The Lost Blog

Archive from MySpace blog
Current mood: reminiscent
Category: reminiscent Blogging

OK, no... I know Molly has told many of you of our newfound obsession with the TV show LOST... but that's not what this blog is about. Instead this is the blog I never got to 2 weeks ago, when this story occurred.

So, without further ado... here we go.

Cape Fear
February 18, 2007

Have you ever got that call? You know, the one where you can win some vacation / trip / prize if you attend their seminar where they try to sell you vacation property. Yeah. What kind of person says yes to that? Well... we found out.

4 free plane tickets, anywhere in the US and Europe. The exchange: a 90 minute sales pitch for a Vacation Club, on Cape Cod. Granted, we'd just won 4 plane tickets with far less strings attached, but really, can one have too many free plane tickets? And what the heck, I'd never been to Cape Cod.

So, 9:30 Sunday morning, we hop in the car. An hour later, we're in Wyoming, RI, home of one of our favourite Tim Horton's. 2 coffees, a water, a croissant, and fruit punch, 10 TimBits, a Canadian Maple doughnut, and we're back on the road. It's a Sunday, but we're making great time to and through Rhode Island. Even a pretty serious car accident outside Cranston only delays us about 15 seconds.

Not too long later, and we're in Falmouth, MA, and at the InnSeasons Resort. Umm... looks like a motel to me, actually. Who cares, check-in time. Present ID, and a credit card. The letter states a credit card or check book must be provided as a second form of ID due to the valuable nature of the gifts, but I learn later, they just want to make sure you bring your money so you can buy at the end. Don't worry, no one swept or got the numbers off the card.

So, we're sitting in the "living room" and in walks our... guide... salesman, whatever, Harry, an 80-something guy in a bow-tie. Harry owns a pharmaceutical R&D company, but chooses to spend his retirement years hocking "memberships" in this "vacation club". Hey, to each his own. But this self-made entrepreneur, a man who graduated MIT in the 40's, is oddly impressed with my last name. Fascinated even. Fascinated... in a vaguely senile way. He wants to know if I've ever talked with my famous Arctic (Antarctic, actually Harry, but close enough) exploring Great-Uncle, who died about 45 years before I was born. OK, maybe the MIT grad is bad a math. Hell, at 80, Harry would have been like 10 when Sir Ernest died.

But I digress. Harry got down to business, and through some amazing computation -- hey, he went to MIT -- he calculated that at approximately $150 a trip, 2 or 3 times a year, Molly and I will somehow spend $867,000 in vacations by the time we're sixty. The be honest, even Harry seemed slightly shocked by the result of this computation. But $867,000 is what the computer said we would spend, and he was certain he could save us money with the InnSeasons program.

The program is simple, you buy a time share in a resort. Then you pay to maintain your share. Then you pay to use your share. Then you pay to have the right to trade your share for somewhere else. Then you pay to trade your share. Then you pay for the right to trade your share internationally. Then you pay to trade your share internationally. Then you pay for the agent that arranges your airfare. Then you pay for your airfare. Then you pay for an extra calculator to help you figure out what on earth you just paid. But fear not, this is the greatest bargain in the vacation world.

Harry takes us on a tour of the local facilities, 3 resorts in Falmouth, all of which are full. It's Mid-February, and all three resorts -- on Cape Cod -- have no vacancies. What on earth would be our chances of actually booking a vacation in the summer?!? Scary. Scarier still is the fact that, aside from the 3 resort properties, everything in this town is vacant, abandoned, and boarded up. It almost looks like we're driving through a Scooby Doo episode, except instead of a talking dog and an arrogant blonde man in an ascot, we have Harry, and possibly the oldest man on Cape Cod driving the van.

At one point, after explaining the fees schedule, Harry asked what I would pay for the actual property. I really thought the answer was supposed to be 0. Alas, it wasn't. Before any of the fees listed above, the initial property (which really isn't property at all) was going to cast us $143,000. Don't worry, they finance on an 8 year term at 15% interest!

So, we politely tell Harry that -- and we blame my upcoming educational costs -- we can't afford this deal at the moment (not like we ever intended to buy 0, and wait for the delivery of our plane tickets. But the plane tickets don't arrive yet. No. First, the Arab horse-trader.

Now I have nothing against persons of Middle Eastern descent, but it does seem when you need someone to wheel and deal and barter and swindle, you just have to bring in the Arab. So "what if I offer you half the points? And see this number... gone. See this... I pay this for the next 5 years. And this fee... you don't pay it. I pay that. And I pay this for 3 years. And I give 3 bonus weeks. And this... no, don't pay that; that you pay in names. You give me 10 names... paid. You give 20 names... I give you $50. You give me 30 names... I pay this, give you $75 dollars, and you get this camel." OK, he didn't offer me a camel, but it was that bad. At the end, the numbers still seemed unreasonable -- not that anything was truly reasonable, since we had no intent to buy anything.

So we thank them both for their time again, and we sign off on the declination of our special deal, and we get our gifts. $25 in dinner, $100 in gas rebates, and 4 round-trip airline tickets. So, being rather hungry since the 90 minute tour took us an hour and 20 minutes, we roll of to get lunch.

The $25 meal certificate is for a place called the Carolina Bar-B-Q Barn Restaurant and Bar. We pass. We're sure we can find something good in Hyanis. So up Falmouth Road we go. And as we do, we pass Cape Mac. At first I thought Molly said Cape Mack, and just thought it was some little town, but it turns out it's a computer store she regularly does business with. We try to stop in and say hi, maybe get a good tip on a place to do lunch, but alas, they're closed. Little did we know that would be the theme of the day.

Continuing on we pass a number of oddly names towns and hamlets. It's odd... we settled this land, drove off the Native Americans, yet kept all their hideously unpronounceable names. Onward we drive. The Old Abandoned Concert Pavilion. Where's Old Man Wiggins? And this place... ah yes, this place...

Something completely awesome about a place called "3 Way Liquors". If only liquor was spelled a little different. OK, 6th grade, I know. Anyway...

Hyanis. Umm... that's what the sign said. OK, I'll roll toward the Center. Umm... OK I'll roll toward the beach. Yup... it's a beach. Sand washing across the small town street, boarded up building line either side... a bustling metropolis. OK... here's my advice here: Don't, under any circumstances, waste your time traveling to Cape Cod out of season. Spring: Great. Summer: Awesome. Fall: Wonderful. Winter...

In the Winter, Cape Cod transforms to an odd coastal version of Appalachia, North of the Mason-Dixon line. Rednecks, in salt-rotting pick-ups, park the clam boats on their front lawns while their teen children congregate at combination grocery-liquor-pizza shops that dot the otherwise abandoned thoroughfares.

OK, I said this blog isn't about LOST, but if any of you do watch LOST, think back to "The Others", when they find the raft and kidnap Walt... "We're gonna hafta take the boy." Yeah, that's Cape Cod in February. We were kind of afraid to get out of the car, so after an hour loop of the Cape Cod beaches, again passing (and finally taking a picture of) 3 Way Liquors, and coming right back to the Carolina Bar-B-Q Barn Bar and Restaurant, we just decided to stop at the local 99 Restaurant. At least it was familiar.