Wine Weekend Part 1: I'm on a boat...but my friends aren't.

This past weekend, I traveled to Wine Country, Long Island(?) to attend the bachelorette party of an old college friend. I knew that the weekend was going to be a blast--7 girls (most of whom I went to college with) in a condo for the weekend drinking wine, eating food, having some girl time. All good things. But, the getting there was worrying me. I'm not a big boat fan. I don't like the idea of not being able to leave a place if I don't want to stay there anymore. I went on a whale watch in the 10th grade during a stormy, rainy day that was less of a whale watch and more of a puke watch. Like a whole boat of Norovirus. I've been boat-wary ever since.

But, the neurotic in me couldn't stand the thought of not taking the most direct route to my destination. How could I drive 7.5 hours around the Long Island Sound instead of just taking the 1.5 hour ferry? So, that's how my friend Andrea and I found ourselves driving to the New London ferry.

We were meeting three other girls at the ferry itself. I had heard in the past that if you're taking more than one car on a ferry and traveling stand-by, it's nearly impossible to get your whole party on the same boat. However, we arrived at the same time and I couldn't believe our luck when a cute boat guy told us to go into the same lane that my friends were in. (Side note: If you ever want to go guy-watching and you don't feel weird ogling 20-year olds, hit a ferry dock!) I drove over to lane 3 where another cute boat guy was directing me straight ahead in the lane. Suddenly, the another-cute-boat-guy looked over his shoulder and moved me over to lane 2. As I got closer, he waved me over again, and moved me to Lane 1. Then, he directed me to the left, at which point I yelled to him, "Where am I going?" And he yelled back, "you're going on the boat." I just kept following his directions until he told me to park. But, as I believed that we were still in the parking lot, I didn't think much of it. I was a little bit confused when Andrea asked him, "Is this the 3:30?" And another-cute-boat-guy leaned over, looked at the clock on my dashboard and said, "yep". Slowly and finally, it dawned on me that I was actually on the boat, with the rest of my friends still in the parking lot. Somehow, even though there were six or seven cars in front of us, another-cute-boat-guy had helped us cut to the front of the line just as the boat began to leave. Andrea and I looked at each other...and burst out laughing. I think this picture accurately depicts how confused I was...

See the blue car that looks like it's about to fall off the back. Yeah, that's mine. The good news is that it happened so fast, I didn't have time to think about how much I didn't want to get on the boat. And guess what...I survived!

We ended up getting to the Cliffside Resort in Greenport, NY without any further confusion. I tossed a "Hey! You should come to the Cliffside. We can buy you beer!" to another-cute-boat-guy as we drove away. The others arrived safely and Night One was a great night of grilling burgers (well, I didn't grill burgers) and laughing and drinking and catching up. We ate a lot of cheese. We reminisced about college until we discovered that three out of the five of us who went to undergrad together had hooked up with the same guy, making it weird. (Just kidding about the weirdness: it was actually a running joke for the rest of the weekend) We sat on our condo patio and watched a beautiful sunset. I mused about how interesting it is to be able to watch the sun set over the water on the East Coast. To which my friend responded, "Uh, that's setting over Connecticut, but yes, very pretty." And we went to sleep looking forward to our wine weekend.