Posted by CJ Rivard on Thu, Aug 05, 2010
Recently, there was an article on this Blog, posted by CJ, concerning safety while traveling on Martha's Vineyard. I am prompted to expand upon this theme by last month’s tragic bicycle accident in Vineyard Haven; and I speak with the perspective of having been a Military Police officer once upon a time. My purpose now is not to discuss the accident, but simply to share some of my observations with you in the hopes that they will help you and your family stay safe, while having fun on your Martha's Vineyard vacation.
The Island is truly a magical place to visit, but this is NOT the Land of Oz with the perfectly maintained Yellow Brick Road leading wherever you could hope to visit. Similar to other places, the Island's roads and sidewalks are susceptible to deterioration. Harsh weather and heavy usage takes its toll here as well as in your hometown, so caution is advised. Martha's Vineyard has many lovely and well maintained bike paths, which cyclists should utilize whenever possible.
Two days after the Vineyard Haven accident, the Park and Ride bus left my daughter and I behind at the State Road lot. Having some experience with the ebb and flow of bus, boat and traffic in getting home to Falmouth, I judged that it would not return in time to pick us up for the boat. With Kate strapped into her stroller, piggy-doll strapped in as well, we set out to walk down the hill to the boat. She soon fell asleep and I am glad she did.
We had to travel down the sidewalk where the accident had transpired. The farther I went, the harder it became to push the stroller through the inches of sand and cracked pavement that line the length of State Road. The sidewalks are in rough shape in places along this stretch and it terrified me when the stroller wheels would get into a rut in the sand and pull toward the street. It was a grim walk for me…full of sad thoughts, especially when I passed the accident site.
As a Military Police Officer on a small, family-oriented post in South Carolina, I assisted in many community seminars - some of which included bicycle safety. I can recite the rules of the road here and caution everyone to obey them, but safety starts before you take the bike out onto the road. The seminar that stuck out in my mind was the one concerning bicycle sizing.
I have seen so many cyclists riding on bicycles that I feel are too big for them. (On Thursday morning on my drive into Edgartown, a girl wobbled on her bike and fell... onto the sidewalk rather than in front of my car, but it was a close thing.) This quick and easy website helps with the steps in sizing a bike for safe usage. Scroll through the pictures and read the short descriptions. Learn the steps and know what to look for regarding your family’s safe bicycle sizing.
The bicycle rental companies on the island move hundreds (possibly thousands) of bicycles between them each day. They can find a bicycle for you that may be close to the right size, and can spend some time adjusting it to your specific body type. But please remember…they have dozens of other customers waiting for their help, maybe not so patiently!
The final say is yours when it comes to bicycle safety. If they cannot find a size right for you, try again later on that day, or come earlier the next to spend some extra time. The Island will still be here to explore!
Image courtesy of pacomexico
Posted by Michael Wilson on Sun, Mar 28, 2010
Let's continue the story of Greening the Colonial Inn. If you missed Part One it's over here. Go ahead, I'll wait while you catch up...
My brain hurts just compiling the factoids for this post. My notes are scribbled and vague at best and I do NOT have a doctorate in this stuff, but it is the next step in our journey through a greener hotel.
I did contact our friend Chuck at Vineyard Bottled Waters and whined…just as I did when I wanted to get greener products in the hotel in the first place. Only this time all I could say was: I forgot all that stuff you taught me.
Luckily for me, (and by extension, you) Chuck ROCKS and gave me all this data again and in dummy-speak so that I could write an article that would NOT induce mass narcolepsy.
It seems that coffee will kill me if I drink it out of certain plastic travel mugs! My lovely coffee, Nectar of Heaven! Certain plastics (PVC (polyvinyl chloride) to be specific) will diffuse toxins into the liquid it contains.
I think we have all heard tell of such things before. Some stimulate the growth of cancers, some, such as Bisphenol-A, don’t cause cancer to grow, but they do stimulate a resistance to cancer treatments. Well, spiffy! They don’t cause it, but they make your body stop fighting it.
Most people agree that paper cups are better health-wise. We already use paper cups here! YES!
Uh…wait! What I did not know was that paper cups are coated with a layer of plastic to seal it and prevent leakage. What kind of plastic? I don’t know. There are good plastics and bad, just like cholesterol, but I don’t have the equipment to give you a work up and no lab space in the Colonial Inn pantry.
Luckily, there is a line of paper cups coated with a coating of polylactic acid made from corn instead of plastic. So…drink more coffee!
