RETROSEPCTIVE...If cattle cars could fly

3 JUNE 2010 Our first day on the road to Nantucket

We awoke at 4 am and left the house at 5:30 am for our trip to Sarasota “international” airport. The US Airways plane took off at 7 am and winged its way to Charlotte N.C. Remind me never to go through that airport again. Were it not for the electric golf carts and a nice lady from Trinidad and Tobago, we would still be walking to concourse C. When we got to the gate in Sarasota, they would not let us put our roll aboards on board (paradox?) and tagged them with yellow tags and put them somewhere. When we got to Charlotte, the handle on the Kitty’s roll aboard was shoved down inside the bent outer tube part and could not be extended so we had to carry or drag it bent over. We got to the next flight and flew to LaGuardia. Small terminal and a short walk to gate 4. After a 4 hour layover and some trips to the bookstore and several to the bathroom, we got on board a propeller plane, a Saab 340B, with no seat assignments and a few passengers. We flew to Nantucket about 45 minutes and saw all of Long Island. I waved to Gene and Jayne in Sag harbor but they did not wave back. Just as we were about to arrive, the pilot came on the loudspeaker and announced that he had good news and bad news. The good news was that were were going to land on an island off the coast of Massachusetts, unfortunately it was Martha’s Vineyard, where that biatch Ms. Liboz used to summer when I was in high school.. Anyhow they told us that our options were to stay there or go back to LaGuardia and overnight there on our own. We opted along with an AA flight attendant who was on board (and lives in Nantucket) and many other passengers, to taxi to Oak Bluffs (one of the towns on Martha) and take the high speed ferry (one hour) to Hyannis on the mainland. I bought tickets to Hyannis and also from Hyannis to Nantucket which leaves at 8:30 tonight. It is now 7 pm and we about half way to Hyannis on a mildly choppy sea typing on our laptops. They have WiFi but it is very slow. The tone of the trip is very reserved, probably because nmost of the passengers are heading home rather than "to" a vacation.

As luck would have it, the Nantucket airport opened up while we were still on the first ferry when their instrument guidance system came back on line but the self-serving drones from U S Air had already decided to go back to NEW YORK so as not to maybe get stuck overnight in Nantucket. God forbid.

We were happy to be picked up at the steamship wharf by Mark and Jennie. Mark was driving his new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. When we got to our apartment we found all the necessary staples in our fridge, compliments of Jennie. Coffee in the morning of our first day without having to leave our place....heaven.