Day Nine

Day 9

The honeymoon is over—literally.  We had an 11 hour drive home from the Cape (beat the GPS estimate by an hour).  Ann felt a little sad about ending the honeymoon but I told her that our whole life is going to be a big honeymoon—that brightened her up.  Note to self—this woman is really gullible.  This knowledge could come in handy some day.

Lunch at McDonalds at a rest stop.  Avoided the Angus burger and went with a good old fashioned cheeseburger.  Ann stole French fries and diet coke without the self loathing that would have accompanied them if she had ordered them herself.

Sadly, the free XM radio subscription ran out while we were at the Cape.  Ann called to see if we could get it turned back on and they offered us a lifetime subscription for $500.  Unfortunately, I had recently read that XM Radio is in financial trouble and was not willing to sign up for lifetime service with a company that may be out of business by the end of the year.  This gave us the opportunity to hear the meathead sports guys from Boston (Patriots and Celtics) and upstate New York (Bills), Rush Limbaugh (Ann kept changing the station for some reason), NPR, and a host of other entertainment options. 

We again ran into some very bad drivers—especially bad when it was raining very hard.  Ann feels that she can get back at them by giving them “the Look”.  The Look includes a furrowed brow, slanted eyebrows and pursed lips.  In Ann’s mind, this makes the recipient feel incredibly guilty and committed to changing his ways. 

Got home around 830, went to Sara’s in Gates Mills for dinner, then did face plant in bed.

It’s been great blogging for you for the last week.  Will follow up with some pictures when I have a chance then I’ll leave you alone!

Day Eight

Day 8

Reading the Honeymoon Blog is like watching the Kardashian family on TV—it can be addicting despite offering nothing of lasting value.  Ann says the other thing it shares with the Kardashians is that you know that there is a big ass in the room!  Wonder what she meant by that.

I am writing this from my desk in Cleveland, having returned yesterday, but have a few notes to work with. 

Day 8 was the last day of the honeymoon.  It was a cloudy, cool day and felt like a true changing of the seasons.  Ann woke up on a mission to get some exercise.  We have been eating a lot and I think this was Ann’s attempt to reassert some self control.  We decided to ride our bikes and went the entire length of the local bike path, from Woods Hole to North Falmouth (about 22 miles).  When we returned, I ate everything in the house—leftover pizza, peanut butter, yogurt, etc.  So much for self control. 

In the afternoon we met Jon and Sally for a little sailing outing on their sailboat with their son James (3^rd year Harvard Law) and his girlfriend.  The boat was being put up for the season so this was the last sail of the year.  It was another sailboat design that was odd in my experience—a cat boat.  This is not a catamaran, but rather a very wide-beamed, gaff-rigged sailboat with the mast way forward.  It had a centerboard rather than a keel.  I think these are very regional boats—as I looked around the harbor I saw a lot of boats of this design, but we have very few of them on the great lakes where sloop-rigged sailboats are dominant.  We sailed in the harbor to stay out of the weather and Jon successfully dodged lots of moored boats—everybody had fun.

Watched a little football in the afternoon—Eagles vs. Redskins.  The Philadelphia fans gave Donovan McNabb, their long time quarterback, a standing ovation when he took the field for the Redskins.  Philly fans are very tough so this was really impressive.  Daisy seemed to growl at the Eagles’ new quarterback, Michael Vick, for some reason.  We saw some Browns highlights and were delighted that the Brownies finally broke through with a win.

Ann has grown very comfortable in our private Cape community.  She claims she still loves the general public—just prefers them on the other side of the security barrier.

Day Seven

Day 7

Woke up to a cool morning with bright blue skies.  Ann was asleep so I made my move for the book (now known as my “mistress”).  I was getting close to the end of the third volume of the “girl with the dragon tattoo” trilogy and all the threads of the book were coming together.  It was hard to put down.

I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and then there she was—staring at me, then the book, with a look of disapproval.  Wives do not like mistresses, even if they are just books. 

