The purpose of this trip was to see old friends and family and a wedding. Our wonderful trip begins with a late night drive to San Francisco International Airport. If you haven't been to this airports longterm parking before then you should be forwarned because it was somewhat tricky to get too. Anyways, after a few hours of u-turns we finally find long-term parking and take the shuttle ride to the airport.
The attack plan for our mission was simple... hit as many places as possible in the shortest amount of time. So, we leave SF Thursday night arrive in Atlanta for a two hour layaway and fly red eye to Providence, Rhode Island. Then from Providence, we rent a car (Hyundai Accent) and drive the hour and a half down the Massachusettes cape to get to Woodshole. At Woodshole, we put our rental car in long term parking and ferried over to Martha's Vineyard. Here, the plan for me was to visit some of my old friends from the Hoft Farm! Megan and Robin were there working on more Salt Spray related issues and Laura was planning on swinging down for a visit.
Karen and I get to the Vineyard and caught a taxi to the MV airport. There we rented a cool Jeep Wrangler. We checked into the Harbor Landing Inn in Vineyard Haven and headed up Lambert's Cove Road to the now infamous renovated Hoft Farm Dormitory complex. The wntire place was changed. It was much bigger, with a nicer kitchen, but it had a sterility to it that completely contrasted with the cozy Hoft Farm I had grown to love. Oh Well... I walk in to a room full of strangers and am caught by the sight of Robin-kabobs slothing on the couch in the distant room. We had no choice but to do a heckling run and hug to celebrate our reunion. Then Megan appeared and the perfect weekend at Martha's Vineyard Began.
That night we went out to The News for dinner. It was a nice walk in Edgartown and it was fun to make fun of the yuppy stuck up riffraff walking the streets. Fuckin' August People.... Karen decides that she was going to see Kurt, Matt, and Sharron (Her east coast compadres) on the mainland for the day while I stayed on the vineyard to sloth. The next morning Karen gets wisked away by the ferry and I take a quick drive back to the Hoft Farm to have a nice brunch with Megan and Robin. It was like old times again.... spectacular. We catch news that Laura is arriving in the next ferry so we all hope in the jeep and speed away to get Laura. AND even more eerie, we find out that Andy Pulte was heading to the vineyard as well! All the stars were pulling together for a great conjunction to the Hoft Farm.
We picked up Laura and decided that we would make a nice family dinner that night for old times sake. Megan was going to make a cocounut cake, I was making vegetarian wonton soup (you might say the secret incredient is vegetable), and Robin and Megan whipped up a vegetable casserole thingy, and Laura was to help. But, in the mean time, we would have lunch at Humphreys. I had this thanksgiving themed sandwich called the gobbler. It had turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing inside... They gave me a lot of stuffing. We also got Humphreys kick ass cookies. We took lunch back to the Farm and gossiped and slothed for a while. Robin started reading to us from a great book called "Her Raging Needs", Megan decided to sleep under some newspaper. I decided that I didn't want to sloth anymore and reminded them of an earlier suggestion they had made of going to the glass blowers... And boy can he blow... :) After the glass blowers we headed back to Cronig's to get ingredients for our wonderful meal. Of course, the ingredients weren't all there and we had to drive across to the other side of the island to get the rest of the ingrdients at the A&P.
We made a splendid dinner and Megan's Coconut Cake and her grandma's secret frosting recipe were a hit! We opened the bottles of black muscat champagne I lugged from California and drank and drank... Yum. Pulte finally showed up with his friend and we gossip some more. All in all, it was the perfect day.
The next day wasn't too perfect. It was rainy and things were'nt going our way scheduling wise. We wanted to all head offisland to Province Town, but it took forever to return my rental car and the ferry were getting canceled due to the weather. So, we ended up shopping in Vineyard Haven for a little bit and waiting for the ferry. I got chocolate icecream all over me :) But, it was getting pretty late so we decided to cancel Province Town. Laura and I headed off island and said a somber goodbye to Megan and Robin. This was the end of our Martha's Vineyard reunion.P align=center>From Woodshole, I drive up the cape again to get to Norwood (Outside of Boston) to Kurt's place get Karen. We had dinner that night with Kurt and Matt. Karen and Kurt were an item ya know :) ... So, we do the whole sleeping thing and wake up the next morning to drop off the rental car at the Providence Airport and then go to the Amtrak terminal to take the train to NewYork. Karen had caught some sickness and she was feeling miserable waiting for the train.
We arrive in New York and go to Lisa's, Karen's sister's, house. There we were met by her darling nephew Josh and his equally darling brother Ben. Josh was sick.. he didn't look to happy. We played with the kids for a bit and went out to meet Dave, another of Karen's friends. We went to some trendy place called the Garage.. the food was ok... I liked their spoons though.. and so I took one.
(These kids are spoiled by their grandmama)
Karen and I got bored on the last night and I ended up playing with the kids toys. I put on this kiddie fire hat and posed for a picture... HEE HEE