We have switched from plastic to paper bowls and plates for our continental breakfast. They are made from sugar cane and bamboo. These seasonal crops grow quickly and thus, are more eco-friendly than cups made from wood pulp from trees.
Now, on to our cleaning products. This is much more difficult in terms of understandability.
If you want the long version of the explanation which follows, here is the factsheet (PDF download).
To sum up: Greening The Cleaning® is a series of all natural cleaning supplies developed for use in medical environments to create a healthier healing environment.
100% of all profit returned to the Center and the Imus Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer
In our search for an Eco-friendly product, we used samples of many kinds, but after our housekeepers were finished using them, they each said: “Nah!” when I asked them if the cleaners worked well.
Therefore, I straddle the finest of lines. I can’t go all Enviro-friendly if it means things don’t as clean as they can be, but the Greening The Cleaning product works great, smells great (no chemical Windexey smell from these products) and comes in a concentrate so is very affordable. Did I mention that Chuck actually offered to drink the cleaning solution to prove how safe it is? Now there's a guy who gets behind his products!(don't try that at home folks!)
This is a link to some info on how they rate their product and has more sciencey words like ‘surfactants’ and ‘Nonyl Phenol Ethoxylate’ if you like that sort of thing.
Hope I have not bored you silly! I need to find myself some coffee in a vegetatively sealed, non- Bisphenol-A rated, renewably resourced cup.
Now it's your turn - when you travel, what do you do to make your trip a little 'greener'?
Photo by e-magic
Posted by Michael Wilson on Fri, Feb 05, 2010
I will attempt to walk a fine line in this article. I like our planet…I think we should keep it! It’s a ‘fixer-upper’, that’s for sure, but I’ve grown fond of it over the years. The more research I do into the realm of becoming ecologically responsible the more I feel that it could be impossible.
You will find no references to song by a certain Frog as I discuss the issue of going ‘Green’. To The Frog I will simply say ‘Ain’t that the truth, Brother!”
As a hotel manager, I make this VOW: I will do what I can to help our planet survive, but some of those steps take the involvement of our guests to be most effective.
The Colonial Inn has changed some of the ways we do our jobs over the last year and a half or so, and I will spare you the mind-numbing research in comparing and contrasting products…I will sum up the entire affair with the words ‘flaming hoops and ecologists with whips’!
We do not have an eco-manager at the Colonial Inn. We all wear many hats and there is not one person with the duty of making sure we are environmentally conscious. Each of us plays a small part of the process and we work at it during the course of our service to potential and in-house guests.
What We Have Done:
- Where appropriate, incandescent light bulbs have been replaced with compact fluorescents
- Every room in the Colonial Inn and the Edgartown Residence Club now has a small blue bin for all co-mingle recyclables.
- The shampoos and lotion in our rooms are in recyclable packaging and they don't need to be rinsed - our waste removal vendor told us that the small bits of shampoo and lotion left in the bottles do not damage the recycle process.
- Every guest has a choice whether have sheets changed and towels replaced daily during their stay. This helps reduce chemical and energy use in the laundry.
- We are reducing our use of plastics in housekeeping by using canvas bags to tote laundry instead of large plastic garbage bags.
- There are large co-mingle recycle bins in our lobby area and the front desk now religiously uses separate bins.
- We now send 99% of our confirmation letters by email instead of printing and mailing (Sorry Post Office...)
These are some of the steps in the process. There are drawbacks to each of these systems.
There is not a day that goes by without housekeepers or managers finding food waste contaminating the recyclables. The huge white arrows forming the global symbol for ‘RECYCLE’ on bright blue bins apparently confuse some people.
To use small soaps and shampoo / lotion bottles is an effort to conserve… resources as well as our costs. These little bottles sometimes make it hard to liberate the required liquid. However, with many one-night stays, there is a lot of soap and shampoo thrown away. So…bigger bottle = easier access, easier access = waste…argh!
The canvas bags for soiled linens are no easy feat. Such a simple step to conserve plastic bags, but on a property built in 1911 there are no rolling house cleaners carts (the hallways are too narrow and have little one-step risers at random) so laundry must be hauled, not nicely rolled and dropped like larger more modern constructions. It is a little detail, but speaking as one who has done his share of laundry hauling…it is a workout. The canvas holds more and gets heavier than the plastic and with no elevator, it is all human effort to bring laundry up and down four flights of stairs each day.
