CHAPTER SIX

THE GUEST PARADE

[Note: This Chapter is presented in more than one post.]

WARM UP ACT

The very first guests of 2016.

My very first guests were a couple of retired teachers from Pennsylvania. With that pedigree, you might well imagine how nice they were; so much so that I took the woman to the shore that night for the sunset and left the man for some alone-time at the Inn. He was quite chatty the next morning at breakfast and then they were off. If they were the standard, this was going to be easy-peasy, but not all that much fun. They were quite nice but only marginally interesting.

Next up was a youthful honeymooning couple from North Carolina who were delightful. I stocked their room with a bottle of local wine in honor of their nuptials. They were interested in the property and its history and wanted to see everything. Co-working entrepreneurs in the field of freelance documentaries, they were very forthcoming about themselves and their budding business. We had a couple of long chats in the house although they stayed in the apartment where they could be totally alone (I assumed, after all they were newlyweds and they turned down my offer to move them into the Inn! But it turns out that on whichever digital reservation site they found us, they thought the ONLY option was the apartments). All was glory.

At least I thought so until they posted a complaint in the Airbnb review section regarding the lack of air conditioning and the spotty WIFI. I had not yet resolved the issue of making the WIFI reach the other building, so that was legit (but would not have been the case had they moved into the Inn, ironically). But the A/C issue was a stunner as this had NEVER come up in our conversation, nor is A/C listed in our property description. This was my first even slightly negative feeling for this Innkeeping business; why weren’t they more forthcoming in person, I wondered.¹

This being only our second review I was shocked when I read it and thought my people fears were coming true; in retrospect, I will freely admit this was a complete overreaction. But it was incongruent because they were so happy at the place, so I did not expect to see anything other than accolades.

The whole premise of the Airbnb/VRBO thing is based upon the reviews, so I was a bit frustrated with her furtive nitpicking. They were only the second guests, so I became warier. But, other than the ax murderer, that trepidation turned out to be wholly unwarranted.

July got off to a relatively slow start, a couple of one-nighters, including the brother of a local who was in town for a big birthday party. The first VRBO rental for the entire house went to the now Halifax-based members of the family of a Judiquer who had passed away sometime back. This was the weekend they chose for the memorial, which included a huge potluck dinner at the Inn. It was a bit rainy, but that did not dampen their enthusiasm and even though it was a solemn occasion, they made the most of it; a few of them even went golfing after practicing their pitching on our expansive lawn, where they also enjoyed playing cornhole and the teens gathered in the night. They later apologized for the noise they made, but I had not noticed. The lawn is a lot of work (for Marie) and is a beautiful thing, so it was so gratifying to have people actually using it.

During this stint, Carole and I spent our first time in the apartments and could see it as a guest would. We were quite pleased with the comfort it offered but annoyed at the total lack of counter space in the kitchen. And now we could tell what we needed to provide for apartment guests that was not already in there (a deep pot was a must and I found some one day while I was killing time in Antigonish at a sort of throwback Five and Dime store; a fun place to poke around, they had everything from underwear to hardware; fashions to fishing gear, toys to small appliances).

It was also our first experience with moving. Even though it was just across the driveway, it was still a hassle. We had to tote and/or stow the comestibles that were for ourselves and coming guests; we had to bring clothing and the phone and just the stuff of life. It was a pain. And when we moved back in Carole undertook packing for a trip back home to the states for appointments and family. She would be gone a month, leaving me once again on my own.

Late that week my guest was an exotic chap: an ex-pat, Brit journalist living and working in Chile for Bloomberg News. Turns out he is also working on his MBA and was in the St. John’s area for a class project. He figured while he was in the general area he would take advantage of the golf scene. Very forthcoming and friendly, he stayed in the apartment but came to the Inn for breakfast his first day. The second day he had an early tee time, so I sent his scone to-go. The day before he took a spare scone and was so grateful because it made the perfect snack after the first nine holes. He also repacked his luggage and left behind a lot of packaging and tags from items he had bought along the way as he was making his way back to Santiago after leaving the golf course. He thought nothing of the long trip and vowed to return one day with his family, he liked it so much.²

THE PRIUS PEOPLE

The L family arrived next with a VRBO arrangement for a week, prompting another move to an apartment. Except for bedtime when I could hear all the L’s yelling goodnight to one another (and to the ubiquitous John Boy) from their separate bedrooms (the daughter was over the moon that she had her own bathroom; for a change, she did not have to share with her younger, developmentally disabled brother), for the first time in over a month I began to feel isolated. Carole was gone. I still had no reliable WIFI over there. That prompted my first Amazon purchase: a router extender and a couple of strings of solar lights to decorate the bridge.