Ann later persuaded me that it was wrong to sit around reading when we had such a gorgeous day so I got out the fishing gear and we took Daisy down to the beach for a fishing expedition.  I still had no idea what I was doing but had a theory that I could catch fish in the access point to a salt marsh down the beach.  We hiked down there, but unfortunately it was low tide and there was no tidal flow in or out of the marsh.  I know there are some know-it-alls out there who might ask why I didn’t check the tidal tables before I went fishing.  Well, I just didn’t—so sue me.  Again, Ann kindly supported my theory that my lack of success was attributable to conditions, not a lack of skill (thought this position was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain).

After fishing we drove up the road for lunch in a little town called Bourne.  It seems as though everything on this part of the Cape is named Bourne—Bourne bridge, the town of Bourne, the local market, a farm in West Falmouth.  There must have been a prominent family by this name in this area but I have not been able to verify this as the source of this locally ubiquitous name.

I tried to get a tee time at the local links but it was Saturday and they were full.  Did the only practical thing—took a long afternoon nap.  After the nap we took a walk on the beach with the dog, then came home and watched college football on TV.  It was a good football day since Ohio State (think Ann) and Michigan (think me) both won games but survived scares from teams they were supposed to handle more easily. 

We had dinner at Jon and Sally Reid Sigel’s house (about 10 minutes away).  Sally is my cousin (daughter of my Uncle Jim and Aunt Donna, in whose house we are staying).  Sally made littleneck clams and Jon cooked tuna on the grill and we had a great time catching up.

 The Sigels have a so-called “widow’s walk” on their roof (a widow’s walk is basically a porch built onto the roof, fairly common in coastal New England and almost omnipresent in Nantucket).  It gives the Sigels  a fabulous view of Buzzard’s Bay.  I had always heard that widow’s walks were built so that sailor’s wives could look out to sea to watch for their husbands returning to port after journeys that sometimes lasted years.  However, the captain of the Endeavor had debunked this theory when we were in Nantucket, telling us that the scrub pine wood that they had to burn on the island was so full of pitch that chimney fires were common and they needed an easy way to access the roof to pour sand down the chimney to extinguish the fires.

Got home at about 11 and stayed up reading until I finished the book.  Life suddenly felt empty without my “mistress”.

Day Six

Day 6

So far the marriage seems to be going pretty well.  Ann has not given me the iceberg treatment yet and she still attributes my insensitive moments to stupidity rather than a desire to systematically ruin her life.  However, I recognize that we have not yet been faced with any major adversities. 

In the marriage service they talk about “for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health”, and all that stuff.  You’re standing up there thinking “Yea, whatever—we’re not sick.  Can we get this over with and get some champagne?”  But then it hits you.  Bad stuff could happen.  What would we do?  I am coming up with a list to go over with Ann on the 12 hour drive on the way home.  I am starting with “what would happen if I came home every night and sat on the couch in my underwear, scratching myself inappropriately while drinking beer and watching sports?”  We took no specific marriage vow on this one and I am interested in her thoughts.  I do best with clear boundaries. 

Once again we woke up to beautiful weather despite a weather forecast that suggested the world was going to come to an end.  We took Daisy on a walk (she walked, we rode our bikes) around the island.  She seems very happy here—good smells, no cars and a great place to sleep under the bed.

We then saddled up for a bicycle ride to Woods Hole.  There is a beautiful bicycle path near the island causeway that is built on an old railroad right of way that goes east to Woods Hole (the end of this part of the Cape) and west to who-knows-where.  The path goes along Nantucket Sound, salt marshes, forests, and through a couple of towns on its way. 

