The trip started on Friday in New Haven, when Kana picked Adrian and I up in her car, which was 100% manual, from the stickshift to the doors that had to be locked and unlocked individually. We drove towards East Falmouth fairly smoothly. Kana and I set up a routine where I would point in the direction we wanted to go, and she would yell because she couldn't see the road and my finger at the same time and then there would be more yelling and then we'd take the correct exit.
We arrived at XXX as dusk was setting in. The house stood between some pine trees and the ground was soft with drying needles. We could see a pond just behind the house. It smelled of forest. Zen.
We dropped our stuff off and sped to Mashpee (heeheehee) to an Asian restaurant and we ordered take-out. While we waited, we went to a candy store, where I got fat on "local" toffee while Adrian bought two buckets of ice cream. We retrieved our sack of Asian food and went back to the house, which involved getting lost and ending up at "The Pizza House" and calling Kana's dad, which was how she usually got back home. Yasuko and John Dower, Kana's parents, had already arrived and had already "warmed up" the house. Yasuko was very passionate about soccer, and Dr. Dower was very much into the "Whirled Peace" flavoured ice-cream they had brought.
The real adventure came the next day. We woke up and had breakfast on the porch listening to the pitter-patter of rain falling on the roof. Soon, we boarded the car again and drove to the world-famous Provincetown. Now, I had already heard something about P-Town. It had been described to me in great by Dennis, the burly gay comedian at the Worcester Train Station 2 years ago when I went on that fateful trip with Ash. He had sold it as a place where you can be who you really want to be, and for that reason you end up seeing some very excentric, but very fun, characters. Finally, I was getting the chance to go.
Provincetown sits on the tip of the cape. It's a small town with small houses connected by Portuguese and Rainbow banners. The first thing you see is the Pilgrim Monument (see wiki), a thin, tall belltower built to commemorate the first landfall of the pilgrims. The ambience around commercial street, *the* street where you want to be, was lively: not many cars ventured the narrow street because pedestrians conquered it. Which is what we did, too.
First things first, so we found a place where we could eat and watch the Germany-Uruguay match (3-2), which ended up being a great 90 minutes of football, and some good pizza-eating time. We then got lost in the many galleries that came out of Commercial Street, until we came out the beach. The beach was a real disappointment. The water looked gray, and the shore was filled with little barricades of gunky seaweed. So gross I didn't even dare take my shoes off. Still, we walked along the shore and walked past a party. Now, this particular party was pretty much male-only, which wasn't surprising because P-Town is known to be very gay-friendly. These men, however, had some very similar physical traits: they were all rather big and hairy. Dozens of shirtless Hell's Angels. There were also these flags around the party, which were brown/orange-striped and had a bear paw-print stamped on the corner. To add to the intrigue, this flag could be seen throughout commercial street.
A little help from Adrian's iphone and Google solved the mystery: PTown was celebrating Bear Week. Bear Week is where all the gay bears in the US gather and celebrate bearness. (Bearness seems pretty self-explanatory, but here's the wiki for more info) There were some very manly events in the program like Bear-B-Qs, and some less manly ones like tea parties. Very amusing.
The three of us started seeing paw-prints and other bear symbols everywhere as we kept walking. Adrian and I explored the sex-shop, and then went into the adjacent children's toy store. In a sense, P-Town was kind of like that: a sex shop next to a toy shop.
By 6 we had had enough of bears and banners, so we got on the car and wheeled back home. Yasuko had prepared some killer coleslaw and some lobster, which we enjoyed to the last antenna.
The next day was fishing day. Professor Dower gave Adrian and I the basics of fishing (casting, reeling) and put me on a canoe with Kana while he kidnapped Adrian. Kana and I chatted for the most part, but we each caught a fish, which made me feel very proud of myself. An hour later we decided to rescue Adrian, who as it turned out was trying to unhook his "sixth or seventh" fish. Damn. We paddled back to shore, took a quick dip, and went to a bar so we could see this:
A good weekend....
