Last of the Summer Whine

After Mike and I enjoyed our own Babette's Feast in NYC, there came a week of saying goodbye to Long Island. This was a daughter-free week in which I got to suit myself, supposedly, though some of my time was spent getting the Wee Cottage ready for hand-over to the sole occupant, Mike. He would be staying behind for a couple of months. It seemed unfair to stick him with a dirty refrigerator and the strewn personal effects of two disorderly women. Not that Mike isn't looking forward to at least visiting our home back in Texas. There, he has some form of male compansionship in one of our dogs. The shih-tzu is not much of an ally, or even much of a dog, but he is all male.

During that last week on Long Island, I made myself drive to the end of the "North Fork" in order to rent a bike and see the scenery. The tip of Long Island makes a wishbone and the southern part gives you the Hamptons and the northern part gives you wineries and sea-side neighborhoods and much less congestion. Tho, as far as I could tell, just a converted garage in the area goes for a half-million.

Driving the 60 or so miles from Huntington to the to the bike rental shop was perhaps too easy. My GPS, "Agatha" as we like to call her because of her British accent, masterfully steered me to Greenport, a very pleasant little seaside village a few miles past the Sea View hotel. I thought as I passed this long, low establishment, hugging a terriffic view of the sea, that it would provide the best spot for a late lunch by the water. "The Sea View" I muttered over and over again, to fix the name in my memory. I knew I'd be back.

But first, some cycling! The bike shop was in the heart of Greenport and the lady behind the counter was assisted by the largest, most gigantic Great Dane I have ever seen (you'd need a team of landscapers to deal with that big boy's poop). She showed me the bike and implied that any fool would take the ferry to Shelter Island rather than riding to the tip of the North Fork. "There's a lot less congestion on the island", she said. And any fool could find the ferry, she assured me. "Just keeping going until you see a fat sign that says 'ferry'. There's only one."

I had never heard of Shelter Island but if you look at a map, it's the big blotch of land in between the North Fork and the South Fork. About 15 kilometers square, surrounded on three sides by smallish waterways, you'd think the Big Fat Ferry in the Small Village would be easy to find. But, my sense of direction now throughly eviscerated by Agatha the GPS, I had to ride around a few streets before I stumbled on all the signs of ferryness: a conspiciously marked lane and something vaguely like a large ticket booth for a toll road. And there was the ferry! Don't panic! The Great Dane Woman had said that it was a half-hour round trip at most. I stood the bike against the booth and fumbled with the machine long enough to find it didn't work.

The small ferry was still waiting. With peeling white paint and decking, it was big enough for a half-dozen cars and a few passengers. I rolled my bike on, wandering what the penalty was for passengers without tokens. The bored fare collector didn't even want to hear my apology! He grunted, gave me a slip of paper, then moved on. The crossing really was barely fifteen minutes, with passengers either staring out at the brilliantly green island rising from the water or yakking into their cell-phones. Once again, I thought on how much I loved northern light; how much I don't miss the skull-crushing blankness of a Texas afternoon.

We docked and I rolled my rental off, then spent ten minutes futzing with a way to anchor my purse to the handlebars. With the purse strapped down within an inch of its life, I looked around me and discovered that the town on the Island side of the ferry route, was comprised of a few streets of pretty, 19th century houses, on modestly sized lots. This house, a little large for the area, was situated on the village green and was pretty typical of the architecture.

I started off, grateful that the bike, unlike the one I'd had in Central Park a few weeks ago, at least had gears. And brakes. I really like brakes on a bike. The town, Shelter Island Heights, had a community feel, which I fear was just a consequence of the dainty architecture and the fact that some do-gooding busy-bodies won't let the properly well-off come in and knock everything down for sprawling estates. Good on them. They've even put up a historical marker noting the founder of the first European settlement, a sugar merchant from Barbados. Wiki says he paid James I for the rights to settle the island, and confirmed the sale with local Indians. No doubt, the Indians would have preferred to be actually paid, but Wiki says nothing more on that subject.

Once out of the village, the traffic was indeed muted and there were plenty of bike lanes and plenty of cyclists around. Judging from the map, I determined it would be an easy matter to cross the town, then get out to a little side road that would afford a view of the sea. From there, I would make my way around to the Atlantic side of the island, where I hoped to see some actual waves. I discovered that I had an image in my head of riding for a good while with the sea on one side at all times and with the wind at my back. As it happened, I had to be content with seeing the backsides of houses that faced the sea. Very infrequently, I glimpsed something vaguely blue. I blame all the new, swaggeringly big architecture eclipsing view of the sea, and on Agatha's damage to my internal direction finder, for the fact that after riding several hours, I found myself pretty much back where I started. I cleared a ridge and saw the ferry making its way across the sound. And the bike was due back at the shop in an hour. No matter. It had been very green and very quiet. I'd just have to find another place for long, seaside rides.

Back on the mainland, I got into my car, determined now to drive the eight or so miles to the tip of the North Fork. I wouldn't gaze at the waves for awhile, then turn around, find the Sea View Hotel again, and have lunch there. That was the plan, anyway. I didn't turn on Agatha. How hard could it be? This is a long, very skinny island. You just keeping going in the direction you came in. If your tires get wet, you've gone too far.

As it turns out, I completely misunderstood the sun in the sky and drove for 45 minutes, thinking that surely my tires should be wet by any minute, only to finally get Agatha out and realize that I was in fact, almost back to the start of the Long Island Expressway. I was well off the North Fork and on to Long Island proper. I was so convinced of the correctness of my heading that when I saw another hotel, also called The Sea View, I determined that there had to be two Sea View hotels on the island. "How unimaginative," I thought. Certainly, it was beyond my imagining that I could have, again, gone the wrong direction in Yankeeland.

Clearly, I'm not safe to leave the house in any place but Texas.