We got to Woods Hole and walked around taking in the sights.  Woods Hole is one of the big ferry terminals for Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard (we went in and out of Hyannis which is up the coast a bit).  As we were walking by the ferry terminal, I heard someone say “John Mueller??”  It was an old high school classmate of mine, Jim McClure, who I hadn’t seen in almost 30 years. He was on his way to Martha’s Vineyard with some friends.  Sadly, Jim told me had cancer and, although he is undergoing treatment, it sounds as though the long term prognosis is not great.  Nonetheless, he had the most upbeat, positive attitude you could imagine.  In another odd twist of fate, he happened to be with parents of one of my daughter Felice’s high school friends and classmates from Pomfret School, the Anicellis. 

After catching up with Jim, we hopped back on our bikes and rode back to West Falmouth on the bike path.  We rode exactly 20 miles total (Ann claimed that we were riding into the wind both ways).  We walked down to the community dock with Daisy and I took a swim.  Right when we got to the dock, the long-promised rain finally arrived.  With a vengeance. 

The afternoon rain condemned us to indoor activities so we hopped in the car and went into Falmouth and had lunch at an Irish pub.  After lunch we came back and curled up with our books.  I am reading the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” books.  Ann feels I am too focused on my book.  She reminds me that soon the book will be over but the marriage will go on.  Forever.  And ever.  This sounded like a threat.

Now that we are married I suspect that Ann, like many wives, is planning to change and improve her husband (like, for example getting him to pay more attention to her and less to his book).  The husband, like the proverbial frog in the pot, does not recognize the changes going on around him (i.e., the water is slowly getting hotter) and eventually is cooked (the frog literally, the husband figuratively).  I am doing my best to show no signs of improvement in the hope that she will quickly tire of this game and focus her attention on something more constructive.

We went back into Falmouth for dinner.  Tried to get a table at a place that my cousins had recommended called the Glass Onion.  There was a 30 minute wait and no bar so we bolted for an Italian place down the street where we got the last table.  We were surprised that in the worst recession of our lifetimes, in the off-season, the restaurants on Cape Cod are packed.

As we went to bed, I began to think about the backlog that is inevitably building up at work.  All good things must come to an end and soon we will be heading back to Cleveland to face the music.  More importantly, though, I went to bed thinking about my friend Jim McClure and how he is facing his own mortality with such grace.  He has been forced to look at what is and isn’t important and is making the most of it.  It is a good life lesson.

Day Five

Day 5

Set the alarm for 625 this morning.  The ferry operators told us they would begin taking calls for standby passengers on the noon ferry at 630am.  I called and after a number of rings, the person on the other end asked me to hold and put the phone down.  I could hear that she was dealing with people who had not made the 630 ferry—presumably these would spill over into the standby list for the noon ferry.  When she came back on the line and we concluded our business, the crapmobile was number 8 on the standby list.  I had no statistically reliable sample with which to judge my probability of getting on the boat but I did not feel good about this.  They had only let on four standbys on the outbound trip.  There was nothing left to do.  The die was cast and we were in the hands of fate.

There was really no reason to be that concerned about the ferry.  There was plenty of lodging available on the island this time of year and we really had nowhere else to go except for the next stop on our road trip.  However, I knew that failure to get on the appointed ferry would have severe consequences.  It was our honeymoon, so everything that happened, good or bad, would be magnified in significance and viewed as a harbinger of the future.  Missing the ferry, which seemed very likely at that point, would permanently undermine the reputation for infallibility that I had carefully cultivated with Ann over the years.  Worse yet, it would give her a lifetime opportunity for ridicule.  It was very important to get on that ferry.

Perhaps you’ve heard of divine intervention?  A moment when God inserts himself into earthly events to tip things in your favor?  You be the judge. 

While sitting in the car waiting to hear if we would make the ferry I decided to get out my blackberry and see what sort of horror show was developing at the office for my return.  Saw some email banter from Ed Matuszak and Brent Luce (managers of CapitalWorks’ Lakefront Partners hedge fund) and sent them a note saying we were waiting for the ferry.  Ed volunteered that Brent was friends with a guy who owned half the ferries on the Cape.  Brent asked his friend for help but, sadly, our ferry was owned by another company.  However, he said he would call his competitor and see if they could bump us up the queue.  Brent’s friend said it would be a long shot and told us not to get our hopes up.

