For my first visit to the island I take the Grey Lady, the high-speed catamaran from Hyannis. I sit on the top deck drinking Heineken and soaking up the salt spray as the ship hurtles across the sound. Then there it is, flat and beachbound Nantucket, a 47-square-mile pile of sand, scrubby trees, and rose-covered shingled everything.
The ferry docks at Straight Wharf. The village looks like the centerpiece of a living history museum or the campus of a small New England liberal arts college on parents weekend. Everything is scrubbed and blooming and preserved in the glory days of pre-traffic lights and pre-asphalt and pre-chain stores. And there are shops, but it is not a place to look for what you need, unless what you need is Lilly Pulitzer, or a $700 fishing reel, or an oil painting of dunes and breaking waves.
Passengers from the boat head their separate ways. They walk to their inns, are picked up in hotel vans, or by sun-bleached girlfriends in beach buggies toting surfboards and surfcasting rods. I look for the scooter rental shop. Walking through town, it is unnerving to see two police officers to every block. And then I realize that they are unarmed, more security guards, put-your-dog-on-a-leash, and you-can't-park-there, than real crime-fighting police.
I rent a scooter and ride up and down the cobblestone streets. The stones were ballast on ships that delivered whale oil to England and the Pacific. Many of the streets are one way, and the cops scold those going the wrong way. I head south out of town and chug along to Surfside and the Hostelling International-Nantucket, also known as the Star of the Sea Hostel. The scooter goes only 30 miles per hour, and the speed limit is 35, so people need to pass, and they do. When they pass they honk and say bad words. It makes me feel like one of the dummies from "Dumb and Dumber," going barely 30 with a moped full of luggage.
