In which we get cul-cha ...
It was a tricky little maneuver to get off the dock in Essex, given that it was an L shape with us backed into the elbow; and that there was a bit of wind. It took some dockhand work, some sweating on Rick's part (I was driving) and POSSIBLY a good solid bump on the ass (on Blue Horizon's - not on mine) to get us clear. But all's well that end's well, as I learned from Laura Ingels Wilder.
Several people have told us that Wesport is a 'must stop'. In fact we ran into a woman on the dock in Burlington who told us that she fell so in love with it that she is looking for a house there...and that we would need a good three days to see it properly. Naturally this made us very ...... skeptical .... BUT, we try to be (cautiously) optimistic so we got tickets to the Westport local theater to see Working: The Musical, based on that good old Studs Terkel book (which I have tried to slog through a couple of times). Taking a chance on a local theater company is the very definition of optimistic!
The marina owner, a no-nonsense woman named Lane, gave us a ride to our 5pm show - as rain was in the forecast. You could tell she liked us right away, specifically because we weren't French Canadian! The Canadians are necessary for tourism, the local economy has really suffered with the border closed. But apparently there is some, shall we say, cultural/communication differences that are especially hard on the marina people.
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| Who needs Broadway when you have Westport! |
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| The Box Office-lol! |
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| Every seat is a good one-and it’s always nice to be able to see the actors, after so many shows at the Fox where all we could see was a suggestion of actors. |
The show was great - it had some interesting things to say about how we can be defined by our work, if some work has more value than other work, what one does when work ends and how we find self-worth no matter what. We were both very happy that we'd taken a chance on it.
We walked about 20 minutes back to the marina. Rick grilled pork chops for dinner and we had a nice little feast on the boat (the marina boasts a dockside restaurant, but apparently the manager/chef is sick so it is closed. More on ‘closed’ in a minute…)
The next day dawned with a strong wind blowing so we tightened the lines to make sure the boat stayed close to the dock, then headed off for an exploratory bike ride.
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| Notice the sign “Bikes Welcome” - turns out they meant motorcycles! |
Our goal was to ride the few miles to a forest/park and then take a hike around the park. What we didn't realize it that all the beautiful views of mountains meant that there would be BIG hills to ride up!
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But man, what a view…
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We rode up the first two long hills with major traffic zooming by - and then decided that we didn't want to get run over. And maybe the hills are a bit more than we are willing to tackle on our 7-gear foldable bikes. Of COURSE it had nothing to do with being out of shape.
We settled for a bike tour of the town looking for a place to have lunch. Unfortunately we didn't find a single restaurant, tavern, bar or deli open. In fact taking pictures of ‘closed’ signs became the most fun part of our day!
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| Even the road is closed |
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| The liquor store and the ATM were the only things open! |
The day ended with a beautiful sky and sunset. We looked forward to looking at the night sky and maybe some shooting stars!
Actually, the day ended later with massive cocktails with the boaters near us, Janice Anderson and her husband, and another gentleman. They are all planning to be loopers in the next couple of years, and plied us with questions. It felt very strange to be offering advice. Somewhere along the way we have learned a lot. And we had so many people help us - feels great to be paying it forward. We hope to see all of these new loopers in our future... In spite of the hangovers we ended up with. Argggg...
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