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Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 - 5:39 p.m.

Star gazing

I suppose I wished for it. I might've even asked for it. Then I get it, and it's not as exciting as I'd thought it might be.

When I was fact-checking at the magazine, I'd read stories and reports filed by other reporters who got to travel to (sometimes) exciting places and do exciting work in order to get their stories. In many cases, they'd spend several days somewhere gathering information that ended up as part of a photo-heavy two-page article. How hard could that be, to do enough reporting and hunting around to dig up enough information about someone for such a short article?

It can be grueling, I can tell you now.

Last Friday, about 5:30 p.m., one of my news editors comes up to me and, excitedly, says, "Great news, Dan! Looks like you'll get to go away for the weekend!"

I should've been thrilled. I had no plans for the weekend, and it was to Cape Cod, a great place to spend a summer weekend and an area with which I'm familiar, having spent 20 or so Memorial Day weekends up there. But this happened to come on the exact weekend where I needed two days of nothing. I needed to veg out, to watch movies and play games on the computer and Xbox. I needed to sleep in and drink leisurely in my own home.

Instead, I was sent to the cape to track a rumor that Hollywood's biggest star couple, Bred and Jan, were on vacation there. (You know who they are. I just don't want to have any ramifications for talking about work like this, so I've simply switched the vowels in their names.) I also wasn't that pumped about it because I was skeptical. It just didn't seem right. I don't see East Orleans, Mass., as being their ideal vacation spot over their anniversary.

I was right. I spent two full days and the bulk of Monday trudging through the sand of the Cape Cod National Seashore asking people if they'd seen the stars, who were rumored to have rented a place up on the bluff that overlooked the ocean. Of all the beachgoers, bartenders, waitresses, real estate agents, ice cream scoopers and random other Cape denizens I asked, almost all had heard the rumors but couldn't tell me anything more than that initial report that had sent me up there. It seems everyone either read the Herald or had heard the chatter from someone who had. That's the only place these rumblings were ever published. I even talked with the columnist who had inserted that particular "We Hear..." item in the column and she hadn't found out anything more.

But no one had ever seen them. I got one report about Bred being in a deli, but I went and asked there, and it was news to them. That just doesn't happen. When someone of that star caliber walks into a small-town business, everyone knows about it. Within hours, usually. And those who work there but weren't in at the time are jealous of their co-workers who were forever after that. I know, because I was in the newspaper office the night another reporter was at a minor-league baseball game that Bruce Springsteen attended.

It was nice to be on the Cape for a summer weekend, though. On Friday evening, I frantically called hotels up there looking for an opening for the weekend. I found one 12 miles away from where I needed to be, but it was close enough -- and the first of the six places I'd called that had a vacancy. So I stayed at a resort for more than $200 a night on the beach. Unfortunately, I didn't see the pool or the private beach, feel the water or discover the tiki bar on the deck until an hour before I left on Monday afternoon. I took a 10-minute dip into the pool just to relax a bit before getting back on the road, but couldn't enjoy it too much because of all the kids splashing around. On the way off the Cape, I did make sure to stop by Four Seas Ice Cream for a cup of chip chocolate and that may have been the best, most serene 15 minutes of the entire weekend.

I longed to stop by a Cape Cod Baseball League game, but by the time Orleans' 7 p.m. first pitch came around on Saturday, I was exhausted and headed back to my hotel. The Dennis-Yarmouth team played mere minutes from where I stayed, but their 4:30 p.m. game on Sunday didn't fit with my schedule. By gametime Monday, I was in Connecticut. During a terribly slow early afternoon on Monday, while I waited to hear back from my editor to tell him that I'd found very little and could I please get on the road back home again, I drove by the Orleans field and saw four guys out there taking some extra batting practice. I pulled into the parking lot of the school atop the hill overlooking the field and watched from the cool shade of a tree while they took their hacks in the brutal sun and humid air of the lower Cape.

After that weekend, I was given Tuesday off and took the day to care for my car, which, after 80,000 miles of ownership in four years, needed new struts so that it didn't feel like I was in a wooden roller coaster every time I went over a small bump. I spent four hours at Sears in Hackensack but was buoyed by the pleasant surprise that struts were on sale this week and that I found a bigger tent than my current one for a mere $40. When I realized later that afternoon that the receipt said it was $20, it was too late to do anything. Probably.

Now it's been a decent two days at work and in about 30 minutes, I'm off for 10 days. Tomorrow, I meet Bryan in Braintree and then continue on up to Millinocket, Maine, for a day of rafting on the Penobscot on Saturday. Sunday we'll break camp and I'll lose Bryan and the others around Augusta as I go visit my cousins and family for about 24 hours. Monday night I'll be back home for a week of hanging out, playing some basketball, watching the Mets at Shea and welcoming friends from Seattle in advance of a wedding next weekend.

Perhaps last weekend's hectic visit to the Cape was the perfect juxtaposition for this weekend. I need something serene and simple like two nights in a tent in the Maine woods. I'm eager for clear, moonless nights and a blanket of stars above my head. For years I've wanted to set my camera on a tripod and open the shutter for half an hour or so and try to get a picture of star trails -- streaks of light in an arc, the result of a motionless camera set on a rotating world. Hopefully I'll have three chances beginning tomorrow night. We're also approaching the peak of the best meteor shower of the year, the Perseids, which should climax on the 13th, again in a moonless sky.

And so I'm off, heading north into the cool night. I'll be the one looking up.

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