They called standbys at 1150—five of them (recall that we were number 8).  After a pause (to see how these cars fit) they called a sixth car.  We were definitely screwed.  But then, in a miracle worthy of a Charlton Heston bible movie, I heard my name called.  Somehow we had moved from 8 to 7 and were the last car on the boat.  It is hard to overestimate the significance to my future of of this one twist of fate—aura of infallibility preserved, humiliation avoided, redemption achieved.  On the other hand, I now have to deal with Brent when I get back to the office.

We had a very pleasant ferry ride to Hyannis then drove up to my aunt and uncle’s summer house in West Falmouth where we will spend the next few days.  Their house is in a private seaside community on an island connected to the mainland by a short causeway.  The house is in the classic Cape Cod style in some ways (silver cedar shake shingles, white trim) but has very interesting architecture, a passion of my aunt Donna (I suspect that my uncle Jim, by contrast, while he has many fine qualities, has the aesthetic sense of, well, an auto parts manufacturer).  We have a view of Nantucket sound, a beautiful deck, a big kitchen and room for a half dozen more people.

We took a bike ride around the community and I went for a swim in the sound.  We went to dinner at the local grill and met a golf pro who was regaling his friends with his memory of significant dates in his relationship with his wife—first date, first weekend together, etc.  It was very impressive and the women in the group were clearly captivated.  In a more private moment I mentioned to him that his memory was very impressive.  He responded, “Yeah, I figured out a long time ago that women love that crap so I bust it out all the time!”  He then gave me some tips on how I could learn this trick and manipulate women myself.  Oi vey.

We looked at the weather before we went to bed—again, the next day was supposed to be torrential rains all day (this has been the forecast every day since we got here).  Oddly, we have had beautiful weather the entire time and the rain has never appeared.

Day Four

Day 4

The plan today was to rent a little sailboat, pack a lunch and head off into Nantucket Harbor to explore.  Sadly, the organization that rents sailboats shuts down on Labor Day so we needed a plan B.  We decided to walk around town gaping stupidly at shop windows, an activity we named the “moron walk.”  I encouraged Ann to go in one of the cute stores on Main Street to buy a baby outfit for her niece, Paige.  Ann shot out of the store like a bullet, announcing that baby outfits in Nantucket cost $229 and a cute sweaters for her would cost $879.  Ann said she was tempted to ask the saleswoman, “Do you know the baby is probably going to poop in this outfit?”  I suspect that wealthy Nantucket babies are housetrained at an early age.

On the moron walk we had the good fortune to find the fly fishing store that I had been looking for.  The woman proprietor was a wealth of information and, after I bought $50 worth of flies, gave me a map with the good fishing beaches.

Went to the Ferry terminal to see about our chances of getting off the island.  They told me to call in the following morning at 630.  A slight undercurrent of anxiety returned to the honeymoon—blog readers will recall the lack of reservations which, as my friend Bradway points out, are required both ways.

We finished the moron walk with lunch at a little sandwich shop on the pier.  $28 for two sandwiches, but they were quite good.  While eating on the pier, groups of people, generally older, were wandering around, having been dumped there by the Nantucket tour bus.  I have witnessed this in peak season, where hordes of tourists pour off the ferry and scurry around town like cockroaches buying t-shirts and tchotchkes and then scurry back on the ferry.

We decided to look down on these people.  However, as we thought about it, we realized that the only real difference between the gawking tourists from the ferry and the wealthy investment bankers who own houses here is the nature of the tchotchkes that capture their fancy.  For the former, a Nantucket refrigerator magnet is just the thing.  For the latter, a $3.5 million summer house and a $50,000 oil painting of a whaling ship.  This insight allowed us to also look down on the wealthy investment bankers.

