Martha's Vineyard Part 1: Long Day

I spent the weekend in Martha’s Vineyard with Duncan and his family. Being a pretty well-off white suburbanite, I realized I was actually quite surprised to have never been there. A few notes before I begin: I’m going to split this post into a few posts (day by day) and also, I’m going to try to intersperse some pictures since I just got a camera! I’ll start with Saturday.

I woke up long before I usually do (around 5:00am) after staying up late with David and watching Olympics the night before. My parents were heading to Newport for the day, so they were able to give me a ride to the ferry. I ended up being about half and hour early and so I got a nice long bench to sleep on. The ferry ride itself was nice. I hadn’t been on a boat in a long time, if ever, and so I was a little nervous about getting sea-sick. Nevertheless, babies don’t sleep as well as I did. To me, the rocking of the boat was like being an infant in a crib and being rocked to sleep. It was serene.

I arrived in Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, where I was supposed to meet up with Duncan. However, not realizing that I was on a different ferry than he takes, it took us a few minutes to realize we were in different spots. We headed over to a pastry shop where we met up with Karen, who it turned out was staying with Duncan too. After a little breakfast, we all piled into Duncan’s land cruiser and drove off to run some errands and then head to his house. The Forbes’ house is actually on Chappaquiddick, a small island right next to Martha’s Vineyard. The interesting thing about this island is that there’s no bridge, so the only way to get there is to take a three-car ferry across a narrow section of Ocean (only 100’ or so). The ferry ride is less than a minute, but for the first few times, it seems a little weird (especially after you hear about the story where a few weeks ago someone accidentally left their car in neutral and slid off the front of the ferry into the water).

Duncan’s house is about as far away from civilization as one can comfortably live without having to sacrifice the New York Times. Built as a duck-hunting lodge many moons ago, the house boasts 270 degree views of the bay and marshland, but lacks air-conditioning, internet, and tv (arguably, not a bad thing). After a little relaxing, the three of us ferried our way back to Martha’s Vineyard proper for an afternoon of fun with Tim Douglas.

Martha’s Vineyard’s road systems are mediocre at best. I defend this with the trip that we took to Tim’s house. Despite Duncan’s GPS system in his car, it took us around two hours to make what should have been a thirty minute drive. Don’t you love when that little machine says “You have arrived at your destination!” and there’s no houses in sight?

Well, it turned out that Tim’s house actually wasn’t on GPS. In fact, according to the GPS, Tim’s road did not exist (our little car icon was shown driving through a big patch of green). After many lost cell phone calls back and forth with Tim (Vineyard cell phone service is also notoriously bad), we finally arrived at the Douglas Compound. It turns out that Tim’s grandparents bought three lots on the Vineyard a long time ago, which were now undoubtedly worth an obscene amount of money.

Tim’s house was beautiful. We stood in awe for a few minutes and then made the ten minute walk down to the beach (which was actually a pond, which was actually a cove). We took Tim’s motor-boat out on the water and Karen and Duncan did some water-tubing. We ended up on a beach across the cove just sitting around for a while and eating some snacks that Tim’s mom had packed (grapes and cheese!). At one point, Duncan got stung by a bee on his hand (more on this later).

We then motored back over to Tim’s beach and set up his sail-boat. It ended up taking us over an hour to set it up because Duncan had dropped a pin into the murky depths while we were trying to set it up. He blamed it on his then slightly swollen hand from the bee sting. We ended up only sailing for half an hour or so, as we were all growing hungry. So, we headed back to the beach and decided to eat at Duncan’s.

It was getting pretty late at this point; it must have been after 6:30, and we knew that once we got back it was going to be a while before dinner (we had to cook it). So, on the way home we stopped at the grocery store and at an entire bag of pita chips while getting our dinner supplies. We managed to make it back to Duncan’s in about a third of the time it had taken us to get to Tim’s that afternoon. Funny how that works when you know where you’re going!

At Duncan’s, we all sat around and relaxed while dinner was cooking. After eating, it was close to 9:00, so Duncan’s mom called it a night and headed to bed. However, moments afterward, we were all drawn to the porch by the sounds of very professional sounding and looking fireworks. The illegal spectacle lasted nearly 10 minutes and I must say it bested some of the local fourth of July fireworks shows I’ve seen in the past few years. The four of us (Tim had come home with us) then decided to go for a walk on the beach and investigate this mysterious but spectacular display. Eventually, we made our way to a house that was blaring music and had little bits of firework wrapper strewn all about the beach. With Jesse (Duncan’s dog) leading the way, we walked up the steps into the back yard. We expected to find a bunch of teenagers at a pool party but what we ended up discovering was a bunch of semi-drunk adults under an expensive looking party tent listening to John Mayer. With that, we headed back.

When we got home Duncan’s Dad had gone to bed and we all sat around the living room table admiring the work that Ginny (Duncan’s mother) had made on a 1000 piece puzzle. Slowly but surely, we all began piecing together little bits of sky, grass, window, etc. Two hours passed before we realized that our plans for a night on the town had turned into us sitting around and making a puzzle. We are so cool.

It was about 1:00am at this point and we decided to drive over to this bridge where there were allegedly thousands of glowing, phosphorescent jelly fish that passed by. At first, we were disappointed to find no such jellies, but after a few minutes, we found a large hoard of them heading under the bridge. It was beautiful, and we stayed out on that point for a long time watching the jellies go by. I got cold, though, and everyone was getting tired, so we drove back along the dusty, dirt roads to Duncan’s cabin.

Upon returning, we worked a little more on puzzle-making and had a bit of a freestyle rap battle. All was well. We fell asleep listening to The Album Leaf. What a day.