Aug
4
Walking Boston – Max’s Version
by Maxim in
It’s odd to get onto a vehicle in Seattle, take about an hour and a half nap, and wake up a few minutes outside of San Francisco. It’s a hard fact to admit but its true, an hour of flying equals a month of cycling.
San Francisco is where we connected to our flight to Boston. We arrived on the East Coast the night of August 1st and loaded all our belongings (refer the August 2nd blog post for photo) into a van cab. The air here really is swimmable and we “ain’t felt nothin’ yet.”
Caitlin, my cousin, is subletting a room in Back Bay, a neighborhood west of downtown. Her apartment is on the sixth floor. The elevator holds about one and a half persons and moving at just under a floor every ten seconds, it took a while to hoist all our items to the top floor. We met the roommates and welcoming they were to us complete strangers. We were introduced to “Butters the feline”. His name is very fitting due to his excess weight. After a brief chat we all retired to our separate quarters. Emily and I, still used to Pacific Time, managed to fall asleep near four a.m.
We awoke on Sunday afternoon at 1. A feat caused by a mixture of exhaustion, the rotation of the Earth and laziness. We took a walk through the local “pahk” keeping our ears perked for the accent. The roomies were having a Sunday BBQ to celebrate an engagement of a friend and we met some locals. It was a great crew and we chatted over turkey burgers and miller light.
Monday, we spent the morning emailing and planning more of our trip. I am very excited about our route change. It is quite major, but it will better our mission. We are continuing as planned to D.C. but instead of heading west, we are maintaining our course south. We are sticking to the East Coast until Northern Florida where we will turn west for Austin. It shortens the length of the tour by nearly seven hundred miles, which means we will be home for Thanksgiving. I put our bikes back together and they seemed to suffer nearly no damage during the flight. We will know for sure during our maiden voyage to Cape Cod.
In the afternoon, we decided to walk across the city. We strolled through the Public Garden into the Boston Common, a “pahk” dating back to the 1630s. The latter is where our feet stepped upon “The Freedom Trail”. This trail, made up of two rows of bricks and red paint, leads patriotic tourists to all the points of interest that highlight our nations revolt against the tyranny of Great Britain. There is tons of great information, historic sites and nostalgic fantasies that bedazzle the mind, but we chose to step upon “The Freedom Trail” because, staying true to its name, it was free.
Me in front the Massachusetts State House on "The Freedom Trail".
We finished the walk through the North End, which is traditionally an Italian-American neighborhood. I bedazzled my own mind with the romanticized life of Mobsters. The air was still warm and moist as the night took its course. Boston accents thickened by olive oil echoed through the streets. Sweet Virginia tobacco filled the air. Old Brick walls radiated heat from the vanished sun. A city nearly four hundred years old is still very alive today.
On our way home we were pulled into a pub by a comedian who offered us a beer if we would watch his show. To continue with the theme of freedom we agreed to a free beer and watched his act. His name was Tom Dustin. He had some good lines and put on a show. After his bit we talked with him and another comedian about our project. They were both very engaged and Tom proclaimed his biggest fear was to get Alzheimer’s. They were great guys. Thanks for the laughs.
Tuesday, we woke up much earlier than the previous day and had a wonderful breakfast at a local Café. We hurried back to the apartment to coordinate and plan. I spent time honing our route, connecting with the Alzheimer’s Association in NYC, who is very active within the local community, and organizing. We waited for my cousin to stop by to grab some of her things. She is being so kind by letting us stay here until we leave. After we went our separate ways, Em and I walked across the Charles River to MIT’s campus. It is extremely grandiose. Carved high above columns 20 feet in diameter were the names Newton and Kepler. I found out MIT students still act like other college students. They juggle in the courtyard, break dance in the hallways and carry left over pizza from the last night’s mixer to their friends dorm room to watch a movie. Instead of a drawing of genitals on top of the pizza box though, you may see F = (x^2 + y’^2)^1/2.