FRIENDSHIP — Michael Bowen Scarborough, 59, of Friendship, died Dec. 27, 2015, with his brothers, Chris and Matthew, at his side, at the Sussman House in Rockport. He was born Jan. 5, 1956, in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest of four sons of Joyce (Bowen) and Richard Scarborough.

Mike lived in Brooklyn until 1968, when he moved with his family to New Canaan, Conn. He spent the next 35 years of his life in Connecticut, while the rest of his family went off to other places, including Phoenix, Arizona, and Richmond, Virginia.

In his words, their departure left him, "as the only Scarborough still in New England."

During his early career, he worked in Stamford, Connecticut for the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and then for 15 years for southern Connecticut newspapers, including Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate.

Before working in production, laying out pages and creating ads, Mike's time was spent managing the newspapers' typesetting computer systems. Like many of his era, he remembers seeing the first Apple computers, including the Lisa and Mac Plus, when they debuted in the mid-1980s.

"I had an editor back then who looked at me and said, 'I won't have toys in my newsroom,'" said Mike. "By the time we both left the paper though, I was running the largest all-Mac newsroom in America until the Times-Picayune overtook that benchmark."

Having always used Macs, when asked if he ever had to use a PC, Mike said, "Only under great duress, and it was not pretty." He also said he always worked behind the scenes in the news business, but on more than one occasion, he was a ready witness and willing reporter, and even wrote about his geodesic dome building for the former Scene magazine and most recently wrote about his hospital experience in the PenBayPilot.com magazine, the Wave. (Read his story None of us want to...but sooner or later, a number of us just might.)

In 1999, Mike moved to Maine with his sea kayaks to work for a short time at Courier Publications. In 2003 he went to work driving a truck for Thomaston Place Auctions, which he categorized as the "best job I ever had." The pay was next-to-nothing and there were no benefits, but it was the most interesting job because of the people he met and the antiques he saw and held in his hands.

Next, he worked for VillageSoup, and then moved on in 2012 to the Boothbay Register newspaper, where he was most recently employed in the production department, working on Macs.

While many considered Mike's life unconventional, because he remained single and never had children, he said it afforded him the opportunity to try different things, and eventually get pretty good at most of them.

"I was never the best at anything really, but in a lot of them, I had the chance to get one rung up on the ladder, where I could see the feet of the people who were really good at these things. And I got high enough so that I could appreciate that."

He said he always felt that everyone else was 10 times better than him at everything he did, but he enjoyed the experience and always learned from them.

During high school and college, at University of Virginia, Mike was a long distance runner. In the 1980s, he participated in distance races and marathons, and he also spent about 10 years racing Formula Ford cars in the Skip Barber Racing Series in Lakeville, Conn.

His love of sea kayaking was long-lasting, and after a while he wanted to build his own. So he decided it would be smart to start with the paddle, which he never finished. But he did wind up going to Wooden Boat School in Brooklin, where he made not one but two kayaks before moving to Maine.

Mike also got involved in playing volleyball. Again, he said he was never great, but he was good enough to get the chance to play with some really good players at really high levels in some leagues.

Mike's family and friends knew him as a wonderful cook, and Indian food was his specialty. His love of Indian food came from his mother, who he said was on an Air India flight to London that was delayed and over-booked. When the stewardess came around and said there was "no more Caucasian dishes, just Indian dishes to eat," Mike said his mother said she would try it.

"She liked it, kept going back for more and eventually started cooking it at home and I just grew up eating it too and really liked it, too," said Mike. "When I was on my own, that was when I started cooking and I don't do things like barbecue. I cook Indian food."

Mike said every now and again, he proclaimed himself the number one Indian chef in Friendship. And apparently, nobody challenged him.

"I control all of the asafoetida and half of the fenugreek in Friendship," said Mike. "Those are two essential Indian spices and they are hard to find in Maine. I can't tell you what it is, but it's probably illegal in some states and sometimes I'm not sure if you're supposed to snort it or inject it, but I know it tastes good."

His favorite dish to make is pork vindaloo, or lamb vindaloo. But if he can find goat meat, that's the best, he said. He said it was hard to find a reliable goat meat guy in Maine.

Mike's goat and pork vindaloos made showings for the past four years at the Camden Snow Bowl, where he joined a bunch of friends from The Bog Tavern in Waldoboro and raced toboggans in the U.S. National Toboggan Championships.

"I fell in with the wrong crowd at Bog Tavern that year; they were toboggan builders," said Mike. "That first year, I helped build one. The second year, I went to the races and thought it looked like fun. Plus, I saw Richard Anderson there, and he was 70 years old. I figured it he could race a toboggan, so could I."

That year they tailgated on the Hosmer Pond ice in a construction trailer. But when a strong gust of wind swung one of the doors loose and injured a visitor, Mike came up with the idea to build a geodesic dome. But first he had to explain to his teammates what a geodesic dome was. Team Goat Vindaloo and the bright orange dome, in which hot bowls of spicy vindaloo could be found, became a popular draw on cold race days in February.

Mike said he was glad he kept that old copy of Dome Book II from his high school architectural drafting class, even if the pages were brittle and yellow. It had all the information they needed for the design, and his friends at Boulder Hill Woodworking helped make it happen.

Michael loved the outdoors, and Maine suited him well. He will be missed by his family and friends.

Michael was predeceased by his father in 2000.

He is survived by his mother, Joyce (Bowen) Scarborough of Phoenix, Ariz.; and his brothers, Chris Scarborough of Phoenix, Ariz., Matthew Scarborough and his wife, Sara, and their son, Michael Paul, of Phoenix, Ariz., and Andrew Scarborough and his wife, Rebecca Randolph of Richmond, Va. He also leaves behind his cat, Charlotte.

A celebration of Michael's life will be held Friday, Jan. 1 at 2 p.m. at Burpee Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, 104 Limerock St. in Rockland.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Maine Island Trail Association, 58 Fore St., Suite 30-3, Portland, ME 04101 or visit mita.org. He credited the organization for making it possible for him and others to visit the private and often wild islands of Maine via the Maine Island Trail, and he also volunteered his time with the organization as his way to say thanks.

Arrangements are in the care of Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home.