These are the ‘baby steps’ of our conservation system. There are more, but this article is already overly long for a subject like this. I may have bored you all to tears!
Sadly, I plan to do it again. Look for “Going Green…Part 2- ‘Meat & Potatoes’” in which I have learned that …everything will kill you! It’s my job to make sure it kills you more slowly!
That last line made more sense in my head…
Posted by Michael Wilson on Sat, Oct 31, 2009
Cool Pumkin
As I mentioned, Jim, our maintenance man, grew bored of winter island life. He decided to entertain himself by rooting around under the building for relics. Therefore, with fedora and bullwhip, he began his search for coins, arrowheads, old bottles etc.
We were not expecting him to find bones. Large bones. I’m no expert. I looked up the human skeletal system online and it looked to me like the thighbone. It had the L shaped knob that goes into the hip…
Jim found them sticking out of the side of the dig site and brought them to our attention. We called town hall first. In a town this small, everyone is going to know pretty soon so we might as well fess up.
Enter RED-Tape stage: Ron, the site supervisor for the construction company, agreed with us. He walked the bones over to the town hall and they told him to call the State Police. The State Police told us that they’d be right over to investigate. The newspaper photographer and reporter were here first.
Oh…by the way, we also needed to call the local tribe representative of the Wampanoags, the local Native American group. This whole affair made me a little nervous. Forget the scary bits…The fact that this street has had numerous ghost stories told about it, the phone call and bones…etc.
If the remains were human, the de/construction would have to stop until an investigation took place to everyone’s satisfaction. (I have a muddy ‘Slip ‘n slide” for the front yard of a hotel that was supposed to re-open in April. The LAST thing I wanted were delays!)
I feared for nothing. The Police sent the remains to the hospital for testing. The Wampanoag rep came and looked around. She gave us tips on what to look out for while further work took place and praised us for our diligence. Most people in these circumstances, she said, would have tossed the bones in the dumpster and kept on building. Forget the historical possibilities. She was going to call the newspaper and let them know how great we were…
What a let down this will be for some of you. The bones were not human bones said the hospital. They don’t know what they ARE, but they weren’t human. The newspaper made no mention of our historical uprightness of morality.
The digging recommenced the next morning and now all is right with the Colonial Inn world.
However, that doesn’t explain the phone call, does it? We may never know…
Posted by CJ Rivard on Fri, Oct 30, 2009
A Mysterious Phone call!
Due to the magnitude of the project of constructing the Edgartown Residence Club over that winter,
Colonial Inn Construction
we decided that we needed a maintenance man on hand to answer questions on where the water cut-off is, where the circuit breakers are, etc. He could also learn where the new installations would be for electricity and water. It would help with his maintaining of the building in the future; therefore, we asked Jim to spend the winter…
Jim is a Snowbird. He departs for warmer climes as soon as the hotel closes for the winter months. He reluctantly agreed to stay on and assigned himself tasks to keep himself busy. Intrepid Man of Maintenance that he is…he keeps busy well, but in a Curious George sort of way…forcing me to don a yellow hat to contain the wreckage. The beginning of our enigmatic events occurred while the digging underneath the porch wing was going on.
Now, a hotel closed for the off-season is a creepy place, exactly in a Jack-Nicolson-The Shining kind of way; but when you’ve emptied a wing and there are new creaks and groans from excavation, and people you don’t know wandering about constructing or de-constructing things, it gets creepier?…more creepy?…Extra creepish?
You find doors UN-locked that should be locked. You hear movements from the floors above where you didn’t think there was anyone working. But take my word for it, when you get a phone call on your office phone that your console tells you is from the abandoned wing…that tops the Casey Kasem Weekly Top Eerie.
It’s not just the fact that it’s post-season (we closed the hotel and there should be no calls from that wing). It’s the fact that we removed all the actual phones and brought them into the main building where they lie in state, still cocooned in plastic bags.
Theory: What if someone got into that wing AND brought their own phone with them just to creep us out? Plausible but for that fact that Jim…superhero of the maintenance world…removed all the phone jacks so there is nowhere to plug a phone in.
Whence came the call, I ask you? What are the odds that a practical joker would know which wires to splice a phone just to dial ‘0′?
It was all very puzzling.
Then we found the skeletal remains…
Posted by Michael Wilson on Wed, Oct 28, 2009
Construction at the Colonial Inn
Editor’s Note: Just in time for Halloween… this 3 part series is about the spooky events surrounding the 2006 construction of the Edgartown Residence Club on North Water Street, at The Colonial Inn. If you are interested in more spooky (but true) Martha’s Vineyard stories, you should check out some of the books by local writer Holly Nadler, including Haunted Island.
