Ferry carport parking and sail ambience... Park your hooptie and get ready to sail across the sound to Vineyard Haven.

The Steamship Authority has come a long way since its pre-2K promise of, “Get in the standby line before noon, and you’ll get on a boat to the Vineyard at some point today.” I often wonder: who was the madman behind that carmageddon inducing promise?

If you’ve been anywhere near Bourne, MA, in the summertime especially Friday rush, you know how much folks love their Cape Cod and ****** islands. For Mid-Atlantic folks, think of U.S. 50 traffic from Annapolis to the 301/50 split… for everyone else just imagine trying to exit a large parking lot on July 4th.

There’s no bridge to the islands, so anyone hoping to get their car over there collects in Woods Hole, in a parking lot the size of a small Walmart. This is the hub of: No bridge/ this is the only way to get your car over there.

So in the older times of madness, when just showing up at the Woods Hole Terminal before noon got you over to an island by the end of the day… congratulations. Now you’re stuck with 1980s or ’90s technology, it’s hot as ****, and your kids have been bored with travel Yahtzee since ****** Danbury. (I should mention there was the occasional dreaded Steamship employee blocking entry, waving a white handkerchief and shouting, “We’re full!”) 

Cars wrapped maddeningly around the old terminal. Station wagons and minivans rumbled, coughing black smoke. Wheels neared edges that dropped into the harbor. A bewildering ballet.

After an hour in standby your brain begins to decide you're starting to get close. Only to be quickly routed into a line snaking under the ****** bridge on the far end that surely would take four hours to return from.

And it amazingly it worked out pretty well for us standby folks.

Tempers occasionally spilled over. I saw one dude get a donut launched at him. A slew of “’Ay, chief!” were tossed between belligerents.

But mostly, folks smoked and talked sports cars. No smartphones then—so the most interesting thing you could access in the car was the radio and the hazard lights. Or Mom’s stash of nicotine gum…

Once, I saw a dude sleeping on top of a mini-bus, a cot stretched out over the roof. One hand palming a Corona he miraculously held on to, the other hanging limp, palm out. Dude smelled strange—and I thought of Jesus, weirdly.