Riverside Drive

 Someone obviously had safety in mind or they would not have put this sign on the post.  Trust me, I will not be trying to climb this pole - even if it did not have the sign on it, I would not try to climb on it.

 This is the top of the pole with the sign, another reason I would not want to even attempt to climb the pole.

 this house now has the Christmas decorations on it.  The wreaths on the garage doors are very large and very beautiful.  Below is another photo of this house when it had snowed.

 This fellow stands guard at the gate.  I have no idea what he represents, but he keeps  watch over the comings and goings on Riverside Drive.

 Many of the houses here seem to have been added on to...........for one reason or another.  The actual house if the one in front and the addition is in the back.  The front door is no used - no stairs to get you there in the first place.  It seems that most people use their back doors to enter the home.

 this is the same house as above, but taken right after our 9 1/2 inch snow fall the day before Thankgiving.

This is the same house as above that has the Christmas Wreaths on it.  It is a beautiful home and has additions on the additions.  I would not want the job of cleaning it.  The annexe to the garage is full of wood ready to use in the wood stove to keep the house warm.

Riverside drive is an interesting road to live on.  It seems to be an arterial road and I have found that it goes all the way to Canada in the north and extends way south of where we live.  It is always busy.  All night long cars go up and down the street and there is a never ending parade of tractor trailers coming and going.  I thought I would never get used to the sound of the street, but now I hardly notice it unless a fire truck or police car with sirens blaring goes by.
About 2 miles south of us is one of Augusta's two roundabouts.  Whoever invented these 'joy ride circles' either had a death wish or wanted to see how interesting life could be if a couple hundred cars wanted to get through the area in short order.  Well, for starters it is a gas waster.  I say this because we approach the circle, wait to see if anyone is coming and if not, then step on the gas to get out into the circle before anyone does come.  If you only have to go one exit, you are pretty much ok, except look out for the guy who wants to go to the road immediately to your right.  He just might take your front end off as he roars through the roundabout.  If you have to go to more than one exit, you have to take the left hand lane leading into the circle, then get into the center lane, put on your turn signal to tell people you are leaving the circle and just hope that they are watching.  If they aren't watching you, then you become a hood ornament for them.  I wonder when I will get used to being in the roundabout.
We have another roundabout over the other side of the Kennebec river.  However, Bill and I have found another way to get to the Archives that helps us avoid this second roundabout.  In fact, on Monday evening, we were leaving the YMCA and noticed a bunch of red flashing lights over by the Occupy Maine group.  We wondered if they had started fighting among themselves and the police were there to break them up.  Well, in today's paper, it is written that while the demonstrators were up at the Governor's mansion demonstrating, a person or persons unknown crept into their campsite on the Capitol Lawn, and set fire to the makeshift lean to that they had built.  We notice that there are quite a lot of tents etc. missing from the squatters area.  The numbers have been dwindling over the weeks and since the snow before Thanksgiving, only a handful of tents remain.  Either these campers are hardy souls, foolhardy demonstrators or they are just hard to convince that their cause is rather futile, especially here in Augusta.  If I was one of these demonstrators, I certainly would want to have police protection around the clock because there seems to be an undercurrent of people who wish these squatters were gone from the beautiful park.  Now that one of the tents has been set fire, there is nothing to stop another arsonist from creeping in at night and setting other fires, perhaps resulting in a loss of life of a sleeping camper.  These certainly are desperate times.
So getting back to Riverside Drive, we leave of a morning, take our chances against the hurtling behemoth trucks and myriad cars and school buses, line up with the other cars at the roundabout, find a 2 second long break in the traffic, step on the gas and zoom out into the circle and hope that we come out on the other side unscathed.