Live Free Or Die

Top 10 things I learned in and about Portsmouth, NH this weekend:

10. Its population is somewhere between the 2004 Census estimates for Tuckahoe, NY (6,257) and New York City (8,104,079).

9. Its state motto, "Live free or die," continues to be the nation's most inspiring ... and creepiest.

8. Crime happens only when parents come to visit for the first time.

7. Experts agree that nearby beaches have the starkest warm-sand-to-frigid-water ratio in the U.S.

6. Experts disagree about the city's ratio of hot women to hot men.

5. When it was completed in 1923, the Portsmouth Memorial Bridge that links the city to Kittery, Maine, was the tallest lift bridge in the world. (Well, I didn't learn that this weekend. I had to Google that information just now. But I did learn that it's awful purdy in person. Hyuh. Hyuh.)

4. Naming a boat that you don't own yet is much more difficult than evaluating the names of other people's boats. (Ex. Knot To Worry = clever. Atsa My Boat = just not trying.)

3. Portsmouth law mandates that the mere mention of getting hit by a car must result in a close call of said catastrophe five seconds later.

2. Similar to most cities, air hockey matches in bars cost $1. In Portsmouth, however, the fee also pays for all bar patrons to express as much interest in that score as there is for that of the televised Red Sox-Orioles game.

1. Claiming that you will not get sunburn has an SPF of -30.