is this map to scale?

We were up at  7 A.M this morning and made our way by bus and subway to Boston Harbour. The great thing we have found about the city’s transport network is that it’s all linked. As long as you have a ticket topped up with dollars you can use it on buses and the subway. And once down in the subway you can take as many rides as you need to reach your destination for only $2 a time. I was pretty impressed by this!

We bought tickets for the ‘Fast Ferry’ to Province Town and headed over to the giant Catamaran. They were quite expensive but it was definitely worth it! It seemed the best way to get to the Cape and to see it from water as well as land was a massive treat. Little Lighthouses surrounded the outer islands of Boston and marked the way into the bay of Cape Cod. Province Town is right on the tip of ‘the claw’ as I’ve called it and from a distance it looks like a classic New England town with beautiful wooden houses (you know that style?!) of all different shapes and sizes, a little harbour full of fishing boats and a few pleasure boats too. As we stepped off our ferry I could immediately smell delicious aromas of lobsters and clams being cooked mixed with engine smoke from boats bringing in their catches. There wasn’t that ‘salty sea’ smell that one usually gets by the sea though. Perhaps we couldn’t smell this as we are so used to living by the sea, I don’t know. We walked towards the end of the jetty and leaving the rest of our group behind, set off for the other side of town and the beaches. 

I had studied a small town map on the way over and had decided that it was such a small place that we could see everything ‘PTown’ had to offer in the five hours we had there. We thought that if we saw the beaches first, then headed back to the town for lunch we could then spend the afternoon looking in all the shops we had seen. Art galleries, souvenirs and general oddities seemed to be the trade. Oddities was an understatement as we would find out later! We had passed through the town in about ten minutes and despite the slight detour (A dead end that added an extra 5mins onto our walking time) we reached the beach road quickly. Telling Ollie that according to the map we were almost there and that the ‘beautiful beaches of Cape Cod’ were just over the next hill we continued walking.

Half an hour later we were still walking. Fifteen minutes after that...we were still walking. Confused and hot we stopped to take another look at the map. What we had failed to notice the first time was that although the map was to scale around the town centre, it was not to scale for the outer roads of the town and in tiny writing on our stretch of road it said ‘2miles’. Well! We had already walked about 2 miles and were just setting out on the road that said ‘2miles’ so that meant we would have to have walked 4miles to get to the beautiful damn beaches! We found a restroom stop and a water fountain which helped us calm down for a moment. I decided that we should just turn back because neither of us could be totally sure of how long this road would go on for and the ‘wonderful beaches’ were still a fantasy in the far distance! So that’s what we did. We turned around and walked all the way back to the town. A great way to start the day. A 2 hour walk...to nowhere!

Eating our ‘special of the day’ Fish and Chips we looked out across the harbour and enjoyed the sunshine beating down on us. However later we regretted this as both our faces are now red! In the afternoon we took a walk through the streets and poked our heads into various little shops. After one particular shop that had a distinct aroma of cannabis we started to realise something was slightly different about this provincial town. As we delved further we started to notice that all was not as it seemed. 

We had noticed, on our extensive tour of the island, a great number of rainbow flags hanging from various houses. When we had arrived at PTown we had seen two men in a lingering embrace completed with a kiss on the lips. At the time Ollie and I had just laughed but after we’d seen the flags we realised that PTown must be home to a small gay community. Well small was an understatement! After browsing such shops as ‘Spank The Monkey’, ‘Cock and Bull’ leather shop, ‘Board Stiff’ and ‘John's Footlong’ it finally dawned on us that PTown was a gay community full stop! The more we looked the more stereotypes we saw from men holding hands to overly tight t-shirts and obscene shop front displays. We observed one poor elderly couple leaving a shop with such pale faces; in the window was a mannequin in full S&M latex get up! ‘Only in America’ said Ollie as in complete fascination we saw classic provincial living crashing wildly into a full bohemian and unapologetic gay scene.

Of course there is nothing wrong with this. It’s just that in England things tend to be slightly more reserved. For instance, back home in Falmouth I couldn’t imagine the souvenir shops selling bondage gear right next to ‘Auntie Kernow’s’ famous fudge or pasties lying next to naked ken dolls in compromising positions. But this is America. People in PTown seem so desperate to express their freedom that they steam roll over everything else to prove their point! Would I be able to say that all this spoiled the little town for me? Maybe but actually it didn’t. The town pulled my mouth firmly open and my eyes as wide as owls for a whole day. And that’s what seeing different parts of the world is about. Experiencing the extraordinary and accepting the damned right outrageous even if it’s wearing a leather collar and tempting you with its ‘Delicious Taffy’.

* * * 

We got back to Boston later than we’d hoped with only half an hour to catch our bus out of town and up to Portland. We decided to take a cab as we couldn’t run with our giants packs; I already have a rash around the base of my back and bruises on my collar bone! This was a mistake to say the least. $11 later we had made it about four blocks and were stuck in not only Friday evening traffic but also the jam of a busy start to a ‘Holiday Weekend’. Thinking we had missed our bus for sure we payed the driver and ran the last few blocks. Apparently we had reserves of strength and reached the bus terminal out of breath and in a state of panic. When we reached our bus gate there was only a handful of people...we had made it AND we would get a space! 

What happened next was another of what I’m calling ‘ A Great American Experiece’. The departure time came and went and after ten minutes people around us started to stress out. The terminal was packed with people trying to get home and things were pretty tense. A transport officer came and informed our queue that the bus was running late and would be with us in 20 minutes. So a half an hour delay in total. Now to Ollie and I this was absolutely fine. 30 minutes  was nothing and especially considering the mayhem, it could have been a lot worse. This was not the case for the other passengers though. The minute the officer told us one man started banging his head against a window, another was swearing down the phone to a friend at how bad it all was, another man was pacing red faced in a tiny circle and others were heckling any drivers walking past. 

I couldn’t stop laughing! All this distress for half an hours delay! All I could think was how would all these people cope back home when every train or bus in England is probably on average half an hour late...or heaven forbid more! The bus arrived exactly 30 minutes later and with great apologies. 

The patience of the passengers had been astoundingly nonexistent. It made me wonder if British people were less willing to put up with delays whether our public transport system would improve! Maybe when I get back I’ll try calling the guy at the ticket desk at Truro station a Mother F****r and see if it speeds things up!

7/10/11