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So, the plan was that after the conference ended on Friday, I was going to take the ferry to Provincetown, on Cape Cod. I chose Provincetown because it was where the ferry went, because while I may be insane, I am not quite crazy enough to pass for a Boston driver, and anyway, I like boats. It was a good plan; the only problem was that that Friday was, day-for-date, the rainiest in history. And also windy. So the ferry wasn't running, and they put us on a bus instead, adding about an hour to the trip. Which was disappointing, but understandable under the circumstances. Frankly, I had enjoyed my breakfast, and I wanted to hang on to it for a while.

I'll spare you the thrilling details of the bus ride, because I was asleep for most of it, but I can confirm Mary's impression of Cape Cod as a place with lots of minigolf courses. Not big, fancy ones with elaborate structures and hazards and batting cages and arcades, just little half-lots with a few holes laid out in astroturf with the occasional small windmill or bridge, walking the fine line between quaint and depressing.

It was still raining when we arrived, but less than it had been, and one of the owners of the B&B (the Cook Street Inn, if you're interested) was there to pick me up at the drop off, which was awfully nice of her. They had only owned the Inn for a couple of years and, like seemingly almost everyone else in town, had come from somewhere else. Connecticut, I think.

I got there mid-afternoon, and despite the rain it didn't seem like quite the right thing to hang out in my room. So I took up my umbrella, put on my jogging sneakers (the only shoes I had brought that I could justify wearing in this weather, unfabulous though they may be) and set off to walk the three or so blocks into town. I peered through some gallery windows, and wandered through a couple of empty shops, but it was clear that the season hadn't started yet, and what tourists had arrived apparently had the sense to come in out of the rain. In this situation, an alternate activity was called for.

As it happened, my neck was sore, partly from falling asleep on a bus for two hours, but mostly because the chairs at the conference were set up around round tables, so if you didn't get there early you had to turn your chair partway around and watch the presentations at a kind of an angle. (It goes without saying that I did not get there early.) So that, combined with the fact that my fingers were dead white down to the knuckles, meant that when I came by a minuscule day spa in a converted house, it seemed like a pretty good idea to go in and get a massage.

The masseur was from Concord and called himself a "wash-ashore", someone who had come for vacation and never left. When I left he gave me a reccomendation for a place for dinner and a hug, because, he said, "Californians hug", and it seemed rude to argue the point. The receptionist was from Bulgaria, and gave no accounting for her presence. Hugging policies of Bulgaria went similarly unexplored.

The restaurant reccomendation turned out to be a winner; the Lobster Pot, just down the street, with excelent seafood and a very friendly staff. Actually, it seemed like nearly everone I met in Provincetown was exceptionally friendly, maybe because they were happy to finally see people again after the winter or maybe that's just the way people are there. Anyway, I took the waitress's advice on ordering and ended up with some delicious grilled seafood (including scallops that were, literally, like butter) in an interesting-in-a-I-want-to-lick-the-plate way teriaki influenced sauce.

So, even though my hands froze again on the way back and I was suffering from lack of computer, it ended up being a pretty good day.