John & Anne Wiley

Before starting our flight from Stow, MA to Waterbury, CT today, I put on some magic boots.

0957 Magic Boots

These charming boots are warm and giggly, and all I need do to put them on is stand still by the door. Especially if I have the suitcase by my side. When I want to take them off there are no laces, zippers or velcro to bother with. All I need do is make a motion as if to tickle them, and presto! They not only instantly are off my feet, they scamper away squealing with delight in opposite directions. 🙂

4764 Hartford

The whole family piled into the car with us and all our luggage, and we chatted merrily all the way to the airport. After our wonderful visit, we put on our other magic boots: Tripp. Like the old fables about magical Seven League Boots, she can take us quickly from place to place. Soon we were passing Hartford, and then minutes later we saw the ever more familiar Waterbury.

7369 Waterbury

New England towns and cities boast many silent smokestacks and innumerable beautiful churches, surrounded by neat rows of tidy homes like these. From the surrounding area, family gathered to welcome the wandering Californians with a delicious dinner. One topic at the table was how Tripp makes such experiences possible by whisking us so quickly from place to place, friend to friend, and one family gathering to another. Such happy and enchanted “boots” we have enriching our days!

0963 Family Fun

Today started with a ride from our hotel in Edgartown over to Oak Bluffs, courtesy of the outstanding Sun ‘n Fun bike shop. Pilots will immediately realize how fitting it is that we got such great and helpful service from a friendly bike rental shop with the same name as a famous annual Florida aviation event. Anyway, we then rode over to Vineyard Haven to get the battery charged for Anne’s little red pocket camera.

0883 Main Street

We learned that Main Street is pretty much “it” in V.H., and in the end decided to wait on getting the original battery charged because we bought a new one that came with a full charge. Then a nice gourmet tarragon chicken sandwich to take with us, and off we rode the several miles out to the airport.

0884 Sandwich Wait

By the time we got there, the sandwich was most welcome! Then into Tripp for the quick flight over to Chatham on the “elbow” of Cape Cod. Along the way, endlessly fascinating islets and sand bars.

4230 Sand & Tide

Sure, we passed Hyannis Port where we tried to guess which estates had played a prominent role in the JFK “Camelot” story. But the dance of sand and tide was so compelling!

4233 Cloud Garnish

Those low clouds just off the East end of the Cape got my attention, and I studied their motion carefully before turning back to land at Chatham a few miles inland.

4238 Cape Art

These small versions of the pix don’t do justice to the remarkable beauty of all this, but even the raw hi-res originals pale in comparison with what we saw. We stopped for fuel, but it probably also helped to rest our eyes so that this scene was even more impactful when we saw it for the second time climbing to cross over toward Nantucket for our return.

4269 Foam Touches

The strokes of foam floating on the water added an impression of depth to the submerged ripples of sand. Continuing the climb we looked back across the arm of the Cape to the distant lighthouse on the far tip that was clearer than in this pic.

4276 Out The Cape

4280 Nantucket Light

You can’t really see it in this wide shot, but the closest tip of Nantucket has a large lighthouse that here is a tiny white dot. Some miles and pix later we crossed Chappaquiddick where a lovely sand bar stands off the main island, connected by a small bridge.

4318 Chappaquiddick Bar

On the bridge were some people I thought might be fishing, but looking at the full-size version of this next pic I can see they’re apparently standing in the middle somberly looking around.

4317 Chappaquiddick Bridge

In case you don’t know the story of this bridge, here’s a link to the story about its role in a tragic event involving Ted Kennedy. There is a quiet sadness here that we felt even from a quarter mile above. For me it evokes a powerful sense of how events can suddenly take a turn, and dramatically change everything. A happy example of that is the day Anne and I met some decades ago. Or the day we met Tripp and brought her into our lives, to wander the skies over North America. Life is full of turning points, and we were thinking about this as we turned to fly one more time over the now more familiar landmarks of Martha’s Vineyard and then land to ride our bikes back in the gathering darkness on a hiking trail around the silent Tradewind grass air strip.