I left my house June 8 and returned August 18. The last genuinely stressful day I experienced stretched from 6:00 pm on June 20th, in Provincetown, to 4:00 the next day in Manchester, New Hampshire, after finishing the first day of summer school.
So yeah, it was a great vacation.
Alas, I was short of that perspective when I stepped off the boat and waved goodbye to my fellow watchers. (“Mom, is that the lady who lost her phone?” “Hush, don’t point.”) I had to:
- get to New Hampshire, as I had a condo booked on Monday
- find a T-Mobile/Sprint store to get a new phone
- prepare for my summer school class–create activities, find what work I wanted to assign on day one.
- find a Starbucks or other coffee shop in New Hampshire to teach a summer school class
It was Sunday night in Provincetown, the very tippy end of Massachusetts , and I had four laptops but no phone. Provincetown has decent cellular access, but no phone meant I needed wifi. In California, every restaurant and bar has their own wifi login. In Provincetown, all that I got for “hi, does your establishment have wifi” was “Huh? I don’t know.” which means the place didn’t have wifi. On the other hand, I could walk into the Chamber of Commerce at nearly 6:30 on a Sunday and ask for help, which is like, what? They sent me to the library.
I don’t know when they took this picture–perhaps when the library was open? When I got there, dozens of people were sitting, crowding each other on the steps and benches. I sat right by the front door, but the signal was simply too weak and dropped right after connection. I could get one search in on two connections. Like, literally, I’d connect to wifi and get a Google screen, enter a search, and get “no internet connection”. I’d connect again, and it would refresh the screen with the results of my search.
veeeeeeerrrrrrry slow.
However, the agonizing slowness led me to triage. Three of my four critical tasks could be done in the morning. All I really had to do this evening was get to New Hampshire and find a truck rest stop, then find a coffeeshop in the mor…….
Wait. If I got a motel for the night, I wouldn’t have to look for wifi. Holy crap. Weed it down to minimum, girl. All you need to do is book a New Hampshire motel on the interstate this evening and make like Scarlett O’Hara. That’s one thing. Book a hotel room in New Hampshire. Well, two things. Book a hotel room in New Hampshire and get to the hotel.
But the two connections for one result library internet was not up to an Expedia booking. It was up to finding Provincetown coffeeshops, which should be open, right? right?
No. Every coffee shop I tried was closed. It’s a tourist town! 7:00! What the hell!? There was one more coffee shop on my list, but I couldn’t find it. In act of desperation, I walked into the first open shop I found, a neat little home furnishings store, Room 68. The people at Room 68 saved me several hours of agony, so I’m going to show a picture of their shop.
So when I entered the store on Commerce Street, this was my view. There were two people standing by the black display cases on the left when I charged in, breathless, and just stood there.
They left off their conversation instantly; my frazzled state must have been obvious. “Hi, can we help?”
“Oh–you’re not buying something? I don’t want to interrupt.”
“No, we’re just going through some numbers. What’s up?”
“Look, I swear I wouldn’t bother you but I can’t find an open coffee shop. I’ve got one last possibility, the Wired Puppy? But I can’t find it.”
“Oh, no! It’s closed, too. What do you need, a charger?”
“I wish. No, I just went whale watching and my phone fell of the boat and I….”
Again, the path to instant empathy.
“Sit down right here and use our wifi. There aren’t any coffee shops open right now, and we have a strong signal. Do you need a ride anywhere?”
See the table at the far back of the picture? I sat there. Room 68 is a wonderful place and I thank them forever for their kindness.
Uncle Jimmy had gotten my message and told my cousin Amy, who sent me her number. I had to find a phone to call her (no payphones anymore!) but Amy and her wife, Jackie, live in Sandwich, also in Cape Cod, so I could stop and see them on my way north. Most importantly, I booked a hotel but here, my ignorance of New Hampshire and my lack of phone hurt me. I booked a hotel that looked like it was near the interstate, with directions that looked reasonable. I was worried about overstaying the welcome of the wonderful Room 68 folks. This turned out to be a mistake. I should have ensured a motel very near the interstate given my lack of GPS. But more on that later.
Offering heartfelt thanks to the Room 68 folks, I went back to my car and headed back down to the center of the Cape. I wanted to call Amy and see if I could meet up with her. Ironically, Amy, the ultimate homebody, had been in Hartford for most of my week and then went to Nashville to visit friends on the weekend, so we hadn’t been able to meet until now. By this point, I was reasonably sure I’d be returning to the Cape, as I’d discussed it with Aunt Joan, but I might not get another chance to see Jackie. (And if all that wasn’t reason enough, I was hoping Amy could tell me how to get to New Hampshire!)
