Current mood:	happy
Entry tags:	kid fu, poetry, travels, writing craft

Trip to Cape Cod -- Report No.1 -- Getting There + Our Cottage
My buddy J4 and I went to Cape Cod last week, staying in a darling little community called Craigville, which is near the Centerville Beach, one of the nicest beaches on the Cape, I learned.

Ironically, the beach was not a big draw once we got there. Go figure! It just didn't feel or smell much like being at the beaches I was used to. No fishy seaweed smell. No ozone in the air. The sand was composed of ground-down oyster shells, so the walking was actually sharp to the feet. J4 never goes barefoot, even in her house, so she only walked through the sand once and never again. I visited the ocean-- actually, Nantucket Sound -- more than she did. I even went late to one of my classes so I could take a quick dip and say I'd swum on that coast. It was a popular family beach, lots of folks, and also neat that it was a private beach for Craigville people with a nice Craigville Beach Center. But it wasn't very tidal, cooler than I expected, and it got deep fast!


The people enjoying a sunny afternoon on Craigville beach.

The Craigville community, composed mostly of cute little or impressively huge summer homes with lush flowers interspersed with the more "rustic" (read: not upgraded with AC or planted with flowerbeds) cottages and buildings owned by the Christian Church folks who owned the Craigville Conference Center, was quiet and sleepy and felt very safe. We slept with windows open, said "hi" to all the folks we passed on the street, etc. There were no stores and it was a drive to get to Hyannis (6 miles) or Centerville (3 miles) and we didn't rent a car. So we spent most of the week hanging out on the breezy porch of our cottage or hiking the streets up and down to go to class or get our meals in the Craigville Inn.

Imagine: a week with no AC, no TV, no radio, no email/Web browsing, no snacks, no sodas, and no driving. It was like living on planet Mars! But first, we had to get from Boston in a tiny Cessna, like a VW bus with wings! One of the best things was when the temperature dropped. OMG, Sunday night we were in our tiny stuffy connecting rooms at the Inn, and I was so hot and cramped. We convinced the Craigville folks to put us into a cottage (more on our generous cottage mate later), and it was so much nicer. A real bathroom with a real tub and shower. A kitchen with a refrigerator and stove and microwave. J4 had 5 beds in her room! Mine was a small one on the front of the house but it had 3 windows in it, so I got breezes galore. That second night in the breezy bedroom, the temperature dropped into the 50s. AWESOME! That's why I'd come to Cape Cod, to escape the triple-digit Austin weather.

My tiny twin bed and cramped room in the inn; I kept hitting my head on the sink or the nightstand!


Our flights from Boston to/from Hyannis were via a tiny 8-person Cessna!

When I walked out on the tarmac and saw this tiny prop plane, the pilots right in the cabin WITH us, I was shocked. I had NO idea when I was booking the flights. J4 was more sanguine, her pilot dad having managed a plane manufacturing facility in her youth, so they'd gone up in little planes. But it was only a 30-min flight, and the Hyannis airport is staffed with funny, charming people, so I recommend you suck it up and take it. Sure beats the 2-3 hours by taxi, bus or rent car to get from Boston to the Cape.

We had a fun young taxi driver, Jeff, who told us he'd started writing his memoirs and offered to bring his manuscript if we'd request him on a future taxi ride (!). Once we dropped off our suitcases (the conference center just left our rooms open with envelopes on the bed since they were closed for the night), it was 7pm so we got Jeff to take us somewhere cool for local flavor. We did Wimpy's in Osterville. Wonderful baked fish sampler for me, with a blue cheese salad for starters. J4 got lobster, which she loves, cooked in with shrimp and other things. We both had a kid fu moment while we waited for our tables: a dad with two sons was also sitting in the front yard benches, and the youngest boy (about 2) wanted to share with us his whole vocabulary. We got shown "rock!" and "leaf!" and "tree!" and "big rock!" After the meal, we called Jeff's taxi company and they sent him to pick us up again, ha!


Seaside Cottage, which is large, showing the breezy side porch.


From our side and back porches, we saw a lovely salt marsh, with egrets, turtles, etc.


Seaside Cottage was across the lane from this richly flowered Cape house yard.

Back to the Seaside Cottage; Monday was our first meal, breakfast. We sat ourselves randomly with Laima and Judy and Cheryl, long-timers at the conference (11 years!). They knew all the ropes, and told us only beginners stayed at the inn because it was so small and hot. And getting a nice, big room in a cottage cost the same per diem! Poor Judy; she remarked she had the front 3-bedroom unit in a cottage and was the only one there. That's what motivated me to keep asking the Craigville director for a breezier place; I kept insisting "Judy has two bedrooms free, so surely there are other places available." The result: we got put into Judy's cottage. After we'd moved in (waiting until after dinner to be cooler), she showed us the cottage had units above, a unit on the side, and then a great big living area with an enclosed back porch overlooking the salt marsh! It was so tranquil and picturesque there too!

And the secondary effect was: we were in the party cottage! Judy's friends all convened in our kitchen Wed night for a big shish-kabob dinner with lots of wine and massive desserts! J4 and I were invited, though I insisted we eat some of the inn's dinner so we wouldn't make their food run out. While we were sitting in that big living room, being raucous, some of the upstairs people showed up and claimed they were going to hold a poetry reading. The implication was: clear off, we're serious poets and you're just silly party people. Judy loudly told them they could hang out with us, share the wine and food, and we'd listen to their poetry. But we'd also continue our dinner party. Many of them decided to find another cottage meeting room for their reading, but several decided we were fun people and stayed. And when someone suggested we do "non-serious poetry reading" I offered up my Baby Jesus poem, set to music, and done as an interactive, call-and-response sort of deal. OMG, I've never had such an enthusiastic audience for that song! They were in a silly mood anyway, and wine had been flowing. Plus they're artistic so they appreciated my rhymes and music! I wound up doing the song 3x. Would've been 4x, but I had to go to my room around 9:30 to get my homework done.

Judy and her friends also took us along on Wednesday to shop. We started off at the Four Seas, a funky little place in Centerville, where we got huge amounts of lobster in what's called a lobster roll (really, just a couple pieces of bread and lots of fresh lobster with a little mayonnaise and salt & pepper). I've never eaten so much lobster at once! Plus I got an ice cream soda (not something we have in Texas) made with their homemade ice cream. Yummy!

Of the workshop itself, I'll post another travel report. For the fun, touristy aspects of our trip, the highlight was the jaunt on Friday to Nantucket. That will also be covered in another travel report.