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The Villages
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Exotic islands are not always maintained to the strict standards of The Villages

Barry Evans
Barry Evans

The Blonde in the house is known to exclaim every once in a while that she might enjoy a cruise.  With my “poor” hearing, I do not always catch on, but I have probably earned some points as we just went on not one but two cruises. Not only that but we did them in just two days. Now to some that may sound like they were on the short side as cruises go. Not so, as the cruise last Sunday was 60 minutes – each way! The one on Monday was nearly as long – 55 minutes each way.

That is just the raging sea travel time, of course. It does not count the time getting to the wharf, and then waiting for the ship to “heave to” or whatever it is that they do. Once on board each day, we went to an exotic island and wandered around looking at the sites and fending off the merchants while being careful not to trip over the loose bricks in the sidewalks. Exotic islands are not always maintained to the strict standards of The Villages.

I was somewhat shocked that not meeting The Villages standards applied to Massachusetts. However, since the islands were way off the shore of the mainland so that may have been the problem. Probably considerable logistics involved in sending replacement bricks over to the islands.  Despite this minor flaw, we did enjoy our sojourn romping around the islands and intermixing with other tourists and the natives who seem to rely on bicycles like we do golf carts here.

I must admit that the islands did have cool names. Nantucket was one. In case you are not aware the name came from one of the first settlers on the island. Her name was Nan – she was married several times so they never bothered with a last name.  Everyone just called her Nan. It seems further that things were disappearing. The frustrated settlers finally found out that Nan was the guilty party. From that time forward when anything was missing, everyone said “Nan took it”. We all know how people from New England talk, so it was not long before everyone called the island Nantucket.

There is always an interesting story behind geographic names. The other island we visited was Martha’s Vineyard. The problem here is that no one is certain who “Martha” was.  Some think that it was George’s wife, but she wasn’t even born when they named the island.

At least most people do not think so since George’s wife would not give out her age – even to George. There is a story about how the island was named, but it is so unbelievable that I will not bother repeating it. I just put out historical information that I can verify.

Even after these interesting cruises, I still have trouble understand how neighbors and friends go on cruises that last a couple of months or more. It is a well-known point that some people cannot live on an island because they get “island fever”. The fever is caused by the fact that you can only travel around the island and there is nowhere else to go. I suppose that if you consider Australia an island, the fever most likely does not strike there, but other islands are not as big. Although if you look at a globe, Greenland looks pretty big, but no one seems to be certain of its size. Once global warming melts all the ice up there we will have a better understanding.

Let us just concede that most islands are small and some folks would get the fever living on them. Now when you combine “island” fever with “cabin” fever, you can imagine what it must be like sitting on a ship for a couple of months or more! I determined some time ago that I was not in favor of catching a “fever. So I apply standard logic and confine all possible cruises to ones that are brief but exotic.

It is possible, that The Blonde in the house may use a different logic.

Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com

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