I was late to get up, I’m kind of on a different schedule
than everyone else, I go to bed about 3am and then wake up about 6, see
everyone still sleeping, roll back over and then wake up again at like 9am and
by then everyone else us up and hoppin… much the same today. We start out with breakfast and coffee, by
the time I get up Amy and Dana have already gone for a walk down to Lake
Tashmoo – about a 2 mile trek – Sandy hangs out on the front porch as part of
her morning ritual, and Patti and I hang out on the back deck and enjoy the
morning air.
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| Walk down to the lake |
It’s going to be a beautiful day for the beach, nice and
warm with the sun shining bright – we were going to go to Aquinnah and Chilmark
today, but Amy wants to take us to the Chocolatier in Chilmark and it isn’t
open until Thursday, so we adjust our plans and head to State beach, where they
filmed parts of Jaws. There are lots of
T-Shirts in all the stores that say “I jumped off the Jaws bridge at State
Park”.
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| Amy getting her sunscreen on for the beach... she joked, "See what hanging out with you white folk has done to me?" - Amy in white face. Not right. |
State beach isn’t crowded at all – we’re early in the
season and there are fewer people here on the island than there will be in July
and August – the “season” really starts July 4th weekend. A young mother and her two boys show up at the
beach, they’re maybe 3 and 5, and she leaves a bag behind to carry the younger
of the boys.. but then she leaves the boys alone to go back for the bag. We thought she was going back to the car, and
the younger boy, still not really steady on his feet, starts heading full speed
toward the water, Amy goes into mamma bear adrenaline mode and RUNS down to
water’s edge just as he’s also getting there, and he had a head start and was
half the distance to the water, and she has a bad knee AND is running on sharp
rocks. The mother yells down that he’ll
be ok – it’s ok, he won’t go in the water, he’s her runner, but he won’t go in
the water – Amy says later that her heart was racing so fast and that she’s
heard of people doing things on adrenaline, but she’s never felt it like
this. She felt no knee pain, noticed no
rocks… We watch this family like TV
through the day, get to know them on some level. Max, the runner, is BUSY – big brother Angus
is quiet and withdrawn, dad isn’t around
- but grandma and grandpa are with the family and so is her brother and
his wife, and their kids. There are two
girls and another boy, and one of the little girls, Hannah, needs an attitude
adjustment. She’s a snot all day, and
when it’s time to go back she’s the last one out on the beach with grandma and
grandpa, she take forever getting shoes and socks on, and then her socks are
too wet, so it’s just a mess to get shoes on over them (all stall tactics) – as
they walk, she’s carrying only her small chair and she tells them, I’ll just
meet you at the car. Um no, grandma
says, we’re all going to the car together, and we need to fold up these
chairs. Well, I don’t know HOW to fold up
the chairs – so she just stands there while they pack up, and then her chair
isn’t folded either, she doesn’t know how to fold it either, so grandma is
going to fold that and Hannah starts to walk off once Grandma has it. Oh no, I’m going to fold it and you’re going
to carry it, grandma is already loaded down with bags and towels and other
chairs – Hannah stands about 5 feet from her and says, well you’re going to
walk the chair to me. Who talks to
their grandparents like that? This girl
is maybe 7 years old. ATTITUDE.
Throughout the day as we tease each other, someone is whining or
something, we say, “Ok Hannah!”…
Water is pretty cold again – but it’s “refreshing” –
today we packed our lunches so we can stay a little longer than the day before.
It really is the perfect beach day, you need to get into that refreshing water
to cool off.
We pack up at about 3:00 and drive further down the beach
to see the bridge that everyone is jumping off of. There are signs clearly saying that jumping
off the bridge is not permitted – but there are people stacked on that bridge,
jumping off one after another. And it’s
enough of a thing that there are T shirts saying that you jumped off the
bridge… so obbussly it’s not enforced.
I don’t think we have anyone in our pics jumping, but I found the video
of the bridge from Jaws. It’s a famous scene, it’s used when Jaws gets into
“the pond”.. here’s a clip:
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| Approaching the bridge - you can see the rock bar in the distance that the mother runs down in the movie clip |
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| Climbing over to jump... |
Amy wants to show us the famous gingerbread houses in Oak
Bluffs which is on our way back – we parked and walked around the Martha’s
Vineyard Campground association – I’ve seen some gingerbread work on houses
before, but this is beyond. Some of the houses look like doll houses. There is obviously a lot of upkeep needed on
these houses, and we see several people out painting on this beautiful
day. I’m posting some of our pictures,
but I encourage to look at more houses online – I’ve posted on article about
the houses below. There are a lot them,
and it’s a maze of them back in the “campground” (just what they call it, there
is no actual camping happening there) – we’re there for quite a while, and I
know we didn’t see them all. There are a
few for sale.. and they all have names.
