Thursday, August 23, 2012

My Story Part 131 – Staycation

Ebenezer Avery House - Fort Griswold
Fort Griswold - Water Battery
Last Wednesday, two friends and I went down to Mystic Aquarium for the day. I took the library’s aquarium pass out for the day and we all piled into my car and headed down to the shore. Unfortunately, when we got there, there were about a hundred people in line and we decided not to fight the crowd. So we went next door to “Ole Mystic Village” and wandered around the stores looking at the high priced tourist merchandise. We quickly got bored with that and I suggested going over to Fort Griswold state park in Groton. Afterward we went over to Niantic for a late lunch and a little place called “The Dock.” It was what you would call a “clam shack.” It was a little shack about 20 feet by 15 feet with a tent covered eating area overlooking the harbor.

One of my friends has just transitioned and this was the first time she had been out someplace besides shopping and dining out. When I was first going out I use to just limit my trips to LGBT friendly places, we used the phrase “Trannytized” meaning other trans-people had going there before and it was a safe place to visit. The support group actually had a list of places on our website of trans-friendly places, but we dropped the list when someone visited one of the places and got harassed and they blamed us for listing the place, so we took the list down.

Before I transitioned I didn’t like to go into places that I hadn’t gone to before and after I transitioned that didn’t change. I use to joke that I had a pick-up truck rule; the more pick-up trucks parked at a bar the less likely I would go in and a gun rack in the back window counted as three pick-up trucks (I know, there are a lot of people out there who are open minded out there and own pick-up trucks. But there are a lot of pick-up truck owners who are conservative.).

Overtime I started to realize that almost everywhere was safe and I started to go to museums and other public places. One of the first places that I went was to visit the Mystic Aquarium in 2007. Another touristy place that I visited was the mansions in Newport RI in 2008. Then last year I went to Old Sturbridge Village

On my list of Staycations that I want to visit are the Essex Steam Train and the Mystic Seaport. Also the Naugatuck Railroad fall foliage trip and a tour of the Connecticut wineries.

2 comments:

  1. Have you ever been to the antique radio museum in the Windsor area?

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, but I have been to the ARRL museum a long, long time ago.

    Have you been there, how was it?

    ReplyDelete