We left Wellington in two vehicles at about 9:30 yesterday morning. I drove south and stopped briefly in Skowhegan, then made my way across country to Route 95 and took the straight shot toward home. Just past Waterville a cop flew by in the lefthand lane, easily going 100 mph. Twenty miles later two more cop cars flew by, also at light speed. Clearly something was going on--an accident, we thought--and that seemed to be corroborated by the flashing sign warning of a "Major Incident" on Route 295. Normally I would have taken that route, but instead I stayed on 95 and we got home by about 11:30.

An hour later I got a call from Tom. He'd gone on ahead, taken the 295 fork, and stopped in Freeport to run errands. By the time he finished, he couldn't get back on the highway: the exit was blocked and all traffic was gridlocked on Route 1. "What's going on?" he asked.

That's when we discovered that the "Major Incident" was a shooting at one of the Yarmouth exits--a chaotic scene that police still haven't totally explained but is apparently related to a four dead bodies in the town of Bowdoin, 25 miles to the north. Yarmouth is just outside of Portland, Bowdoin is rural, and this is how our vacation ended . . . we avoided being randomly targeted by a crazed gunman. Good morning, America.