One of them up for sale is “Two Bad Cats” – we think we should get it
and re-christen it “Five Bingo Bitches”..
Amy checks in to see if “the sisters” are home so she can stop in for a
visit – the sisters are elite African American women that have a house on the
island. But they’re not on their
porch. And that’s a big thing! Half the houses have people sitting out on
these great porches and they all wave and greet you as you walk around their
neighborhood.
We’re getting hungry again and once we get back to the
car we looked for place to eat in Oak bluffs in the same area where we had the
lobster potato skins before, but it’s a nice day today and there is zero
parking near the marina – it’s about 5, and we decide to go back to the Net
Results. That’s the fresh fish market
with super cheap seafood – today’s special is $5 peel and eat shrimp (for 15 of
them) – we all get 2, one to eat there and one to take home for later, and the
oysters say that they’re only a DOLLAR each.
I order 2 dozen for me and Amy.. but they hand me a bag of unshucked
oysters. Ummm… oops. After, I see that there is a small hand
written sign below it that says half shell order are $1.75 each (still a huge
bargain). The fish counter is busy and
the others are already eating… so I head out to the tables with my bag of 24
oysters. We have a bit of a laugh about
it – but I feel dumb going back up there and saying.. um yah, I’m an idiot… can
we get these shucked? Amy thinks that we
should just do it on our own, take them home and figure out how to shuck them
from Youtube. No – that can’t happen,
we’ve watched enough of people shucking oysters on cooking shows to know that
this is hard, and there are special oyster shuckers and big thick protective
gloves.. this is not for us to try and do. So I eat my shrimp and I adult up..
and I go back in and try to laugh about it – they’re super nice about it, and
they don’t laugh openly at me, I just owe them $.75 more per oyster. J
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| Properly shucked... |
In the mix of all this, Sandy went to get a slice of
pizza from shop just next door – she orders a beer and a slice and wants to
bring it back to eat at the tables outside with us, but they won’t let
her. The law here doesn’t let the
alcohol leave, but she can’t even just drink her beer and get her pizza to go –
because she ordered food with her beer, she “has to” eat it there too. The server explains that “I have to serve you
on a HARD plate” – never called it that before.
But Sandy is a rebel.. she drinks her beer – she has no problem with
that, that’s a common law – she just wanted to take her pizza out, and she
does. She wraps it up in napkins, rolls
it up and sneaks it out. REBEL!
We come back to the house for a little – we have about an
hour before Back Door Donuts opens up.
It’s this place that we saw featured on one of the food shows. There is a bakery that does cakes and really
a lot of specialty cakes and wedding cakes by day, and then they close the
front door, and they sell donuts out of their back door. They’re famous for their apple fritters, so we
plan to get them and heat them up for breakfast tomorrow. We relax for a couple of hours, read, nap,
play on fb, and then we head out to get donuts about 8pm. We find the shop and we go in, but they
direct us to the back – it’s literally out of the back door. So we walk around to the alley – and they sell
them out of a dutch door. We try the
butter crunch and a cinnamon and sugar, Amy got an lemon cream filled – and we
got the fritters. They are bigger than our hands.
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| Apple fritter |
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| Butter crunch |
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| mmmmmm |
The only thing that’s missing
is the coffee – I try to get some at another shop out on the circuit, but their
specialty is iced coffee…. And it’s pretty room temperature. I should have listened to Dana and gone two
shops done where they claim to have the best coffee. I just thought coffee would be coffee. Silly.
Patti gets a lime slush – and Amy and Sandy shop a bit before we head
back.
Amy is considering going back out (not really, but she’s
having fun with it) – while we were in line for donuts she was invited to a
club by a guy that looked about 25 years old.
He was actually the crowd control guy there, making sure we were all
orderly – he’s using his position of power to seduce mature women and get them
to the club down the street. I’m afraid
that he might have been left hanging by Amy.
Poor child.
We dropped Sandy and Amy off in town – they want to get a
walk in and it’s a nice night. They run
into the most talkative little boy, and this is coming from Amy – he keeps
asking, have you been to Mad Martha’s you need to go there…. Do you know Zues
(his dog)..
When we get back I had everyone help me remember everything for the blog and add their little flavor stories from the day. I had to catch up so worked on about five days in one night - and… the power goes out. Well oiled machine…it's become a nightly ritual. Amy goes down and flips the right switch and we’re back on.
About 9:40 we start Selma… I know the time because we
last about 20 minutes, and Patti and Amy are done… we decide to hold it until
Friday, because tmw we have plans to go out to the movies. Tmw we head to Aquinnah, Chilmark, and Menemsha
for fresh lobster just pulled from the boats… we think. Plans change around here... and that's ok.
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