As I was driving down 6, I wondered if my resort, which I’d just checked out of that morning, would let me use their phone. Once again, the path to instant empathy held true and they let me use the inhouse phone to call Amy, who gave me very specific instructions to her and Jackie’s lovely home. I had a great visit with them and as hoped, Amy gave me great instructions for getting to New Hampshire: “Highway 6 East, Three North, 93 North!”
The drive to New Hampshire was unenventful–until I got there. My hotel, a Nashua Quality Inn, was just 20 minutes away once I crossed the border at 11:00. I didn’t find it until 2:30.
Those three hours were, hands down, the worst of my trip. Worse even than losing my phone, because at least I had something to do while I worried. This is when I learned that Nashua was nowhere near I93. My life would have been marginally simpler had I gone up I95 or gotten off at 3, but my phone wasn’t there to tell me that. I stopped for directions when I could, but most gas stations were closed, as were most restaurants. Once, in Derry, I saw a huge to-do in a parking lot with, like, 10 cop cars all circled around, lights flashing. It was a restaurant parking lot and weirdly, there was only one civilian car in the middle of it all, with a crying woman talking to one cop., with two others standing near by. Meanwhile, clumps of other cops in groups of 2 or 3 were standing around at a distance of 30-70 feet, just watching. In desperation, I parked far away from the mess, walked an arc once again far away from the car of concern, and gingerly approached the clump of cops standing the farthest away.
“Hi. I’m really, really sorry to bother you but I have no phone and I was wondering if……”
“Can’t you see that there’s something going on here? That we’re busy?”
“No. I can see that he’s busy” indicating the cop talking to the crying lady seventy feet away. “I can see that those two guys next to him are absorbed in the drama. But you all appear to be just watching the TV show, which is why I thought I could possibly interrupt you for two seconds to ask the best way to get to Nashua.”
He gave me instructions. They were wrong. I’m open to both the notion that I got them wrong or that he gave them wrong as punishment for my sass.
Anyway, it eventually occurred to me that I had one of those paper things that might be helpful. I pulled it out….and learned that Manchester, where I had ended up from the cop’s instructions, was considerably north of Nashua.. NORTH! And I was nowhere near an interstate. So I drove street traffic, going steadily south.
I finally found some hotels, any of which I would have stayed at had I not already booked, and went in for help twice, to a Radisson and a Days Inn. Both hotel clerks cheerfully called the Quality Inn and got instructions. The first set of instructions got me closer. The second set got me all the way there. (Note: Hotel clerks are a lot more helpful than cops.)
So I checked in at 2:30, 20 hours after I’d packed up my car and left the Cove at Yarmouth to lose my camera while whalewatching in Provincetown. Set the alarm for 6:30, figuring that I needed at least four hours of rest before I started again.
But I woke up at 5:30, and got my laptop up to look for T-Mobile Stores and Starbucks, of which there are only a shocking twenty in the state. Yes, it’s small, but really, Starbucks? And no Peets or Philz at all. I did find TMobiles, but none of them were open until 10:00 in the morning, just one hour before my first summer school class began.
I was beginning to panic, so I put that task aside and focused on creating some activities for the first day of summer school, reassuring myself that phone or no, I could teach the class. I had four laptops. Two hours later, I had my activities and all first day admin stuff taken care of, and it was 9:00 am. I could have stayed in the hotel, but I felt the need to be mobile, so I found a McDonalds and ordered a breakfast sandwich just to use their wifi.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re not allowed to let anyone sit inside.”
“What?”
The McDonald’s manager looked genuinely contrite. “It’s the labor shortage. We don’t have enough staff to let people sit inside. We’re not even supposed to let walk in customers, only do drive through, but a lot of our customers don’t have cars.” I must have looked desperate. “But…if you want to stay for a bit, you can.”
“You’re wonderful. I have no phone, I’m traveling, and I need wifi.”
“Oh, no! That’s terrible!” There it is again–the perfect sympathy winner. “You just sit here until you find what you need.”
As I’d been getting curriculum ready, my brain had been working on the phone problem in the background. What I needed was a TMobile/Sprint store to get a replacement phone, but then I had to hustle to a Starbucks to start my class by 11:00. And I shouldn’t assume my phone would be functioning immediately, as the backup restore often takes a few hours, so I wouldn’t be able to use my phone from TMobile/Sprint to the Starbucks. Which meant, ideally, I needed to find a TMobile/Sprint and Starbucks within a few blocks of each other. No such geography existed in Nashua, but Manchester was a different story. There’s a major street, Willow, that had a bunch of shopping centers and a Starbucks and TMobile/Sprint store all within a mile of each other. Both the TMobile and Starbucks were independent structures (very important–hard to teach a class from the inside of a Target store, which often offers a Starbucks service, and the TMobiles that are part of the Best Buys are going to take longer).
