We were heading back up north. Our quick trip from the Cape to NYC left a few spots in between unseen, and we wanted to catch them, and hopefully some wind. What happened was we got trapped in
.
It started off innocently enough. We parked in the first big parking lot we'd seen since Texas. Things looked a bit like home. There was even a Home Depot across the street from
. We went in on Sunday afternoon, straight to the computer section. We set up shop and worked til dusk. Then we camped in the parking lot, and no one bothered us. Things were looking good.
On Monday, we headed into
to just get a few more things done. Around noon we checked iwindsurf.com and there was a few spots within 10 miles where the wind was blowing. We headed thataway and made it to Quonset Point before the breeze settled down and got out on the water. It was awesome even though the conditions weren't that good. After being inactive for so long, it just felt wonderful to get in the ocean. (We kiteboarded here again two days later, but got kicked out by the nearby Traffic Control Tower that claimed we were in the direct flight path of landing aircraft. Oops.)
But then, things started getting fishy.
On the way back from kiteboarding, Brant wanted to stop at Dunkin' Donuts. "Oh no," I said. "Resist the aliens, Brant!" But he was already held in the tractor beam, and once inside, he even fell head first for their scheme of many for more. He emerged with a cardboard lunchbox full of donut holes, resting like so many egg pods in a cluster.
I've lost Brant to Dunkin Donuts.
Since we hadn't any trouble the night before with parking at
, we headed there again. Tried and true lets us sleep the whole night through. Besides, we figured, then we could just pop in real quick in the morning to get a bit more stuff done before heading down the road.
But we didn't just pop in to
. No one just "pops in" to . It sucks you in. It makes you stay at least twice as long as you had planned. In our case it turned out to be like 500 times longer than we had planned.
So now it's 1:44am Eastern Daylight Time on Friday morning in Warwick, Rhode Island, and I am typing this as a permanent fixture at a laptop docking station in
. The employees here have told us they're installing a plaque if we ever move on. They've outfitted us with our very own blue aprons. We're writing all our "i"'s with red dots. They set up a bed under the desk like George Costanza so that we can alternate napping with electronic zoning. We watch the changing of the guard through every shift. Soon you'll see our pictures on the posters at across the nation.
I'm beginning to wonder if
is a part of my heritage and I'm mysteriously drawn to the stores in search of my ancestry.
Nah. We're leaving tomorrow.
