Vacation, vacation, vacation! It thunders along like a
drunken brontosaurus, crushing everything in its path toward its own crashing,
blood-soaked doom.
The metaphor kind of got away from me there, but I think you
basically understand: Vacation is tiring. We’re on Day 3 or so, and have
decided to take the day off. We’ve been on the run a bit since we departed, and
it’s gotten us pooped.
I was pooped, personally, before it all began. I had just
spent a titch over a week in Cincinnati, Bedbug Capital of the Nation (turns
out), correcting the AP exam. It’s a good gig that I like a lot, and it pays
well, and my school has no problem with me going there, so I do it. The issue
is that it usually takes me away
from a few days of class, so the first two nights there I’m up until
midnight correcting and commenting on the practice essays that my students have
to write in class, then send to me as emails. So that’s stressful. Then there’s
the social stuff that kicks in once I have my evenings free – I go to a
Cincinnati Reds game, usually by myself, but THIS year, I met a bunch of new
friends, and we went together. Those new friends then were inviting me to go
out with them all the time, which was a hoot – it turned into a
late-night-every-night kind of affair, in addition to the work of grading exams
8 hurs a day, so I got back from that pretty tuckered.
My colleague Camilo had fed-exed me half my final exams, so
the last day of Cincinnati and on the plane rides home I corrected those. But
when I arrived at Albany, I had to drive straight to Lenox, grab the rest of my
own final exams, then boogie over to where some Lenox friends were having an
end-of-the-year bash, then back home to greet the fam (with a stop at Caretaker
Farm, to pick up some lettuce, chat with Don, and take his bike rack for use on
the vacation I’m going to start telling you about soon), then family greetings,
supper, and off to the correcting table again, where I read forty-some final
exams. Plug the grades into the computer, sleep a bit, pack up the car, zoom to
Lenox to turn in and sign my grades, and then hit the road for the Cape.
We’re in Sippewisset, which can be spelled many ways, and
which is near Falmouth. There’s a lovely bike path that passes right past the
back end of the camp ground, hence our need of a bike rack. It’s ten miles
long, and figured to be the focus of a lot of our recreating. It goes 2 miles
to the right to a public beach, which is how we spent much of our first
official day.
That water off the Cape is pretty goddamned cold, I’ll tell
you that right now. We’ve been in the water there and on another couple of
beaches (which I’ll get to in a moment), and the game we play has been dubbed
“The Ninny Game”. We see which of us is the biggest ninny due to their
reluctance to go completely under the water. I generally lose, Tess generally
wins, and Quinn comes in second. (Janneke has yet to play.) It’s nice, and
clean, and very picturesque, and nobody on any beach so far has been obnoxious
or rude in any way. But, jeepers. That is some kind of blue-lip-inducing surf.
The camp ground is plenty good enough. Largely empty,
happily, because the next tent lot is separated from us by nothing more than a
split-rail fence. Not even a token line of trees to make it seem woodsy. The
campground is generally leafy and tree-covered, but they really pack them in
here. It’s the only campground on this stretch of road – the rest are all huge
lots with million-dollar houses on them that overlook either the saltwater
marshes that lead to the ocean, or the ocean itself. I can see a
six-or-seven-foot-high fence about 300 feet away that separates the campground
from the somewhat-busy street. It’s far from remote. But, hey. We’re
car-camping. We didn’t expect to be at base camp on Everest.
Yesterday we got up early, girded ourselves, loaded the
backpacks, and rode the bike trail two miles in the opposite direction of the
beach, to the shuttle site for the Martha’s Vineyard ferry. They pick you up
there in buses that are equipped to carry bikes (a line of hooks all along one
side instead of seats, with bikes suspended from the ceiling), and take you the
rest of the way to Woods Hole. We took a million pictures of the process
of boarding the ferry, which is an
absolute hoot. Apparently you have to sign up months in advance in order to be
able to take your car on it – something I can believe, since there were only
about 30 or 40 on board, and hundreds of
people. And maybe 6 motorcycles, and 20 bicycles.
The island itself lends itself beautifully to biking.
Unless, we found out, you’re 8, and you don’t have a bike with multiple gears.
And it’s hot, and sunny, and your name is T. It really turned into a bit of
a death march for her; we got about half-way to the halfway point of a trip we
wanted to do by bike from Oak Bluffs (I think) to a town at the south-east of
the island, and had to turn back. T just wasn’t going to make it. Grubby and
sweaty and whiny. Although, to be honest, I was feeling that way on the inside.
I have a road bike that I got way back when I thought I couldn’t run anymore,
and the truth is that I never enjoyed road biking, and never got the seat the
be particularly comfortable. And to go from 0 hours per day to 3 wreaks havoc
with one’s nether regions. In addition to which I didn’t want to drag along the
toe-clip shoes, so I’m riding toe-clip pedals on regular shoes…It’s just a
drag. The theory of bike camping really lost out to the reality. Poor planning,
I guess. As soon as I get back to civilization, I’m trading this thing in for a
comfortable, hybrid-style bike and never looking back.
But that’s the future. In the present, I have a sore
bee-hind and am enjoying biking less than might have been hoped. The island,
though, was beautiful, even though every glance in every direction reminded us
that we really couldn’t ever hope to afford to spend any time there. There are
a few holdout homes, back away from the water, belonging to people who clearly
aren’t Kennedys, but most of the place is exceedingly precious and pricey. We did
meet an Ecuadorian Indian from Otavalo, whose store sold all kinds of the usual
artesanía you see in any Otavaleño’s store. He was kind of fun to chat with. He’s
got residency now on the island, and can bring his car over with less hassle
and with up to five free passengers. (I think.)
The beaches we went to were public and also cold, and very
pebbly. But we had fun. We had planned to possibly have supper there, but
everything we might have wanted to do to keep the kids occupied until then
involved the bikes, and they were clearly biked out. So we called it and took
the 6:15 ferry back to Woods Hole, and then the bike shuttle, and then the
two-mile ride back to camp.
And then to Crabapple’s, a sea food restaurant that had made the grade two nights prior. Showers and to bed.
The other great difference between this and our previous
camping trips: Q has a girlfriend. And she sends him text messages, on Janneke’s
phone.
All.
The.
Time.
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