Once, upon a time, there was no Edgartown Residence Club! We have been operating for so long now that it is hard to remember back when it was simply the Porch Wing of the Colonial Inn. The creation of the Edgartown Residence Club involved a major restructuring project. The Porch Wing was an annex to the Inn with fifteen rooms on three different floors. The project was this: to change these fifteen rooms into six luxury suites that would be available for fractional ownership. Easy enough with an industrious crew; but the building was on sand, which means there were no true right angles left in the building. Designs drawn to shore everything up and put some beams underneath the building also included plans to replace the crawlspace underneath the entire building with a full basement.
We closed the hotel for the winter so this was the sole form of excitement for us, not to mention the entire town. (A beach town in the winter is an easily entertained entity.)
We spent the month of December in a frantic scramble to empty the hotel rooms in that wing. When you look at a hotel room, it really is more full than you realize. Stationary, ironing gear, fridge, phone, toiletries, TV, bathrobes, coat hangers, shower curtains, towel racks, pillows, bedspreads, mattresses, end tables, chairs, armoires…they all have their place and they look great where they are. However, they all take up loads of space when you take fifteen of any one of those items and put them somewhere else. In fact, they seem to grow in mass.
Now, add in the fact that the armoires weigh approximately as much as a small moon. In addition, the stairwells were too narrow to allow the armoires to leave. (They originally entered by means of a huge crane jacking them up through each floor’s porch doors, and that was how they left in the end.)
The next step was to call one of the few moving companies on the island. They sent a crew of workers who may or may not have understood a word I was saying. I had to monitor each person’s load and tell him where to put it (so to speak) on almost every trip up and down stairs. Eventually the building was empty of everything we wanted to keep. Our maintenance man, Jim, removed sinks and toilets, as well as light fixtures, mirrors, towel racks and phone jacks. It was a maintenance man’s buffet of spare parts.
Many large, loud pieces of equipment then came in, tore everything in our front courtyard out, dug twelve feet straight down and suspended the entire wing on big Jenga-like block columns. Our neighbors, who were earlier so pleased to gawk at the goings on, now turned against us. Local restaurants claimed we were driving away business, and neighbors reported that the shaking of the ground from the equipment caused stress cracks to appear in their walls. In other words, the site had been thoroughly disturbed at this point. That’s when Jim got bored and things got weird…
Posted by Michael Wilson on Fri, Sep 11, 2009
This article is not about something to do or see on the Island. I have no secret places to recommend, no hot spots that are ‘the place to be this week’. It is concerning a moment of crazy, random happenstance, an act of kindness from unseen strangers.
We are still in the experimental stages of crib to ‘big girl bed’ transfer with my daughter, Katerina, which means that every bedtime is a unique array of settling-down rituals. Like a sunset, no two bedtimes are alike. There are nights that she tumbles like a sack of potatoes into the bed and passes out instantly; and somewhere the attempts to get her to sleep rapidly approach ‘rigmarole’ levels: all singing, all dancing entertainment to no avail.
Sunday night, August 16th was such a night, with a dose of teething crabbies thrown in, just so I didn’t get too bored, apparently. She rolled and flopped, cried and called for momma, ignored my singing of ‘You are my Sunshine’ (which was, if I may say, not too shabby!) and finally ended up knocking herself in the head against the rail o’ protection.
I bit back what would be a useless ‘I told you so’ and scooped her up to soothe her. The shrieks drew momma back into the room and my wife and I BOTH sang to her while they sat in a chair near the window.
Then, from the street below, we heard voices.
We always hear people coming and going through the Edgartown downtown from our second floor window. Many times, it’s drunken revelers, or bands of running teens after a movie lets out, sometimes just the talk of folk passing by the windows of shops below.
This was different. A group of women was singing on the porch below us. Four or possibly five voices were singing ‘You are my Sunshine’. In harmony, even! I assume they heard the wailing of an anguished toddler and our desperate singing and were inspired.
My wife opened the window to listen to the song and my Little Fusspot, with a wide-eyed smile poked her face against the window frame and looked to the sidewalk. We could not see the chorus due to the awning below, but she still turned back to us and pointed. “Happys singing down there,” she said several times. During the rest of the song we could hear Katerina chuckling out the window. She called out a ‘Thank you’ or two, but I don’t think they heard us. A taxi appeared and they were gone. It calmed Kate right back into her bed and a sound sleep, tears forgotten and it was all we talked about the next day.
