Kicking It in Newport

Our plans were to arrive in Newport, Rhode Island—the home of not only the International Tennis Hall of Fame, but also G—in time for a dinner gathering with our New England relatives and our new England relatives. Martin, the gentleman to the left of his lovely wife who’s at the far left of the picture above, is the long-lost British cousin of my mother-in-law.

I can’t begin to calculate and report the low probability of this group getting together for dinner and this picture: it takes parties that didn’t know of each other’s existence a mere five years ago, one of which happens to routinely take holiday near where the other lives (even though the two parties are separated by an ocean), and us with our decision to go through with the crazy idea of taking our kids on a 20-hour-plus road trip to see their grandmother and great-grandparents at a time when the aforementioned party from across the pond happened to be back, to converge on an area of the country that had been threatened to be decimated by Hurricane Irene just the week before. Plus, we had to convince a wound-up Reed to put away his beloved soccer ball before dinner so that we could get to the restaurant on time.

And somehow it all came together splendidly, much like the fusion food items of the Salvation Restaurant + Bar.