After lunch we decided to go fishing—or rather I decided to go fishing and Ann and Daisy decided to come with me to the beach and read a book and dig around and eat dead things in the seaweed, respectively.  Ann was given responsibility for navigational advice on the way to the beach.  Which brings up a bone that I have to pick with the minister at our wedding.  I was promised a “help meet”, a la the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve and all that stuff.  If automobile navigation is part of the help meet’s job description, we have a problem.  There also appears to be an issue with the vow of obedience but I will take that up with the minister directly. 

We eventually get to the fishing beach at Eel Point and I spent a couple of hours happily flogging the water with my fly rod with nary a nibble.  I found out later that the fishing is best when the tides are running fastest, which I believe is just before and just after low tide.  I was fishing in a slack high tide.  Ann was nice enough to support my theory that the problem was not my lack of skill, but the conditions.  The weather was good so I went skinny dipping on the way back to the car—Ann laughed and Daisy looked like she smelled something bad in the seaweed.

After fishing we came back to the cottage and got ready for a sailing adventure.  Since we could not rent a sailboat ourselves, I had made reservations on the evening cruise of a 35 foot sailboat (the “Endeavor”) that takes tourists out in Nantucket Sound on 1.5 hour sails.  The captain (Jim) had built the wooden boat himself 30 years ago.  Not sure what that style of sailboat is called—the boat had a gaff-rigged mainsail and two overlapping jibs. 

A pair of 60 year old twins (Joy and Pat—it was their birthday) were also on the Endeavor with us and made good company.  The trip started inauspiciously in pea soup fog but the weather lifted the minute we got out of the marina and we had a beautiful sail and a gorgeous sunset.  I helped Leslie, the mate, get the sails up.

Captain Jim regaled us with stories of the Essex (the inspiration for Melville’s Moby Dick), cannibalism at sea, the wives who sailed with their whaling captain husbands and all kinds of other facts, some of which might actually have been true.  An interesting fact that he shared with us was that Nantucket sailors often had second families in Hawaii and to this day, many of the leading families on Mauii have the same names as old Nantucket families and the towns share many of the same street names.

As we came back into the marina I asked Jim about a disreputable looking boat in a slip near our cottage.  He said that slips in the marina were rented out for $800 for the entire period from October 1 through May 1.  Apparently this attracts a dozen or so dysfunctional sailing bachelors every year who take advantage of the bargain to live on their boats in Nantucket all winter.  The epitome of this group is a guy who bought a very large fishing boat for $1 in a government auction of drug assets.  The engine was blown but he traded the 1,500 gallons of diesel fuel aboard for a tow to Nantucket Harbor where he moored the boat and has since lived with his 5 dogs.  Apparently he puts the dogs in a dinghy every day and brings them ashore for a walk, but this sounded problematic to us.  Notwithstanding all this, when Joy and Pat heard that most of these guys were single they resolve to make a little tour of the marina before going to dinner that evening.

After sailing we went to a nice dinner at a good restaurant called the Boarding House.  Arm wrestled Ann.  The woman is freakishly strong but no match for Johnny Moo.  Ate too much.  Went to bed thinking about the ferry.

Day Three

Day Three

Weather-wise, day three was an unexpected bonus.  The clouds separated in the morning and sun and blue sky emerged.  We took advantage of our good fortune by hopping on our mountain bikes and heading out to the eastern end of the island, the little town of Siasconset (pronounced, of course, “Sconset”). 

Nantucket takes the previously noted New England tendency toward odd, tongue-tying names to a new level.  Nantucket itself is a mouthful that has achieved prominence in dirty limericks well beyond its geographic significance.  Add Madaket, Siasconset, Polpit, Quidnet and Cosaka, just to name a few, and you have a world class cluster of peculiar names. 

We rode on the bike path to Siasconset, taking a short detour to ride to the beach at Pocomo on the far end of Nantucket’s large harbor.  We then biked up to ‘Sconset and bought a turkey and swiss with secret ‘Sconset sauce at the local sandwich shop. 

