Tag: Cape House

Prologue

Christine’s principal asked a few weeks ago if we wanted use of her Cape House, free of charge, for a weekend.  Yes, I know that’s a strange sentence.  My life story sometimes seems to be a random string of strange sentences.  Nevertheless, while the “why” or “how” might be interesting, the actually cool parts of this story come from the “what”.  You already know the “who” and I just told you the “where”.

Journal

More specifically,  the “where” is a four bedroom, 2 bath house on Samoset Road in Eastham, Massachusetts.  It is situated between two ponds, at the end of the road is First Encounter Beach, and half a block in the other direction is the bike trail.  I say all of this not to brag that we got all of this for nothing (okay, maybe a little), but I was actually astounded when she told us how much they rented the place per week.  Normally, I scoff and grumble about dumb rich peopel who pay those prices.  An example can be found only blocks from where we stayed.  A B&B charged $2900 for a room.

This house has all of the amenities and convenience mentioned plus some other things that maybe I shouldn’t mention because I’m not positive if they’re friend/family benefits or not for only a little bit more than half of what the B&B charged.  I mean, Christine told me the rate and I shrugged and replied, “That’s actually not that bad.  4 bedrooms, so you can get the whole family together to split it 3 or 4 ways and it’s less than an hotel room for the week.

The main points are; (a) there are still good people in the world, (b) deals abound if you just keep your eyes open and (c) I don’t want to camp any more.  Because camping is so inexpensive, relatively speaking, that’s how I’ve been traveling since I was a kid.  Even now, as I write this, I’m camping on the Cape in our usual spot.  It’s costing us a fraction of a fraction of what splitting the house 3 ways would cost and we’d be able to spend a month down here before approaching the cost of the house.  There will be more about camping over the next couple of weeks, though, so I will get back to the subject.

She and her husband stayed with us the first night.  He has MS and needed some assistance figuring out the TV/DVD remotes.  So, I played my usual role of “somewhat tech savvy surrogate son” and got him plugged in to Jack Reacher.  I then went to the bedroom to hide from further social interaction.  Christine found me and got me to come down and socialize only because I understood that it was conventionally polite.  Also, unexpectedly, I got into the movie and enjoyed it.  As an aside, the social hour inspired me several times to make observations or proclamations about how much MS must suck.  I also wondered aloud a couple of times how tough it was to crack the disease since “they have the telethon every year and they can’t even really identify triggers.  HIV and even cancer have been figured out to an extent, but MS keeps on destroying lives and bodies.”  Apologies for the abrupt change in subject and tone.  It’s obviously still occupying head space and maybe if I put it out there, I can open up lines of communication.

Because, in spite of much evidence to the contrary, I still believe in the good in people.  I still keep 2 Generations Gaming in spite of the fact that i have no real idea nor plan for promoting it beyond the small following it because I like games and I want to spread that enjoyment as much as possible.  If that leads to discussion and/or meeting new people.  That’s also the reason for this page and honestly, why I ever write anything.  I’d like to make money from it, but I’m more or less just in it for the community.

The next morning, as I often do, I woke up before everyone else.  I sat on the deck, took a picture of the pond across the street, and spent about a half an hour doing absolutely nothing.  I’m often astounded how people will come up with ways to describe their “nothing” time to make it sound like something.  Thinking, meditating, relaxing, enjoying nature/silence/a cup of coffee.  Each of those activities reduces action by a few degrees, but they all still imply that you are doing “something”.  Why are people so reluctant to admit that they are nothing “nothing”?  Well, I was doing nothing.  There’s a virtue in doing nothing.  As I say to Aiden all the time, you need to learn how to be bored.

Speaking of Aiden, as he often does, woke up second.  I can’t remember if it was his idea or mine, but we ended up on our bikes.  I first led ups up to the trail that is only a few feet from the end of the driveway.  He asked about going to the beach that our host has mentioned that was “at the end of the road”.  Consulting the map, I confirmed that, in fact, it was, so we set out on our adventure.  A 10 minute bike ride led us to First Encounter Beach, where supposedly the pilgrims actually landed and met the Wamponoag.  It isn’t much to speak of.  Our first impression was that thee sand flies are brutal.

However, that only extends to the “main” stretch of beach near the parking lot.  If you go either left or right, they are non-existent.  Traditionally, for kids, the beach is great.  During low tide, there is a huge sand bar that reaches out at least a half a mile.  Numerous tide pools litter the landscape, offering countless opportunities for exploration.  I also ran (more on that in the next post) the beach twice and the west gooey sand made for great padding.  We visited the beach twice and once we got out of range of the bugs, both visits were awesome.

We also found a loophole that allowed us to visit the National Seashore Beach free of charge.  It’s a trip that we’ve wanted to take for years, but haven’t been able.  One reason is the cost.  It’s 20 bucks to park.  That’s not bad if you’re an all day beach family, but that’s simply insane for the 2-3 hours that we usually spend at the beach.  The other reason ties into a comment that I made during the camping trip.  “once people get on to the Cape, they just sort of settle where they are.  The traffic is so ridiculous that they don’t want to go anywhere.  Maybe that’s an over-generalization and not true for everyone, but it has held for us.  Other than one (or two) extremely rare trips to P’town, a rainy day travel to the brewery, chip factory, and mall in Hyannis, and a couple of others, we stay very close to our home base, usually Sandwich.

This time, we were in farther and discovered that the National Seashore was right down the road in the other direction.  Score!  But, still, the $20 to park.  Sure, we could have just shut up and paid it.  During our little caper, we considered it.  But, good stories usually involve some level of dishonesty and intrigue.  Also, damn the man!

(Side note:  In this case, “the man” is actually the National Park Service, an organization that I 100% support and has been one of the prime resisting voices in this slow fall of dominoes that appears to be leading to a facist takeover of the country.  Damn, I feel bad.  Time to write a check.)

What makes me feel worse is the beach was actually amazing.  Bear in mind, I’m not much of a beach person.  In fact, I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I actively dislike the beach and will skip it 1 out of every 3 times they visit.  But, this beach was fantastic.  First, the ride into the beach carried us through the forest where we saw a turkey and over a bay bridge.  Second, the waves at the beach were huge.  Third, we followed a pod of seals down the beach.  In fact, I had so much fun that I asked Christine if her family might consider the drive to come back to the beach.  Her answer was non-committal, but I want to return.

Epilogue

We finished the trip with another family paddle on the small pond, a seafood dinner, and a fire complete with giant marshmallow s’mores.  It was a trip to a place that we know and love, but in a different area.  That made all the difference.  We explored and found new adventures in new places.  I don’t want to sound greedy, but I want to come back and explore some more.  Heck, I’ll even pay for the privilege.