'Gotta Get Out!' This is the theme of the second annual conference presented by Teens to Trails, an organization founded by Carol Leone, with its mission, to start and support Outing Clubs in Maine high schools, for encouraging and preparing young people for outdoors adventures away from the Game Boys. The conference will meet Saturday, April 5, starting at 7:30 a.m., at Windham High School, offering a huge number of workshops on everything from fly-casting to climbing Windham HS's impressive rock wall. Members of the public are welcome, teenagers $10, $20 for adults. For more details and the mail-in registration form, go to www.teenstotrails.org or call 882-9613 or 882-6935.

Alpha and Omega: Welcome, little Madison Rose Lorrain, new (as of December) daughter of Steve and Kristin Lorrain! And a Farewell salute to Major Herbert Douglas Holloway, a former Edgecomb resident and World War II veteran, who passed away last week in Springfield.

Gaudeamus Igitur: On various college deans' lists, we find Maia Titcomb at St. Michael's College, Burlington Vt., Christopher Casey at Maine Maritime Academy. At the University of Maine at Orono, Nicole Brooks, Matthew Miller, David Nickerson, Erin Oberuch, Rebecca Riser, Rita Sieracki, and from across the river, my niece Chelsea Cameron from Pemaquid. Hip, hip, hurray for you all!

Cook's Night Out! Go out for a fine dinner tonight, Thursday, March 20, at Bintliff's Ocean Grille, and the restaurant will donate ten percent of the night's proceeds to our regional Emergency Fuel Assistance Fund, 'Just Desserts' for their help to the community! Next Thursday's dinner proceeds, March 27, will go to the Good Shepherd Food Bank run by St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Wiscasset.

Put on your calendars for next week, Friday, March 28, the Edgecomb Eddy School Book Fair and Spaghetti Supper! With an additional attraction: a concert by Martin Swinger following the meal! He's the musician who collaborated a few years ago with students and teachers to create the Edgecomb Eddy School Song. Call the school, 882-5515, for details of time, etc.

With the Equinox sweeps in the Edgecomb Historical Society, with an exciting Thursday, March 27, meeting about a lost or nearly lost Edgecomb oyster industry on the Marsh River. Peter Larsen of the Bigelow Lab and Karen Wilson of UM will tell us about plans to restore these native Sheepscot oysters to the recently recovering Sherman Marsh. Read more about this in the EHS press release elsewhere in these newspapers! At the Edgecomb Eddy School, either in the conference room or the library, we will start at 2 p.m. with a brief business meeting, and then dive for the oysters, dive!

Early Green Alert! The second annual Midcoast Sustainable Energy Expo is shaping up, to go on stage the weekend of April 18-19. Midcoast Green Collaborative promises a grand selection of the latest energy-saving products and technologies, from wind generators to pellet furnaces. Efficiency Maine, a State agency, will be on hand to tell us how to qualify for cash rebates for approved energy upgrades. If you are interested in exhibiting your own products, speaking about your own greening expertise, or learning more about the MGC, go to www.midcoast greencollaborative.org . To down-load registration information, click on EXPO or send an e-mail to midcoastgreencollaborative@gmail.co m . But move fast! They are nearing

completion of the Expo's exhibit roster.

Here's a Fort Edgecomb Bicentennial reminder. Some time ago I asked what were 'Madison's Bonnets?' Tom Blackford tells me, 'I believe that Madison bonnets were barrels turned over to cover the tops of masts (probably after topmasts had been struck on deck) in order to protect them from the elements when ships were not being used for an extended period of time. The end grain at the top would be the ideal place for moisture to enter the wood and rot the mast.' Thanks, Tom! So that explains what they were and how they worked, but it doesn't explain why 'Madison's' in particular?

Excruciating experience 101A: Jarryl Larson and I were coming home from a Gateway I (MDOT's master plan for Route 1) meeting in Rockport last Wednesday night about 9 p.m., had a flat tire just at the Warren/Waldoboro line. Drizzle of rain sheeting to ice as it hit the surface, true black ice conditions, but tire (left rear) gave a dainty pop, and the shoulder was wide and flat, no trouble getting off the road. Thank heavens for the cell phone! I reached 9-1-1 , got a tow truck laid on, then noticed, across the street, a small house with lights blazing, so I knocked on the door. The LaCombe family had just moved in about a week before, most pleasant, offered to change the tire. Guess what? We could not find a spare tire anywhere. It would have been one of those little donuts they give you now, but we could not find it.

So it was a lengthy tow, but I spared the guy the River Road, just had him go straight to Skip Cahill's, called Byron Johnson, who met us there and dropped me at home.

The following morning Susie Stephenson gave me a lift to Cahill's. They found where the spare, yes, a donut, was hidden - squeezed in mid-car, we'd have had to tear the seats out to get it. So I'm glad that we did not put those nice people to that much trouble in the icy mist in the middle of the night, middle of Route 1 on the Warren/Waldoboro line!

Thank you, everyone who had a role in this meller-drama! People are uncommonly kind when you are in trouble like this. It was, in its inconvenient way, a great experience!

Kicking my tires at 234 River Road, 633-2978, jocam@midcoast. com .

This column appears in the Boothbay Register, The Lincoln County News, the Wiscasset News-paper, and at www.Edgecomb.org .