Four in and ten out. That’s what checkout has become.
I want to say for the record that the Key West Cottages on Chincoteague Island are fantastic. The staff is friendly, the units are clean and well designed, and the girl who re-energized my key card after the timer kicked in at 10 a.m. and locked me out of my own room was gracious about the whole thing. We had a nice conversation about the ponies and the ducks. These are good people. The check-in and checkout times are a national hospitality problem, not a Chincoteague problem. I stand by my gripe and withdraw none of it from the industry at large.
I put the luggage in the car and hit the road. Best place I stayed on this trip, and probably the cheapest.
The Take Ownership Note
Driving the long causeway off Chincoteague, past the Wallops Flight Facility with its signs for rocket launches and its closed visitor center, I read an email from Michael DiMatteo at the Art of Documentary group I belong to. I’d been talking to Frank the night before about the last few episodes and how I felt like I was spinning my wheels a little — not enough footage, not enough story, not enough whatever. Then I read this:
I don’t want to have a year of excuses. If I don’t have a script, it doesn’t mean I wait. It means I write it. If I don’t have the job I want, it doesn’t mean I complain. It means I reach out. If I don’t feel ready, it doesn’t mean I pause. It means I move forward imperfectly.
I read it twice on the causeway. Then I kept driving.
The Drive Through Virginia
The plan was Williamsburg, Yorktown, Cape Charles, Hampton, Fredericksburg, and then Alexandria. The reality was a scenic drive through a part of Virginia I’d never spent much time in, with stops that happened organically and a longer stretch on the road than expected.
I did some drone flights where the airspace allowed. I found a stretch of water and marshland that rewarded the effort. Mostly I drove and thought, which is its own kind of useful on these trips.
Virginia is a state I’ve been through many times for work — events in DC and the surrounding area, corporate gigs at Chantilly, a couple of presidential dinner events, the inaugural once. I know the area from the loading dock, so to speak, from the back of the room while an event is happening. Driving through it as a traveler with time to look up is a different experience.
Howard
Pulling into Alexandria, I found myself thinking about Howard Specter.
He was a client for years, but he became more than that. One of those people who shows up in your professional life and teaches you things about what you’re capable of that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise. He passed away a few years ago. I was in the area where he’d lived and worked, passing places we’d worked together, and he was just there in my head the way people are when you’re somewhere that was theirs.
I made a short video about him during my Washington DC cherry blossom series on YouTube. I’ll link it below. There’s not much more to say than what I said then. He was one of the good ones.
Alexandria and the Hotel Room
The hotel in Alexandria was closer to Reagan National than I expected, which is the correct kind of surprise. The room had a light fixture that I spent a meaningful amount of time trying to figure out before accepting it as purely decorative. I spilled water into the coffee machine. I ate the overpriced dark chocolate almonds. The lighting details in the closet were genuinely well considered, and I say that as someone who has spent forty years designing exactly this kind of thing.
Flight at ten in the morning. Season six, done.
Home
Penny had opinions about the duration of my absence. She expressed them in the customary way — close inspection of the shoes, an evaluation of the luggage, a brief interrogation delivered in short bursts while I stood in the doorway feeling genuinely glad to be home.
She’d been fine. The sitter had been excellent. The whole operation worked.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania are next. That’ll close out season six.