I had a plan. Thanking the McDonald’s manager profusely, I set off for Manchester–where I’d been the night before, of course. I even recognized the intersection. But spatial isn’t my thing, and I must have turned the wrong way.
For a few brief moments I was feeling like this would all work out calmly, but no more. Now I was driving frantically up and down Willow. I was certain that the TMobile store was on the opposite side of the interstate than the Starbucks, but I could find…nothing. And it was 10:00. Twice, I pulled into malls that were basically vacant–once again, labor shortages were keeping everything closed. Finally, I saw a Staples. I like Staples. Staples could help, couldn’t they? I approached the young woman at the copy counter.
“Hi, I know this is a dumb question, but I went whale watching and lost my phone.”
“Oh, my god. Is it Verizon?”
“I wish. I drove past the Verizon three times. It’s Sprint, which got bought out by TMobile. I have to start teaching my remote class at 11, and I know there’s a Starbucks somewhere near by. But I’d really like to get a new phone started first and I was wondering if….Google says there’s a TMobile Sprint store on Willow, and Willow ends just a few blocks from here, so it’s got to be close, right?”
She grabbed her own phone, and brought up maps. “Oh, I think you turned the wrong way. The TMobile and the Starbucks are both on the other side of 93. Just a mile away. So go out here and turn right. Here’s the important thing: if you see the CVS, turn around. You’ve gone too far. The Starbucks will be first, on your left, but the TMobile store will be on your right. Remember, turn around if you hit the CVS.”
“You are doing God’s work.”
Staples is great.
And lo! There was the Sprint store!
(Google Maps needs to update its images. TMobile bought out Sprint and all the stores have been renamed, which is why I’ve been painstakingly writing TMobile-Sprint instead of just Sprint. I hate mergers.)
I checked the time: 10:15. It was early. Maybe there wouldn’t be a line.
Readers, there was a line.
Why is it that you can walk into a phone shop and wait to PAY YOUR BILL? I mean, what the hell? The rest of us want to buy something, but they take up an entire sales clerk (in a shop of maybe 2) to let someone take time to pay their bill. Absolutely crazy making. I’m there to BUY A PHONE! More money! Profit! You can use bill collectors for deadbeats! But no, a person there to buy a phone is not scooted to the front.
I0:16. I’d wait 10 minutes. No point in being tempted to prioritize the phone over summer school if a sales rep finally looked my way at 10:45.
It took 8.
“Hi, can I help you?”
“Yes. My phone fell into the Atlantic yesterday and I have to be starting a Zoom class in 35 minutes. I need a phone. I can buy it now and then pick it up at 4 if you need time to set it up.”
“No need. I’ll have you out of here in 15 minutes. All you need to do is pick the phone. What did you lose?”
He wasn’t kidding. I’d lost a Galaxy 9, but didn’t want a Galaxy 20. I took the AR52,which had a bit slower chip but a lot better camera. He got the backup started. “It won’t be usable for a couple hours, but come back after your class and we’ll check it out.”
10:45. I made a U-turn at the CVS that would have told me I’d gone too far, and headed back to the Starbucks, just a few hundred yards away.
10:55. Parked, grabbed my laptop, and ran to the Starbucks door.
“Our store is closed to walkins. Drive-Through only. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Oh.Dear.God.
But wait! There was a table outside. I whipped out my laptop. Normally I could use my phone as a hotspot, but it was still busy updating. I brought up the wifi list….THERE! The wifi was available. This would work.
11:00. I clicked the Zoom meeting. Connection. A series of dings as my waiting students joined the class.
“Hi, guys! Welcome to summer school.”
OK, so the approach was dismally late, the dismount extremely shaky, but by God, I stuck that landing.
But I couldn’t have done it without the folks at Room 68, Kerry, Maggie, and Uncle Jimmy getting the news out, the front desk clerk at The Cove at Yarmouth, cousins Amy and Jackie, the two hotel clerks somewhere in the wilds between Manchester and Nashua, the manager at McDonalds, the cashier at Staples, the sales rep at TMobile-Sprint, and Starbucks’ ever generous wifi. You all made me look–well, if not great, at least on time for the first day of class.
Next Up: Camping in New Hampshire
Hypersensitive 
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