Newport, ho!

Our first day in town was a blast. We parked and rode our bikes all over the place – the bike shop, the co-op, the beach, the pub, the coffee shop, and then finished up by looking at the most adorable apartment I've seen in a while.

The bike shop isn't hiring, but they do group rides – mountain bikes Wednesdays and road bikes Saturdays – and we'll probably be buying bike parts eventually. The coffee shop isn't hiring, it's pretty much a one-guy operation, but way cheap and the dude who runs it is hilarious, so we'll be back. (He is the first person to inform us that if you wear a Hawaiian shirt to the pub on Tuesdays, you get free beer. Two other people mentioned it as well.)

I still need to talk to the co-op lady, but the co-op reminds me of The Marketplace when it was in its old building. Grind you own peanut butter, plywood shelves, local milk in returnable bottles. I also need to get an application for the pub, but the minute we walked in they started plying us with samples, so even though I only purchased one beer, I was three sheets to the wind my the time our food arrived.

The agreement I'd reached with the vacation rental lady was that she'd provide a week – a bedroom in either one of her multi-bedoom houses. The first house she had us in was okay, not posh or anything, and the house was full of annoying people - but the second house she triend to move us to was AWFUL. Uncovered lighting fixtures, no furniture, smelly. I mean, we're not picky, but the was going to be an uncomfortable place to sleep. We moved to the lovely Summerwind Budget Hotel, and I think we'll stay here for the week. The lady wasn't going to give me a refund, but I called in the cavalry (Mom), and she very cleverly negotiated me my money back.

We spent a lot of time yesterday looking at apartments only to be told that if we we're unemployed they wouldn't even process out applications. !!! Bummed out, we went to dinner with someone we met from Couchsurfing, and he introduced us to the owners of the restaurant who may have a position for at least one of us. And if they don't, I'm sure they will be good word of mouth-ers. So even though we've had some sucky stuff, we are greatly bouyed.

We rode bikes on the beach this morning, then collected applications from places that are open on Saturdays and are currently filling them out. We'll go meet the restaurant people at 4:00.

Thank you to everybody who is helping us finance this expedition – The other day as we were driving around, I got all teary-eyed I was so happy.

Love and Bunnies, All -

Alyssa