Cape Weekend

Everyone needs a vacation once or twice a decade. Doesn't mean it will happen, but the need is there nevertheless. So with a two-year super bummer life thingie out of the way, which transitioned into a three-month super hectic busy thingie, I figured it was time to take a timeout and get away for the weekend.

The goal was to leave Friday afternoon and take advantage of the Monday holiday, getting back that morning. So right on time, we got there around Saturday evening, just in time for the rainy forecast to kick into gear and continue straight through Sunday, wrapping up just in time for the drive home.

Such as it is. Follow me on a journey where I detail the few minutes I salvaged and the even fewer photos I took to document it. Think of it like one of those old X-E travel articles, but so much worse.

Things kicked off at a point where we should have been about a day and a half into the trip. Looking on the brightside, the vacation would have been half over by then. But by missing half of it, it's like it just began! That's using the old brain.

Speaking of old brains, the first stop was the Pancake Man. They've been around since my last visit and about a century before that. Maybe not that long, but the chairs and coffee cups might be pushing it. I say this in a loving way, since when you head out of town, you don't want polish. No, I want furniture that was at home at grandma's. I want the three-color packets of questionable sweetener, and preferably the white one should have pictures of lighthouses and rowboats just like they did in 1987.

The breakfast offerings are the usual. Eggs, meat, and, of course, pancakes in various flavours. I recall getting the breakfast burger, which is basically just a cheeseburger with a fried egg on it. I also recall it being more than a thin patty of ground chuck, but perhaps I'm just growing senile in the morning.

We went twice, and on round two, I had to go with the chocolate chip pancakes. My kingdom for some peanut butter on them, but that's an indulgence I can no longer afford.

Being a rainy day, most outdoor activities were off the list. No matter, time to visit the game room in the basement. Much has been said about hotel game rooms, and little is of the positive persuasion. But like sleepy breakfast establishments that remind you of the good ol' days of 1948, these arcades bring you back about half as far.

None are complete without having a few units that are completely dead. It's far from a downside, since I'm not really hankering to play Buck Hunter or Fast & Furious. A combo of the two? Well, yes, but that's for the next indie dev to create.

No, give me the old faithfuls like pinball and fighting games. Not that I'm any better at them, but at least the playtime feels bite-sized. If there's any sort of campaign, I'm apt to feel a little let down that there's more to the game that I wasn't able to experience since I lacked the $300 in quarters it needed to get to the end.

The pinball game was great, since it seemed to have a glitch that kept awarding extra lives and plays for seemingly no reason. Maybe there was a reason, but I can't make heads or tails of the many flashing lights and buzzers. It didn't help that the light-up matrix was half burnt out. Nevertheless, one quarter seemed to offer upwards of twenty minutes of play, and I call that a good deal.

The table hockey on the other hand was quite the opposite. They're maddening to begin with, but one of the players had dislodged from the controls, so there ended up being a glaring dead zone right near one of the goals. This necessitated tipping the entire assembly over to jostle the puck back into an area that could be reached. By the time you managed to score one goal, the game would simply end since it was far beyond the time limit, and it was being nice letting you dilly-dally all that time.

Now, we can't spend all day locked inside. Well, we could, but then we'd miss the big attraction spotted the day before when we were denied entry into a restaurant (it was full, nothing scandalous). I'm a lover of old books, so it would be impossible to pass up a dedicated bookstore that had exactly zero overlap with anything in a Barnes & Noble.

I was impressed with the fact that this appeared to be a local hotspot, with hordes of people wandering in the entire time. There was even an overflow section outside where books had to face the elements in a battle royale against the weather. There was nary a Nora Roberts book in sight, so that was a good sign, and I took a step inside.

"Overwhelming" would be an appropriate adjective. Shelves extending to the ceiling contained tomes of wisdom that would likely remain untouched out of sheer inaccessibility. They were organized by genre at the very least, but I quickly realised that I needed to just find something to avoid leaving empty-handed, all while avoiding an inevitable sensory overload.

I didn't find anything too saucy like I would at my local used bookstore, but a little digging usually uncovers something with blackface, so I can see if anyone actually is reading this.

That about exhausted the options out-and-about, so the hotel pool was the default next option. No pictures here, since that would err towards the creepy side of things. Any device would soon find its demise anyhow, since the washed—if only temporarily—masses of children seemed to take no issue cannonballing right over your head or having splash wars with each other that cover the breadth of the pool. Relative to the time when I saw a young teen girl literally trying to drown a friend, it was rather tame but annoying all the same.

I have nothing more to add, so here's a random sign and a planthopper nymph.

That leaves us with the end of the rain on the final day. By the time we got home, it was blue skies mere hours before dusk, so time for ice cream. Or iced cream, I don't know. As much as spooky season is coming and some live that all year round, I do try to bask in the few things summer can offer, so despite being a rather demure weekend, it's better than the rat race we all have to jump back into come the workweek.