Anyone who lives and works on the Island during ‘the Season’ can tell you tales of woe and indignation, frustration and apathy. In the hotel industry, I interact with folk at all points on the mood spectrum. That evening was such a surprise to my wife and I that we still smile to think of it. It was, in a word, LOVELY!
TO: The Musical Ladies of Winter Street: Our hearty thanks for a wonderful and helpful surprise. You made it a very special bedtime for our Miss Crabby-Pants.
Image courtesy of Tina Keller
Posted by Michael Wilson on Mon, Aug 24, 2009
Okay, yes. We are Newbie parents. We kept as much sugar our of our baby girl’s life as possible during the first year. I have already received mockery from friends and family for this (no TV either. How shocking…) so no taunting the blog-guy!
Now, however, we have discovered the joys of “Icey Creeem” as Kate calls it. We can no longer share a cone with her. She seizes the cone and burrows into it. She can spot an ice cream shop at a hundred yards it seems and gives us a look that says: “So where’s my cone?”
Therefore, our quest for the Best Cone Ever began. So let me review the Shoppes we have purchased our bits ‘o freezy goodness from so far. I will list them from my least favorite to my most. Although I bear no ill will to any…someone has to be last! Remember: I am evaluating by Travelling-With-Toddler criteria. My main concerns are: how hard is it to keep track of Kiddo in this shop and how expensive will this child’s new outfit moistening snack be, since she will wear most of it (not to mention anoint us as well).
Mad Martha’s- This is a popular spot on North Water Street and has a wide array of sundaes and frappes available as well. It shares the space with a sandwich shop so it is usually crowded. The ice cream is great but a tad pricey. (Okay it is the Island so everything is a little more expensive than other places, but I dislike waiting in a crowded shop to pay quite a bit more for ice cream.) They also have no kid’s cone option.
Scoops- They have a great location on the corner of Main and South Water Streets and are a lot roomier inside as you enter. They have a great selection of flavors but not as wide an array of non-cone choices, but that’s okay. They are called “Scoops”. They have a great price on a kid’s sized cone. The only problem I have with their cones is this: they are always super melty. The freezers are open topped and are open all the time and when we buy a cone, it is a race against time to consume any of it before it has liquefied and is dripping off my hands. Maybe the ice cream staying softer prevents the full-time scooping staff from strained wrists or something. (I am not a big fan of sticky mess, as anyone who knows me can attest. Okay…it is ice cream and summer and that combination is never a good combo for anti-sticky lobbyists, but I feel that having to perform bottom-of-the-cone melt control slurps before you have stepped away from the building is asking a bit much of me.)
Carousel- I don’t often get to Oak Bluffs in the summer, but we made a special trip one Sunday afternoon and had a delightful time at Carousel. The kid’s cone was a good size for a great price, the flavors were numerous and the shop was big enough not to seem too crowded. The person who served us was what made us enjoy our “icey creeem” the most. He was more than happy to let us try a few different flavors as samples before we committed to a full cone of that flavor and was more that willing to sell al three of us kid sized cones. Some places have to be cajoled into that deal. (Let’s face facts. I am a large, round man. I don’t NEED three whole scoops of ice milk and sugar in my system…the less I have the better, frankly. A small scoop is treat enough for me). When we said we had experienced reluctance from other shops about small cones he grinned and said “Come on! It’s ice cream! They shouldn’t be so serious. I love this job!”
It was a refreshing bit of friendliness during the busy middle of the summer doldrums and it made us instant fans. So many servers and clerks reach that tired point that it felt good to smile at his enthusiasm. He made our day!
So there you have my findings thus far, from least favorite to most.
“There’s one more,” he says in a whisper, casting furtive glances over his shoulder. “The Quarterdeck has a small soft-serve, $2.50 street value. Perfect for when the kid needs her ‘icey creeem’ fix and yer short of cash. It’s our secret vice! Tell them Kiddo sent ya!”
Image courtesy of tedkirwin
Posted by Michael Wilson on Thu, Jul 30, 2009
I have developed a routine. Not so shocking for those of you who know me. Each afternoon or early evening, I’ll pack up my daughter into the backpack and we will walk to the harbor. We will feed the swan, should he appear and watch the boats.
“Boats! Boats, boats, boats!” she chirps in my ear as we approach the water. Anyone with a toddler knows the lure of different vehicles.
