In my eternal quest to find new and interesting ways to waste time, I've fallen in love with Google street views. You can merrily walk through pretty much any town you can think of without having to, you know, walk. Or leave the safety of your home environment, which is no mean consideration when you're slightly agoraphobic.
Usually, I do my Google-walkin' through places I've never seen before. I now have no need to actually visit Greensboro; I've seen most of what I wanted to see. I do have a need to visit Myrtle Beach though because it's a beach.
Sometimes I Google-walk through places I've been before, but haven't seen in a long time, to see how it's changed or if I remember things properly. I have a friend visiting from Cape Cod, so I thought I'd have a look around there.
I visited Cape Cod four times, years ago. Once was for this friend's wedding; the other three were ostensibly vacation trips. I say ostensibly because they were neither pleasant nor relaxing; two things that vacation is supposed to be. I'd gone with the person with whom I was involved at the time. The relationship hadn't yet gone toenails-up; so that wasn't the issue. The issue is that I am from the South and Cape Cod is just all-around very, aggressively Northern.
I remember that the first thing that struck me was the oddness of the names. We have Indian-based names in Virginia too, but they sound different. Onset? The onset of what, exactly? Mashpee? I mean, seriously, your town has the word "pee" in it. And then there's the Northern tendency to use the same name, with directions, for five different towns. Dennis, East Dennis, South Dennis... The landscape is weird; since the cape is windswept pretty much constantly, the trees are stunted. Everything is very sandy.
And I remember that the ocean is very, very cold, even in summertime, and that the sand doesn't seem rough but must be, because I'd end each of these trips with my feet sliced to ribbons. Reaching the actual beach from where we stayed was like the Bataan Death March except there wasn't even a movie made about it. The restaurants were very expensive and not very good, at least to my taste.
Mostly, I remember that I felt very much out of place. All of the people I was with had grown up taking vacations like this; I'd grown up going to the beaches of the mid-Atlantic and was used to water you could actually swim in, boardwalks and Maryland seafood.
It's fairly unlikely that I'll ever be on Cape Cod again, so Google-walking around it was a convenient way to refresh my memory without the ten hour drive and the hurty sand. It was actually kind of nice to see that it is pretty much as I remembered it, and astonishing to realize that the last time I saw most of this stuff was twenty-five years ago. There's been a lot of water under the Bourne Bridge since then. It's also unlikely that I'll ever see most of the people who were there with me again, either, but on most of the streets I could picture them (or at least their 1995 selves) very clearly. I can almost picture 1995 Me there, too, confused and frustrated by everything around me. 1995 Me didn't have the vaguest clue what 2019 Me would be doing, but certainly didn't think I'd be visiting him via Interwebs.
Usually, I do my Google-walkin' through places I've never seen before. I now have no need to actually visit Greensboro; I've seen most of what I wanted to see. I do have a need to visit Myrtle Beach though because it's a beach.
Sometimes I Google-walk through places I've been before, but haven't seen in a long time, to see how it's changed or if I remember things properly. I have a friend visiting from Cape Cod, so I thought I'd have a look around there.
I visited Cape Cod four times, years ago. Once was for this friend's wedding; the other three were ostensibly vacation trips. I say ostensibly because they were neither pleasant nor relaxing; two things that vacation is supposed to be. I'd gone with the person with whom I was involved at the time. The relationship hadn't yet gone toenails-up; so that wasn't the issue. The issue is that I am from the South and Cape Cod is just all-around very, aggressively Northern.
I remember that the first thing that struck me was the oddness of the names. We have Indian-based names in Virginia too, but they sound different. Onset? The onset of what, exactly? Mashpee? I mean, seriously, your town has the word "pee" in it. And then there's the Northern tendency to use the same name, with directions, for five different towns. Dennis, East Dennis, South Dennis... The landscape is weird; since the cape is windswept pretty much constantly, the trees are stunted. Everything is very sandy.
And I remember that the ocean is very, very cold, even in summertime, and that the sand doesn't seem rough but must be, because I'd end each of these trips with my feet sliced to ribbons. Reaching the actual beach from where we stayed was like the Bataan Death March except there wasn't even a movie made about it. The restaurants were very expensive and not very good, at least to my taste.
Mostly, I remember that I felt very much out of place. All of the people I was with had grown up taking vacations like this; I'd grown up going to the beaches of the mid-Atlantic and was used to water you could actually swim in, boardwalks and Maryland seafood.
It's fairly unlikely that I'll ever be on Cape Cod again, so Google-walking around it was a convenient way to refresh my memory without the ten hour drive and the hurty sand. It was actually kind of nice to see that it is pretty much as I remembered it, and astonishing to realize that the last time I saw most of this stuff was twenty-five years ago. There's been a lot of water under the Bourne Bridge since then. It's also unlikely that I'll ever see most of the people who were there with me again, either, but on most of the streets I could picture them (or at least their 1995 selves) very clearly. I can almost picture 1995 Me there, too, confused and frustrated by everything around me. 1995 Me didn't have the vaguest clue what 2019 Me would be doing, but certainly didn't think I'd be visiting him via Interwebs.
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Thanks! Now, go get a drink, sit down and enjoy the show.