Cars, Boats, Next Year a Train

Our traveling schedule to Block Island was a little complicated.  This is partly because we only have one family car, and partly because I didn’t particularly want to drive it myself with Owen a-hollering in the back and then navigate the ferry by my lonesome.  So Sean passed us like a baton to Martha after we had sandwiches at Rein’s Deli on the border between Connecticut and Massachusetts.  In exchange, Martha passed him six of his favorite beers, Maine Beer’s Peeper, which we cannot get in our neck of the woods.  Martha then drove us to her home outside of Boston, where we spent the night, only to rise early the next morning and get back in the car and drive to Rhode Island to catch the ferry.

Now 3 out of 4 times I am on a boat, I am completely fine.  Unfortunately for me, this turned out to be the proverbial fourth time.  And I had cockily decided I didn’t need a Dramamine.  Well, Neptune showed me, and although there was nary a cloud in the sky, the sea was choppy, and as I stood in the bow with Owen, who had never had so much fun in his life, and we climbed up a wave and plunged down a wave, climbed up a wave, and plunged down a wave, I began to feel very very sick.

I was glad that I was with Martha and her kids, because it is hard to watch and entertain a child when seasick.  Where we were standing, there was a little square cut out down low, which Owen used as a window to watch the froth of the waves.  He loved it.  Let’s just say that after we docked at BI, it was about 20 minutes longer before I could move. 

On the way back on Sunday, it was just going to be Owen and me on a ferry to New London, and I was a little nervous I’d get sick again and have to entertain Owen while keeping track of two suitcases, a purse, and Owen’s carseat.  But this ferry was a fast one that skimmed the surface of the water, which was glassily calm.  We sat inside, and the inside looked like an airplane, with rows of seats and the Red Sox playing on large televisions.  Owen sat on my lap and I distracted us both with stories of superheroes.

Owen would make requests like, tell me a story about Batman and Thor getting captured in a cave, and I would follow the prompt, and slip in a lot of moments in which the superheroes ate cake and talked about their feelings.  Anyway, it all went well.  Sean met us at the dock and then we spent three hours inching through Connecticut at a snail’s pace, cursing all the while, before finally heading towards the Tappan Zee bridge at a normal speed.  The moral of this story is that Dramamine is my friend.