I used to think “Chappy Ferry…most boring job on the Island! 500 feet, one minute to cross, BAH!
With my little girl looking on so eagerly, I have started to watch more closely and I have to say that it is trickier than I thought.
Storms in the spring of 2007 ripped a hole in the beach that connects Chappaquiddick to the Vineyard. Rumor has it that ‘Chappaquiddick’ means ‘sometimes an island’. Storms in March 2008 ripped a second breach as well and the constant current through the harbor has caused further erosion.
The Breach has changed the ways the tide flows, caused rip tides, and eddies (which are apparently great, tricky swirly bits.) (You probably couldn’t tell until now, but I am not a boater…)
My new opinion just from watching them with a toddler: Phew! Wouldn’t want to be Captain Wells! They load fast, cars and people, take off and have to turn 90 degrees and slide across the current. If they don’t the current pushes them off course a few hundred feet.
It was busy enough coming and going off Chappaquiddick on Friday that they started running TWO boats. That was fun to watch. Two boats, crossing each other in the current. A Watery Dance of Death. (Except that these people know what they are doing and no one was at risk in any way.)
There are no shops or restaurants on Chappy so what do we send the Colonial Inn guests over there to do? The Trustees of Reservations have a great series of guided and self-guided tours. Kayak or canoe trips, four-wheel drive over sand trips to the last lonely little lighthouse at Cape Poge are available with reservations.
The Cape Poge Wildlife Refuge, the Mytoi Japanese Gardens and the Wasque Reservation are all worth the trip over.
Yes, there is a bridge. No, it’s not the same one. There’s nothing to “see” there. Just enjoy the trip and nature’s beauty!
Image courtesy of The Trustees of Reservations
Posted by Michael Wilson on Sat, Jul 18, 2009
If I had a dollar for everyone who has ended a reservation call with some variation on this theme, I’d be a happy man. Sometimes, people want me to tell them what they should do and I simply cannot. This can be frustrating for some.
There are as many answers as there are people. Some folk are extremely attached to their wheels and the idea of leaving their car, their independence…nay…their very identities behind is unthinkable. Some people can drop their cars like a hot rock and just wing it. YOU know your travel needs better than I do. It is possible (and FAR less expensive) to travel everywhere on the Island without bringing your car across.
Here’s what I suggest to Colonial Inn guests…
Leave the car behind. The Steamship Authority has ample parking in numerous locations. You pay $10 per calendar day to park and they shuttle you to the boat. The Steamship cost for vehicles is between $135 and $155 round-trip. (The bigger the car or truck, the more you spend to bring it over!) Therefore, $40 for parking on a three-day stay leaves you $95 to $115 ahead. (That’s a meal for two at a mid-range Island restaurant…)
During the height of the summer, every town on Martha’s Vineyard becomes rush hour Boston. You can inch along for an hour and never see a parking spot, and you will begin to curse the happy carefree faces of cyclists and pedestrians. MOREOVER, they paid $40 to park their cars so they are loaded down with plunder while YOU have $100 less to spend toward boosting the economy. It’s downright un-American! So leave the car. Plunder the Village!
Car-less and straight off of the boat, options increase. This is where I have different advice for different people. Taxis are expensive. $22 for two people will get you from a ferry terminal to our door. Pricey? Yes, but with a varying number of travelers coming from locations far and wide, (some of whom may have begun their travels at three or four AM, ugh) and luggage in tow, it is the fastest way to get you here and settled. If we can’t get you into your room yet, we will at least take that annoying luggage and direct you to a great lunch spot. (Freed of your burdens and a tummy full of lunch, you will feel much more adventurous. Trust me!)
Once you are here and settled, THEN we can walk you through the Vineyard Transit Authority Bus route. The public bus system has connections to many points on the island and for a $15 three day pass, you can have unlimited access. Many of the drivers are year-round Island residents and have a wide range of ideas for things to see and do. (Getting some of them to chat is trickier, but if it were all easy, where would the adventure be?)
There are also several bicycle rental shops no more than three minutes away. We recommend Cutler Bikes and Wheel Happy. They have been more than helpful to our guests over the years and I recommend them without hesitation. Many of the roads on the Island have wide sidewalks designed to accommodate bicycles.
Please, just don’t ask us about mopeds! (We prefer that the one part of the island that you don’t explore while here is the emergency room…)
Image courtesy of The Vineyard Transit Authority