Wednesday

Wednesday

I’m so thankful that today was our day off. I’m also thankful for this air mattress because I can roll out of it to get up. After a bit of stretching and some Excedrin I head down the hall to get some coffee. Thank you Bland for having the coffee ready every morning!

On Wednesdays Habitat takes the day off. A lot of teams head up to Chincoteague but we are heading for Tangier Island. To get there you have to either go by boat or plane. We’ll I’m not a fan of flying so it’s off to Onley to catch the Joyce Marie II.

We board our boat at 10:00 AM and head out across the Bay. I found out later that from the pier to the Bay is 5 miles. It’s another 13 miles after that. On the way over we see Brown Pelicans, Osprey, fishing boats and their spotter plane. The ride over really isn’t bad. Some folks had taken some Dramamine before we left but it never got rough. It takes a little more than an hour to get over to the island. We come up on the island and there are crab shacks everywhere. We dock then head down very narrow streets to see what’s here. It doesn’t take us long to realize it’s not a lot. A very quant town to say the least. There may be 5 cars on the island and about the same number of pickups. Most folks get around on golf carts, scooter or ATV’s. There are cats everywhere. We see a few dogs but not many. Almost every yard has a family cemetery in it. The population of Tangier is about 500 and we find out that the island is shrinking. The people we meet are very friendly. Of course if you listen to the locals in the shops you notice they have a very different accent.

We have lunch at the Chesapeake House run by Hilda Crockett. This is apparently a tradition for all those that come to the island. Lunch was crab cakes, fried clam fritters, ham, green beans, pickled beets, corn pudding, potato salad, rolls, cole slaw, applesauce and for dessert pound cake with pineapple chunks. All served family style. Wow, what a spread and it was excellent. After lunch we waddled around the island again checking out a few shops and finally finding some chairs to plop down in and rest before heading back to our boat.

Our boat was heading back at 3:30. All who were heading back were back on board by 3:15 so we headed back. The ride back was very pleasant. A very nice Bay breeze to cool us off. I went into the cabin to talk with the captain of the boat. He is a Crockett (probably related to Hilda) who use to crab but bought the water taxi service about 3 years ago and hasn’t looked back. After docking we decided quickly that we were all going to skip dinner. So we headed back to Franktown UMC to relax and talk about the day.

One of the things that we discussed was community. Could we live in such a small community seemingly cut off from the outside world? Where everyone knew everyone and everyone’s business but also were there for everyone. We never came to any solid conclusions about this.

Two days left. Tomorrow is going to be very busy. We hope to finish the roof and the siding. It’s going to start early too (7:30 on the jobsite). So good night to all. Thank you for the prayers as we are praying for you!