Two Departures and the Day Between

The two numbers, and everything under them

The outbound leaves at six oh five in the morning. The return leaves the coast at four fifty in the afternoon. There is a later return, but it runs only on certain days and it puts me home after nine, which turns a pleasant day trip into a slog.

So the day is bounded: nine hours and fifteen minutes on the ground, minus whatever I lose to walking between the stop and the water. The published times are on the operator's public pages, and I check them the week before and again the night before, because spring is when seasonal service changes take effect and I have been caught by that once.

Getting to the stop is its own small piece. I leave my door at five twenty for a six oh five departure, which is forty-five minutes for a walk that takes twelve. That looks ridiculous written down. It has also meant that in six trips I have never once had to rush, and rushing at five in the morning ruins the entire day rather than just the moment.

I buy nothing at the stop because nothing is open. Coffee comes from home in a thermos, which by now is a fixed part of every errand I plan.

The ride out

The bus was about a third full leaving town and picked up eleven more people at two stops before the highway. Nobody speaks. There is a specific quality to a bus at six in the morning where everyone has agreed, without discussion, that conversation would be an act of aggression.

The first minutes are dark, then gray, then suddenly not. Sunrise on April fifteenth happened at six oh five exactly, which I did not plan and which felt like being given a small gift by a stranger. The light came in low from the left side and lit the seat backs orange for maybe four minutes.

There is one stop at a park-and-ride lot at the halfway point, four minutes, nobody gets off. After that the land flattens, the trees change, and the fields start showing salt marsh at the edges. You smell it before you see any water, roughly twelve minutes out.

We arrived four minutes early, which the driver announced with some satisfaction. From the stop it is a nine-minute walk to the harbor and about eighteen to the beach lot, both flat, both on sidewalks that exist the entire way.

Nine hours, and how they actually go

Here is what I have learned about the middle of the day, mostly by getting it wrong.

• Before nine nothing is open. The town wakes up around nine thirty in April, which is fine if you plan for it and disappointing if you do not.
• The water is the point, so go there first. I walked the harbor edge for an hour before anything else, because the light before nine is the good light and it asks nothing of you.
• Restrooms are seasonal. The town pages are clear that several facilities do not open until late May. In April, two are available near the landing, and knowing which two is worth five minutes of reading in advance.
• The middle hours want a roof. Between noon and two the wind picks up off the water, and I have twice been glad of a public building with a chair in it.

This trip I walked the harbor, sat on the low seawall for forty minutes, ate a sandwich I had brought, walked the length of the beach lot side, and then spent an hour and a half in the town's small museum room, which asks for a donation and holds about twenty minutes of material that I stretched to ninety because I liked the quiet.

Around two I made the mistake I always make, which is to sit somewhere comfortable at the exact moment the afternoon turns cold. I got up, walked the harbor a second time in the other direction, and found that a place walked twice in one day is not the same place. The tide had dropped about seven feet. Boats that had floated at nine were sitting on mud at two thirty, tilted, looking foolish and temporary.

The return, and how much buffer is real

I aim to be at the stop forty minutes early. Everyone tells me this is too much. Everyone is wrong, and here is why.

The stop is a sign on a post outside a building with no waiting room. If the bus is early, it does not wait. If I am at fifteen minutes and something goes wrong on the nine-minute walk, my margin is gone and the next option is a phone call and a very long, apologetic conversation with somebody who loves me.

Forty minutes buys a slow walk, one stop for water, and ten minutes of standing still watching the street. On this trip the bus arrived six minutes ahead of the posted time and sat with the door open. Three people came running at four forty-eight. They made it. They did not enjoy the last two minutes of their day at the coast.

The ride home was fuller, warmer, and noisier, and it took a hundred and five minutes because of an accident near the river. I was home at six fifty, which is late enough to feel like a full day and early enough to still be a Wednesday.

Worth the errand

Yes, and the version without a car is the better version, provided you accept its terms. The terms are that two fixed times own your day, and that you will spend a total of about three hours and fifteen minutes sitting on a bus to get nine hours of coastal town.

It works if you can walk comfortably for four or five miles across a day with rests, because the whole trip is built on walking between fixed points. It works less well in April than in June, when more is open and the seasonal service runs more often. It does not work at all if you need to be somewhere at a specific hour that evening, because the return time is a promise made by traffic.

Bring layers you can actually carry, bring your own food for the first three hours, and read the posted times the night before. Then let the day be short, and let the bus decide when it ends.