Quest for the internet

We pulled into the Crosswinds Marina in White Lake. As we purchased some diesel and arranged for a slip, I asked the young lady there if there was a WiFi café anywhere nearby in Whitehall. She said she didn’t know of any. OK. So, we went exploring with the laptop backpack which Sue had apparently packed with an anchor attached to an anvil! We knew from a brochure we had been given that if we didn’t find any WiFi connection in town that the local Library had computers and internet access. I asked a girl at the ice cream place where the library was. She says, “Oh it’s easy. You can just follow the bike path down there and it ends right at the library.” Great. How far? She says about ¾ of a mile. So we’re off to find the computers at the library. It was a lovely path but at some point I had the feeling that we had already walked way more than ¾ of a mile. Now we were totally out in the country! How could there be a library out here. We decided that we must have missed it and turned around. Right then some people on bikes came up behind us. I asked them if it was true that there was a library at the end of this path and they said, yes, and it’s not that much further.

So, we pressed on. If we had walked a foot we had probably walked 3 miles!

It was significantly further…but there was no stopping us now even though gravity in this region is apparently stronger than what I am used to causing the bag to pull really hard on my shoulders. Then…yes! yes! through the trees…THE LIBRARY.

Remember the scene in “Vacation” with Chevy Chase when they finally get to Wally World and the pretend moose is saying, “We’re sorry, Wally World is closed”. OK. Right in front of the doors to the library was a sign reading:

Library Closed for staff training.

I am not making this up! Life without a car is so damn interesting I can hardly stand it!

There was nothing for it but to trudge back to town. We went a slightly different way looking for a café or something with WiFi but no luck. Our quest now was focused on finding a cheeseburger and a beer. We did that all the way back to our marina at a place next door called Scales. Good food.

On our way back to the boat we thought maybe the harbor master office would have a computer but there really is no office here. I then noticed an unusual looking antenna on the roof of this building that seemed to be aimed generally out toward the boats in the marina. Could it be…

Back at the boat I switched on the computer and, you guessed it, there is WiFi right in the harbor! Apparently the young lady I first encountered either didn’t know her own harbor was hot or thought I meant is there any place ELSE that has WiFi! Oh well, there was our work out for the day.