Siasconset has grown a lot in the last 20 years (the last time I had been out to that end of the island).  They apparently just keep building more of Nantucket’s iconic cedar shake colonials every year, farther and farther inland.  The older and cuter part of ‘Sconset has implausibly tiny roads and equally implausibly tiny cottages clustered together near the beach, as though to keep one another warm in a hostile environment.  Many of these are said to be old fishing shanties from Nantucket’s whaling days. They have since been renovated for tourists.

I had planned to look for the McCreary family’s old summer home in ‘Sconset but forgot to bring the address so we rode back to town on Milestone Road (Milestone Road does in fact have milestones, including one marked with a Pi sign, which presumably is 3.14 miles from town).  The whole loop, including detours and stops to gawk at the beach and eat the sandwich, took 2.5 hours, so I figure we probably rode 20 miles total.

Ann is convinced that one of my goals in life is to kill her.  She would cite as evidence (a) several episodes where she felt uncomfortable with the terrain while skiing with me, (b) a couple of mountain biking episodes where she felt similarly uncomfortable, (c) a long swim in choppy water at the Mueller summer place in Canada, and perhaps a few other lesser events.  Her paranoia in this area was regrettably rekindled when I took a shortcut back to our cottages on some very narrow roads that are favored by delivery vans and landscaper trucks, all of whom seem to be in a big hurry.  My strategy was to try to bike as fast as the trucks while hers was (in keeping with the aforementioned low-testosterone approach) to cower in the fetal position at the side of the road until I was lost from sight.  We were reunited but only after thoughts of abandonment, attempted murder, etc. had been firmly planted in her head.

We were greeted on our return to the cottage by a very happy dog who non-verbally communicated that she damned well wanted to go on a walk—now.  We complied by getting the leash, jumping in the Crapmobile and heading out to beautiful park west of town on the north coast of the island.  There was an absolutely enormous house—maybe 15 to 20,000 square feet—adjacent to the park.  We reflected on how the original concept of a simple, low maintenance summer cottage in a place of natural beauty had gotten a little bit twisted with massive McMansions taking their place.  Nonetheless, the spot was absolutely beautiful.  So much so that Ann dubbed it “a poor man’s Ireland”. 

After the dog walk, we drove to Madaket on the far western part of the island and walked the beach.  We saw several seals fishing in the surf.  The Atlantic ocean was crashing on the beach and the wind was blowing maybe 20 knots.  Several houses were in danger of being eaten by the Atlantic, while several others were lucky enough to have their beaches grow at the expense of their neighbors.  In the course of the day we saw a lot of houses that were going to end up in the drink in the next 20 years, but for now they all have great views.

After the beach, I made a move to get back for a nap but the blondes prevailed on me to keep pushing forward on our sightseeing so we went to find Altar Rock (reportedly the highest place on the island) which is embedded in a large nature reserve and reachable only by foot or 4 wheel drive.  We took the Crapmobile out to Altar Rock and took in the view.  It was right under the flight path for the Nantucket airport and we watched a couple of C-130 military cargo planes come in over our heads.  I told Ann that the Obama administration is flying in emergency supplies of designer goods to Nantucket in a desperate attempt to keep the economy moving.

I should point out that the humid salt air and wind has an interesting effect on Ann’s hair.  Turns out that if she doesn’t tend to it, it reverts back to its natural state which is a form of Irish Afro.  Ann, to her credit, decided to totally own it and just rock the ‘fro (not that she had any real choice apparently).

On the way out of the nature reserve we somehow got off the main road and ended up in some pretty rough country and scratched up the Crapmobile a bit.  Got back on the main road and decided to go to the south eastern end of the island to an area called Tom Nevers where we walked the beach.  We had another exciting ride through rough backcountry on our way back and came out near a security fence at the back of the airport.  Crapmobile slightly worse for wear.

Home, nap, blog updating, dinner (a great place called Dune), bed.

