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.