A Wicked Good Time: Part I

Pictures from my trip to Boston are finally up here! Here's Part I of the journey (Part II tomorrow):

Friday
Arrived at Chicago Midway around 4ish to beg for an earlier flight...which we received only to have it be delayed out of Minneapolis/St. Paul (my hometown) of all places! It is common knowledge that on a good day I'm a nervous flier, and I was not looking forward to the 2-hour purgatory sans ground to Logan. Bosco stepped up and kept me distracted and remarkably calm though, and as a bonus we can both recite the entire contents of the AirMall magazine! (It fascinates me that only when airborne it would occur to a person "HEY, there's that weed thrasher I've been meaning to get!")

Our arrival was once again delayed courtesy of the airport shuttle to the T, which runs with the frequency of tree sap. Upon embarking on the Blue Line T to the city, it was discovered by my rattled nerves that THIS particular train had an alert signal that strongly resembled an air raid siren. It's un-mellifluous *WWHHHAAAAAA* sent my teeth jittering every stop all the way into the city. The first "real" bit of Boston I saw was the steaming kettle on Court St. Thankfully, my beloved has endless patience and was a good sport while I stood slack jawed in front of said spectacle while pointing and jumping "IT STEAMS!!!" We then quickly dumped baggage at the Parker House, and went looking for dinner. (It was a nice place, though not as impressive as one would think for having hosted The Saturday Club and employing Malcolm X.)

Saturday
An early wakup call awoke us for a journey down to the workout room to accrue some mileage on the exercise-bikes (it's too close to the MS 150 ride to skip even a weekend of training!) We then ventured out to scavenge for breakfast, which was found at Finagle-a-bagle. This is the funniest, most ultra-violent bagel shop on earth...when you place you order, they send your bagel on a conveyor belt, which goes through a spinning 12-inch discus of doom to be sliced in half. Finally, cartoon violence has a place in real life!

The walking tour began and we whipped through downtown, up to Fenway for lunch at the Boston Beer Works and then on to Harvard. We were tempted to swipe some juice from the Physics Club Open House, but decided to obey the law and make goofy faces in front of the giant magnifying glass instead. A quick train ride back to Faneuil Hall then produced some tourist watching and a trip to the wicked cool toy store, Zoinks! (It was absolutely wicked cool and featured a life size Boba Fett!)

At this point exhaustion began to creep in, and it was decided to return to get our bags and take a nap in the Common before meeting "The Sister." The now 'blog-famous' Fried Dough stand was found and documented, as was a nice green space with squirrels to snooze. The travels the continued with a trip up to Brockton for dinner. "The Sister" was there waiting to pick us up and greeted me with "Ya Haat Him an' Ah'll Kill Ya....Hi, I'm J." Introductions over, we then continued to dinner at Christos, the local Greek restaurant.

A low-key Saturday night was spent in Taunton, Mass. with some friends and I was thrilled to just sit and ventilate for awhile.
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Part II: Revenge of Sunday/Monday tomorrow!