Our Trip to Cape Cod, August 2002

We just returned from a week on Cape Cod, where we had a generally pleasant time. We were tyrannized by the law of averages - the average daily high temperature on the Cape at this time of year is in the high 70ies, which is pretty much how our week averaged out, but we had 90ies during the first few days and the 60ies in the remainder. Nothing is air-conditioned, so it can be pretty unbearable when it gets really hot.

On hearing several scary stories about how desperate the traffic can be, we decided to leave at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. to beat the competition. The traffic turned out to be quite light and we were over the bridge by 8:30. We then puttered around the Cape and got to Wellfleet around noon. We even had a new vehicle for the trip - a red Jeep Grand Cherokee with 5,000 miles on it - which made the trip a pleasure, although the reason for the new vehicle was not so pleasant. A few days before we were to leave, a branch fell on the minivan in the driveway, smashing the windshield. We called the insurance company and they said No Problemo! We'll have someone out at once to fix it on the spot! They came and fixed it but said that there could be glass fragments in the ducts, so we should take the car to their shop so they could blow them out with compressed air. I hopped into the car to drive to the shop and promptly rear-ended a woman in her SUV. Her car seemed basically undamaged, although she was unamused by the experience, but the hood of the minivan struck her rear-mounted spare wheel and got smooshed. Our insurance agent was also probably unamused to get a second call from us on the same day, although he seemed to bear it pretty well. So the minivan is in the shop and we are on rented wheels.

The unexpected SUV Louise by the house in Wellfleet

Our house in Wellfleet was very nice - a brand new house of about 2,500 sq ft and all the mod cons. In several respects, it went above and beyond the call of duty, including pillow-top mattresses and a foosball game in the basement. Toni glommed onto the latter and actually made some respectable progress during the week.

Several of our Larchmont friends were up during the week, including the Turovsky's who introduced us to the Ponds, which were delightful and which provided some shade which was highly desirable at the beginning of the week. The water was also delightfully warm and not salty. We also spotted this magnificent hawk in a tree off their deck.

Maddi and Charlotte at Duck Pond Hawk

Madeleine spent a day with Rebecca Futterman and learnt to boogie-board. She returned happy but trashed by the waves.

After the weather turned cool, we focused more on shopping. We spent a few hours in Provincetown, which the girls enjoyed, but I declared terminally awful. Parking was a major headache and even the pedestrian traffic was daunting. The stores generally sold a combination of pathetic schlock and T-shirts with offensive or mean-spirited declarations on them. My back was killing me and I was only happy to return to Wellfleet to soak in the tub.

Wellfleet shopping was generally more refined and therefore out of our price range. We visited art galleries and fantasized about buying multi-thousand dollar objects for the house and then went off to buy ice-cream as consolation for not being able to do so.

Shopping in Wellfleet Louise and Toni

We vacated our house early Saturday morning. Monica had kindly offered to let us stay on with them so we could return home on Sunday, but the weather was not promising and we decided we would drive on home. Since our trip up had been so smooth, we decided to bag the early morning start and got on the road by 9:30 a.m. We had just begun to congratulate ourselves that the trip back was shaping up as painlessly as the trip up when we ran into a huge jam just outside Providence where a garbage truck had overturned and spilled tons of garbage all over the road. We spent several hours going nowhere before it was finally cleared up and we could proceed. The rest of the trip was OK, though, and we got back into Larchmont around 5 p.m.

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