Escape to Cape Cod

Doobie, Neha, Sarah, Jenn, Dougal, Danny, Jessica - an exhausted snack after cycling

The Provincetown seafront - stunning!

This past weekend found the entire motley crew at Cape Cod. Cerrulean skies, azure seas, golden sunshine, sandy beaches - who could ask for more. But still, if ya could believe it, there was more. There was a charming shingled cottage, an outdoor patio, a seafood barbecue, a leisurely bike ride along the seacoast. And of course, gustatory and inebriative indulgence a la Dionysus. Charming.

On the drive up, we had barely left the tenacious claws of city traffic, when we pulled over at a diner for our first pause and some dinner. Doobie and I went all out - for after all a weekend break is a weekend break - it should bear none of the constraints of real life - so appetizers, burgers, dessert (some squabbling over which one to choose, but chocolate won as always) it was. Sarah tried to be healthy, and ordered a salad, but oh boy never order a salad in a diner! We all stared at the wilted vegetation on her plate in horror. She valiantly said she was full after the meal, but then talked about grilled cheese sandwiches for the rest of the drive up the coast, so go figure.

When we finally made it to Provincetown, well into the depths of the evening, we were caught entirely off guard. Why had nobody warned us it was the flaming gay capital of the East Coast? No harm in that, of course, except that when one isn't expecting it, and one suddenly drives into a town full of trucker dudes holding hands, it can certainly elicit the odd twitch of surprize.

Not that anything like that would stop us wild souls, of course. So we biked up and down the course, with Bella, Sarah's faithful hound (and Doobie/my protege for next weekend!), galloping along beside us. We cooked up a whole seafood barbecue, and as we sat down on the patio to eat salad, salmon and skewered scallops and prawns (no hotdogs or burgers or dirty campfood in sight), we surprised ourselves by how much we were turning into our parents.

It was a long weekend, but an eventful one, and a sleepless one. As we parted ways at the end, happy but exhausted, we couldn't help already exclaiming in anticipation of our thanksgiving weekend together.