Cape Cod vacation, part 1: Traffic.

I'm down at the Cape for a week!

To me, "the Cape" refers to Cape Cod. I've often wondered how true that was in the rest of the country. Would somebody on the West Coast know what I meant when I said I was visiting the Cape? There are plenty of other capes - the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Hatteras, even Cape Ann, which is closer to where I live than Cape Cod. But this is the Cape.

It took me much longer than I thought it would to get here. I was foolish enough to wait to leave until 11:30, for one thing. I couldn't get into my rental until after 2, and I didn't want to hang around eagerly waiting for too long.

Ha, ha. I first hit traffic around Needham. All I could think was, I hope it's not backed up from the Sagamore Bridge, probably 50 miles ahead. And I guess it wasn't, not really. But it was stop and go well past Weymouth. After Route 3 narrowed to two lanes, it got better for awhile. I expected it to be backed up for the last 5 miles before the bridge, and it was. Argh.

So it was 3 before I got to Harwich Port. First, the bad news: our favorite fish restaurant, Seafood Sam's, is gone. Now, the good news: There's a new coffee shop in the center of town, Perks or Perk's (all I could think of was Central Perk on "Friends"). I got an iced coffee there, and it was delicious. And Reed Books is still there. Isn't that a great name for a bookstore? Last summer, the owner told me that a kid came up and told her she'd spelled "Read" wrong on the sign. I didn't visit it today, but I will at least once while I'm here, even though I've got a Nook now.

It turned out that I couldn't get a beach sticker after 3, so I have to wait until tomorrow. I didn't even try to go to the beach. Instead, I unpacked and read for awhile. Eventually I went down to the Box Office Cafe for dinner. At least they were still there!

I had a quiet evening. Eventually I decided to see if anybody in the neighborhood had an unsecured wifi, and what do you know? Somebody does! Nobody did last summer, but this year somebody's staying in the unit next door. Somebody who periodically goes out onto his back deck and smokes, and the smoke finds its way into my unit. Sigh. I kind of hope they're going home tomorrow, but if they do, and it's their network I'm using, I'll probably lose access. Then I'll be back to lugging the laptop around to places like the public library and the Box Office Cafe.

Tomorrow, I'll shop for groceries, get my beach sticker, and go swimming! I don't think the sharks have made their way into Nantucket Sound yet, although I saw in the paper yesterday that they've closed the beach in Chatham near the lighthouse.