Day Two

Day 2

I woke up in our honeymoon cottage at 730 or so.  Left the blondes (Ann and Daisy) sleeping and took a shower.  Told Ann I was going to the inn for coffee and a newspaper, assuming she would understand that she was to follow and join me for breakfast.  There was no such understanding apparently.  After waiting for Ann for a while, ordered a delicious breakfast of tomato juice, coffee, homemade granola and bacon.  Wandered back to the cottage after breakfast to a foot-tapping blonde who wondered where I had been.  No one said this was going to be easy.

One thing I had learned at the inn that morning was that the Nantucket ferry (unlike other ferrys I have known such as the Kelly’s Island Ferry) requires reservations if you are bringing a car across.  I did not have a reservation and was unable to make one online (suggesting that there were no reservations to be had, i.e., that the ferry was already full).  This is the kind of screwup that causes a newly married bride to question the intelligence and perhaps the very manhood of her husband.  I filed this away with a note to break this news to Ann gently.

Got on the road a little before 10.  We observed that New England has much more imaginative names for their towns than Ohio.  Just as African-American parents are often extremely creative in finding unique, musical names for their children, so New Englanders invent names like Woonsocket, Mashpea, Sandwich and Worchester (pronounced “Wooster” of course) at the drop of a hat.

Having missed breakfast, all Ann wanted was a chai tea with milk from Starbucks.  Sadly, we discovered that when you cross the border into Massachusetts, there are no more Starbucks.  There are Dunkin’ Donuts.  Or, as we came to call them, Dunkin’ freakin’ Donuts, after the seventh one with nary a Starbucks to be seen.  I don’t know what it is about New Englanders and Dunkin Donuts, but they can’t get enough. 

We agreed that it was very unpleasant learning to live life without Buff Josza, the wedding planner that Ann hired.  Buff took care of everything so well that our ability to take care of ourselves started to atrophy.  Finding ourselves alone in the world without Buff was a jarring experience. 

We called the ferry on the way to Hyannis and were told that there were no reservations left but that we should come and they would try to accommodate us.  Thereupon the trip took on an air of mild uncertainty in my mind and, in Ann’s, an air of impending disaster.

We got to Hyannis, parked the car in the ferry line (still no assurance that we would be allowed on) and went to have lunch at a little bar called the Dockside nearby.  We were told that we really did not need a car on Nantucket—that we could get by with bicycles and taxis.  However, our packing strategy had always assumed the car would come with us.  Ann threw in 16 extra pairs of shoes and boots just before we left, I had my golf clubs, there were bikes on the bike rack, we had the dog.  Indeed the car had become the “Crapmobile”, so named because of its overflowing contents.  If we could not get the car on the ferry it would be a disaster, a black mark on my manhood, and a bad shoe day for Zoller.

Lunch at the Dockside was therefore a welcome distraction.  The bartender was a toothless, very gregarious encyclopedia of sports and various useless facts.  He discovered we were from Cleveland and we talked about Manny, what a tool LeBron is, the sad state of the Browns and the fact that Delonte is now in Boston. 

After lunch we came back and sat in the car for 20 minutes or so before they started loading.  I promptly fell asleep, woken intermittently by little peeps and sighs from Ann, which I later discovered were reactions to more and more of the reserved automobiles showing up just before departure time.  They let on a total of four extra cars, including the Crapmobile (thank God).

We had a pleasant two hour ferry ride to Nantucket.  Daisy seemed mildly suspicious of the whole concept of boats and water but was a good sport. 

We are staying in a cottage right in the harbor.   There are boat slips out our front door and the town is a short walk.  It is a cozy little place with one bedroom and a combination living room/kitchen.  We bought a few necessities at the grocery down the block and socked in for a nap.  Had dinner at a nice little restaurant named Queequeg’s, again preceded in my case by a delicious martini.  Let me note that Ann was fine with having dinner at the bar while watching Monday night football.  This is a good sign.