Long Island Adventures, Part I

Since I was so incredibly terrible at taking pictures in Canada, I thought I would make up for it by documenting my time in the Hamptons. We have quite a bit of free time on the weekends; this is an understatement. Every Friday is a half day at school, so after a relatively quick staff meeting, we're out by 12:30-12:45 p.m.

I know. It's ridiculous. We joke that we're on a paid vacation.

So when we left school, we went home. I changed into my pajamas, and I watched hockey, paid bills, chatted with my beautiful Monkey, bought a plane ticket, and made some quesadillas. My partners decided to go to Easthampton for a movie, so I was alone for most of the evening. It was needed.

From the Ferry...

Saturday is where things pick up and get exciting. And by exciting, I mean as much as they can be in Eastern Long Island. We drove to Sag Harbor and took the Ferry across to Shelter Island. While on the Ferry, we had about 5 people, from passengers to Ferry workers, tell us that our passenger side front tire was flat. We had had some trouble with this wheel the day we left Lenox to make the 5 hour drive. Once off the Ferry, we pulled over at a single-pump gas station and took a look at the tire. It was, indeed, quite flat. Like, *really* flat. We borrowed the gas station owner's tiny air-compressor in an attempt to fill it - but it wouldn't hold. Anything. So we check the trunk to see what we have; a full spare, and a broken jack (this is a metaphor for life, I think). The gas station owner told us there was an auto repair shop just down the road. We thanked him, and went on our way.

"Just down the road" meant more than a couple miles. In fact we didn't find anything until we almost reached the North Island Ferry. This is where we meet Jeff and Earl. There was a small white sign that read "Auto Body Repair," in front of a drive way and a drive that winded it's way past two houses back to a beat up shop. Old, discarded planks of wood, metal, and randomly assorted objects littered either side of the driveway. We were worried they were closed. Or quite possibly that we had landed ourselves into a trap consisting of angry Long Island Mountain Men that demanded a blood sacrifice. We felt more positive of the first, until Earl and Jeff came out of the shop, and became increasingly afraid that it was the latter.

Jeff fixing our tire, as Kelley (L), Earl (C) and Allissa (R) look on...

We got out of the car and introduced ourselves, or rather Kelley did, and Allissa and I finally followed, thinking it might be bad form to leave Kelley alone in this situation. Safety in numbers, right? So we meet Earl and Jeff, who turned out to be most jolly, and were very ready to help us. Not only did they put our spare on the car, but they told us to return in an hour. Jeff (who was the mechanic...) said he'd take a look at our tire, and see if he could patch the leak. We said, "awesome!" and toddled off in search of food.

We found food. It was good. We returned to Jeff, who was, in fact, able to fix our tire. He even put oil on our corroded rims, to prevent further disintegration, AND fixed our broken jack. All for the sum of $20.00. Jeff rocks! We didn't have enough cash on us, so he let us go to the Chase Bank down the street and get some. Without requiring that one of us stay behind as a security measure. We were all pretty excited by Jeff and his extraordinary generosity.

As a reward for our honorable act, the gods saw fit to bestow us with a half-used round trip Ferry ticket for the North Ferry. Which means .......................

That we went to GREENPORT!!! WOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"What's so special about Greenport?!" I hear you think. "What indeed!" I reply.

What I'm learning about the Hamptons, is that there are droppings of cute, quaint, and terribly small hamlets spread all around. The only things to do in these little bastions of civilization are shopping, dining, perusing real estate, and if you're REALLY lucky, there might be a movie theater. Going to the sea is also a major itinerary item, except that it's January, and there's snow on top of the sand. SNOW. Snow on a beach is just so wrong. And oh yeah. The wind. The wind is bone-chillingly wretched.

Anyway. The cool thing about Greenport were the signs of the shops. For example:

"The Doofpot" - "Uhm, hi, I'd like to buy a Doof, please."

"The Opportunity Shop" - "Yes, I'm looking for some opportunities. Can you help me?"

"The Coronet Soda Restaurant" - Soda Restaurant??

"The Whiskey Wind" - Need I say anything more?

Greenport also boasts an ice skating rink, a carousel, and a maritime museum. I actually really wanted to go to the Maritime Museum, but it was closed. It's a working-class fisherman's town, and had it not been -500 degrees Fahrenheit, I would have wanted to stay longer. (Okay, it was 8 degrees. But good GOD it was cold!)

As a respite from the aforementioned frigidness, I went into a cupcakery called 'Butta Cakes. Here was this cupcakery, with a basketball game on a big flat-screen TV, and one of the best cups of tea I had had in a long time. I almost died. It was almost perfect; or at least would have been had hockey been on the television, and had the cupcakery been in Calgary. Though really, I can't complain. The perfectness of this place is even heightened when I reveal that my cohorts went into some girly, colorful, and (probably) over-expensive clothing store called Impulse. I wasn't having any of that. But cupcakes and televised sports? Hell yes.

The after-math of my cupcake adventure...

We re-met, and went to a bar called the Rhumbline for a couple of beers and a plate of cross-cut fries. More televised sports in the form of The Jets vs. The Bengals. The bar was crowded with Jets fans, cheering at any little thing The Jets did well. First Down? Massive cheering. Defensive tackle? cheering. The transition between offense and defense? More cheering. One of the locals (I presume) walked by us on his way to go smoke, and asked who we were cheering for. All three of us at once: "The Jets, of course!" He walked away laughing and smiling. We looked at each other and exchanged glances of, "Yeah. We weren't born yesterday."

After our two beers, we needed to leave for our dinner invitation at one of the teacher's houses. My partners wanted some cigarettes, and had learned from our bartender that the dive bar next door (The Whiskey Wind) had a cigarette machine. We walk in, Kelley and Allissa buy their pack of smokes for $9.75. I find it unceasingly hilarious that both of my partners are smoking vegetarians, and that I'm the non-smoking super carnivore. Oh Life, you never-boring friend! Anyway, next to the cigarette machine, there was an email console. So that any bar patron could check their e-mail while they drink. Why? Who knows. But it needed to be documented:

Allissa checking her e-mail. At a bar. Awesome.

Took the Ferry back to shelter island and had a lovely dinner with the teacher and her Swedish husband, who poured copious amounts of alcohol and kept insisting we eat more. I don't think I've been that full ...ever. They were so lovely, and we had a lovely time. I received a phone call that night from my Fall Festival partner, Kelly (Yeah, 2 Kelly/Kelleys and 2 Alyssa/Allissa's), that her boyfriend proposed on Christmas. Congratulations to Kelly & Ryan! They make me happy.

Today we had a ridiculous 1.5 hour drive to Westhampton (which should have only taken about 35 minutes), and drove through Southampton on our way. I also took pictures of our house for your enjoyment:

Our red front door...

The white living room...

My white (and messy) closet. Err, "room."

The white, snow covered swimming pool...

The white entrance hall...

I still wish it had a toaster.

By the numbers:

Hamptons visited: 3 (South, West, and Bridge)

Hamptons left to visit: 2 (East, North)

Ferries used: 4

Hockey games watched: 3

Flat tires: 2

Cups of coffee consumed: ??

Scripts cut: 1

Pictures taken: 30

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This blog post is brought to you by:

Dark hot chocolate

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The North Atlantic

Jeff, the Shelter Island mechanic