The Airbnb guests that arrived were defaulted to Apartment 3 due to the VRBO displacement. This arrangement did present logistical issues with how to serve breakfast; I sure did not want to intrude and bring them breakfast in bed (creepy), so I decided to host them in my unit, Apartment 1, on the ground floor directly below theirs for morning repast.

Both groups who experienced this configuration coincidentally drove a red Prius. The first couple-- dating 60-something, Jewish Bostonians (thank goodness, they did not keep kosher) -- were with me for three mornings. These words spilled out of the man’s mouth as he sprang from the car, arms waving:

“I don’t get this place-the map says Judique but there is no town!”

I assured him that if he remained patient he would come to see what made “this place” so special. He was lactose intolerant (I served no dairy other than optional yogurt) and not that into breakfast anyway (despite inquiring in advance about some of the details); she was bowled over by the scones and the muesli and the yogurt-filled oat cups topped with local strawberries.

The three of us had wonderful talks over breakfast. They were very interested in the property and walked every inch of the grounds and the gardens, their eyes a-twinkle.

A retired geriatric nurse, he spends most summers in Israel with his daughter. She was a democratic organizer. They were just on a lark on this vacation, with no real plan. I gave them some tips on what to explore. When they returned that first evening, the scene repeated: he parked the Prius and leapt out while talking. This time he spewed:

“I owe you an apology”

as she stood behind his back, waving her arms in an expression of her silent, but excited affirmation, that indeed he did need to apologize. It seems that it only took him one day to “get this place” and he could not stop raving about the beaches, the scenery and most of all the people who were so kind and welcoming and musical and “honorable in their humility.”

My only regret with these two was not getting them into the log house for a peek; each day they were out the door long before the L family, so the opportunity did not present. They left a nice $7C tip for the “person who cleans the room” and were the only people to do so.

No sooner were they gone, when up drives a red Prius that contained a threesome from Columbus, Ohio: Mom, a college music professor; Dad, a nascent “inventor” whose sole gadget “The Box” was some kind of trailer contraption that he could not sell and who reminded me of the Michael Keaton character in Mr. Mom, and their very talented, if a bit indulged daughter who was traveling with four instruments, including the fiddle which, at 15 years of age she had already played in such far flung spots as Ireland.

They were on a music tour and looking at potential college opportunities in the heart of Celtic music country as this was the genre to which the youngster aspired. Apparently on a budget, this group squeezed every last bit of value out of their stay while feigning the desire to help me defray the costs; they asked to plug in the electric car to the apartment building’s exterior outlet and to use the washer and dryer, took the uneaten scones “to go” and then tried to whittle down the rent amount with a strange combination of Canadian and American cash. But it was all good because I got a concert from the girl in the comfort of my own kitchen—a real Ceilidh (Gaelic for kitchen party); that was the one and only time I had that pleasure at home.

To be continued….

1. A/C was only an issue one other time. Mind you, this is a place where the temp rarely breaks 75 degrees F and when it does, look out because EVERYONE is cranky-which I found amusing, being from the desert Southwest. One time, a local fellow that Carole knows well popped in to inquire on behalf of his nephew in Detroit who was planning a trip to visit his aunt for possibly the final time. In classic CB fashion, this nephew’s nickname is “Spoonie”! Soon the Spoon was on the phone inquiring about the details of our accommodations, confessing that his brother-in-law, who would be in tow, demanded to stay only in places with A/C. I explained in several conversations that we did have ceiling fans and that the weather really did not call for A/C. In my own mind I could not imagine opting for fake air when the nightly ocean breezes were more than adequate for comfort, though I get some people need the white noise. Yet, even though Spoonie had the uncle connection AND knows my brother-in-law in the Detroit area, they stayed in some undisclosed, climate-controlled location. However, they did drop in, not once but twice, to visit and then take photos and swore that if and when they came back they would make the A/C exception for our exceptional spot. Spoonie was a sort of jokester and a good sport when I teased him about his name making him appealing to women.

2. On one trip my husband, with my brother, drove from Cape Breton to Phoenix; we observed that they nearly went the full diagonal of the North American continent. This guy topped that trip, skipping right over the USA, heading directly to an entirely separate continent, doing a total diagonal of almost the entire Western Hemisphere.