So on Sunday we went to see my granddaughter Greta at her high school in Massachusetts on the other side of the Long Island Sound from us. (I also never heard of anyone going away to high school, but that's just me)
She lives in Manhattan, so anywhere would be better, and I'm glad she is in a safer place.
So we head out to the ferry early in the morning. The ferry to Connecticut leaves from Orient Point at the very end of Long Island, about 40 minutes from my house.
When my wife bought the tickets, they asked her if she wanted "Preferred Boarding," so she said yes.
You pay more for that, and I'm not sure what it means. Anyway, we get to the boat and ask for a spot near the elevator because my wife, Dale, can't walk and barely walks with a walker.
The guy at the ferry dock says, do we want Preferred Boarding or a spot next to the elevator? We said, we want both. It turns out that with Preferred Boarding, you get in the front of the ship so you get off first, but the elevator is in the very back of the ship, so you can't have both. You would think the Lady who sold her the tickets would have mentioned that, so we paid extra for nothing.
Anyway, we get on the boat right at the back next to the elevator. Too bad I didn't bring my fishing pole for the hour-and-a-half trip.
The last time we were on this ferry, I saw an ocean sunfish. Very cool. This time I only saw trash.
This ferry was in WW2 on D Day. It ferried troops back and forth from the front lines to England, and it received a Presidential Commendation. It is over 85 years old, but I'm sure it was painted and had the oil changed since then. They had a picture of it at the time, and it had guns all over it, and it looked like a mini Battleship.
This is on the front.
We reached the shore in New London, Connecticut, right next to the General Dynamics Corp., where they make Nuclear Submarines. The last time we took this ferry, a submarine was next to us on our way out.
An hour later, we found Greta's high school, which looked like a beautiful, old, Ivy League college.
It even had a lot of ivy on its 200-year-old chapel.
That's Greta, my beautiful Granddaughter. She gave us a guided tour around the place, and I thought it was a college.
It was on a Sunday and we didn't see anyone, not one person on this huge campus. It's named Pomfret.
We spent the day there with her and took her to dinner. After dinner to our surprise, the waitress said, Our bill was taken care of. I asked: By whom? Greta said, "By me!" (I know our Daughter gave her a credit card and told her to pay the bill)
Greta told the waitress that it was our 53rd anniversary, and she said congratulations and all that and asked if we wanted dessert. Greta did, so we ordered.
When we were done, the waitress came over and said, "Our dessert bill was taken care of by that man at the bar". I said Really! and went over to the guy. I thanked him and asked why he paid our bill. He said he heard it was our anniversary and thanked me for my service because I had my Vietnam Veteran hat on.
Very nice. There are nice and generous people all over the place.
We left Greta and went to our hotel 7 miles away. It was a huge hotel with 400 rooms, which is big for Massachusetts. We went in, and the lobby was as big as a football field, but not one person in sight.
We checked in and got a handicapped accessible room. We went into the room, and someone left the air conditioning on the coldest setting. I didn't have my snow shovel with me, so I quickly shut it off and turned on the heat.
After a while, the "heat" was coming out colder. It was about 50 degrees outside, so we would have liked a little heat. But nothing. I called the front desk to tell them, and they said, "Oh, that's terrible," and would send the mechanic right up.
10 minutes later, this guy shows up with tools. He looks at the unit and starts looking behind the curtains at the window. I said, " The thermostat is over here on the wall. He said OK, let me look at it.
He looked at it, then opened the AC unit and looked around. Then he said: I just got this job a day and a half ago and don't know anything about it. But tomorrow, "I will send up the smartest guy in the world who knows everything". Well, if he knows everything, I will ask him if he knows how to spawn copperband butterflies and get rid of hair algae.
My wife, Dale, gets in the shower, and what do you know? There is also no hot water.
I go down to the guy in the lobby because the smartest guy in the world won't be in until tomorrow, and we would like hot water, or at least lukewarm water, today.
The guy says the boiler broke, and there is a temporary boiler outside on a truck, and it takes a while for the heat to get up to the 4th floor.
I was born at night, but not last night, and I know that the heat in those rooms comes from the unit in the room and not the truck outside, as I worked building many hotels. I didn't want to argue with this Jiboni because I think he actually believed this.
I went upstairs, and my wife was out of the shower, shivering, and showed me the bathroom. There is no place to hang anything, so you have to put your clothes on the floor, on the "wet" floor because, being it is a handicapped room, there is no step to get into the shower, and in the shower, there is also no place to put the soap or those stupid little bottles of shampoo and hair conditioner (not that I would use such things), but if you wanted to, you had to put them on the floor.
I then took my semi-cold shower and tried to turn on the TV. All it did was light up. I turned on the lamp, but it didn't work, so I took a bulb from another one and put it in that one.
I will wait until tomorrow for the "smartest guy in the world" to fix the TV, too.
The place had a pool. YYYYyaaaaa.
It was in a separate, free-standing building, but there was no place to change (or put anything down), and I assumed it was also cold like everything else, and I didn't bring my ice skates, so we didn't go in. No one was in sight.
They had a beautiful gym, and Dale likes to exercise as much as she can, so we went in. No one was there.
I helped her on a machine and adjusted the knob that adds weight. It was sticky. Very sticky. I looked at my hand, and I was covered in a tar-like substance. Jet black, and it wouldn't come off. Most of the machines also had this substance on them, as people must have touched it and carried it to all the machines.
So no exercising. It was dinner time so I went into the huge restaurant they have there to look at the menu.
It was a buffet and they had everything you could imagine, but no one was there except, I assume, the chef, who was the only one there, and he was eating by himself.
I went back to our room and it hit me. I was in the center of the hallway, and there are 80 rooms on each floor. I was in the middle of the hallway and looked both ways. No one. Not one person or evidence that anyone was ever there.
I figured it out. We were in the "Twilight Zone".
