One of the things about going on a nice vacation in the spring, at least if you live in a place like Oregon, is the evidently unlearnable weather change. You have just lived through the worst of the yearly Great Darkness of the Pacific NorthWest. It has rainy and or snowy and cold for months. You have been working on your wool under layer collection and hoping that those tulips bloom before they freeze. Now it is time to pack to go off to Hawaii, or the Ecuador, or the Azores, or some other seemingly imaginary place where the temperature is 'over 50’. How do you pack?
I just cannot get into my head the expectation of being too hot and not being able to cool off. I am too much in the mode of being too cold and not being able to get warm. I know I should pack more T-shirts and fewer fleeces, but it just seems So Wrong. I have to work at it. Put that shirt back in the drawer. Put that fleece back in the closet. Ok, that fleece too. Pull out a few more T-shirts. Remember that the cotton T-shirts are actually better than the Tech T-shirts when you are really hot. What of your long sleeve summer shirts were best to wear when the sun was blazing down on you and your needed to both be cooler and not get your lily white hide sunburned? Oh…. And sunscreen.
I just don’t know if I did all the right things or not. I already feel that I don’t have enough cotton T’s. Or Wool Sweaters. It didn’t help that we spent a couple of days in Boston before we hop on a plane to The Azores.
Oh. Boston. Let me go there for a minute. I haven’t been back to Boston in a few decades. I spent a few years back there around 1980 going to MIT. Thought I would take my wife and walk around some of the old stomping grounds. That turned out not to be as easy as I thought. It was also a little surreal. Everyone walking around Boston looked very fit and they were all wearing the same jacket. Many of them also were wearing medals around their necks. Turns out we turned up there the day after the Boston Marathon and all of the runners were out doing the tourist thing. They really were everywhere. Even at our hotel. Paige complained that these health nuts ate all of the yogurt and fruit. Plenty of bad bacon left over.
We got across the river to Cambridge, where lies MIT and I was hit by a mutual feelings of “Everything is the same” and “Everything has changed”. The big old buildings were still there, but all of the doors were either locked or required digital keys (which I may have had one, not sure). Lots of people in the infinite corridor, most of them young women. That was unusual but not un-expected. Certainly different from the 80s when it was 7 to 1 men at the ‘tute’ (Now it is over 50% female). And everything I wanted to actually get to was closed off to me. The student center was closed and under construction. The Pool and SCUBA locker and the way I remembered getting to my old lab had a new strange building in the way (The Strata center). New buildings everywhere. MIT is really expanding.
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| This is 26-100 Had a lot of lectures here. They still use Blackboards! |
Then there was this large art installation at the street crossing I used to use to get to my lab. There was a Campus patrolman there with his car and sort of keeping guard. There were also a number flowers set on the art. Then I realized what this must be, this was the memorial to the MIT campus police officer that was killed by the Boston Marathon Bombers 10 years ago on this date. That was sobering.
The little restaurant we grad students used to go to for lunch was still there. But Legal Seafood is now a big expensive deal, not for starving grad students. And the 2 dishes that I remember liking, Fish Chowder and Bluefish, were no longer available. Dammit. The Boston Mass subway (The T) is still the same, once you get past the ticket gates. You can’t just use a Quarter as a token anymore. You need an electric pass card or paper ticket with reader strip. It also cost 8 times as much for a ride. But Boston is still a pretty town with lots of fun history and architecture to see. We had a wonderful long walk and the weather was nice for an early spring day.
Today we are going to go back and see the Aquarium. Then, tonight, we jump on a plane to the Azores. We did a little side trip. We navigated the Boston Metro (with our Charlie Pass) to get to Chinatown. So I think I know what people smoking crack look like now. Perhaps China town was a bit underwhelming. Though it did have some very nice looking bakeries. We ended up walking back toward our appointment at the Aquarium. Boston sure has a lot of interesting architecture, both old and new. The old tends to be large stone structures that are made to fit into strange property shapes. Lots of curved buildings. The new buildings are tall and gorgeous. Great use of glass and aluminum.
Then there is the New England Aquarium. It turns out that me and the Aquarium go way back. In 1982 or so, I was the President of the MIT Scuba Club. As such, I was contacted when another local club (perhaps BC) wanted to make an attempt at the Guinness Book of World Records Longest Underwater Monopoly Game. I signed up with a number of other MIT people and lots of divers for other universities around the area. The attempt was more of a logistics feat than anything else. Needed to get a LOT of divers into the water staged in half hour increments. You would be teamed with your buddy and you would go down for an hour replacing two other divers already playing. So 2 new people would show up every thirty minutes but the game play would be continuous. And this entire event was to take place in (wait for it), the New England Aquarium Central Tank. This is a huge 30 foot deep round tank with lots of fish and turtles and eels and such. The event was set up to occupy an entire long weekend and we would only be diving during regular open hours for the Aquarium (I guess Guinness was OK with that). When it was my allotted time (well, one hour before) I lugged my gear into the Aquarium and they brought us in the back and up to the top of the tank. We put our gear on (I put an MIT sweatshirt own over my wet suit) and we put on tanks and some weights (no BC or fins) and sank down to the bottom of the tank. There the 4 of us set about trying to play Monopoly with hand gestures and a waterproof Monopoly game. A few things stand out in my memory:
- Communication is hard. We were lucky to be able to indicate whose turn it was. Landing on someone property was a pain.
- The Dice were like solid steel. They didn’t roll so much. You would go to throw them and they would drop straight to the board with a thunk.
- The giant green Moray liked the hotels. He would come in over your shoulder and take one off the board. That couldn’t have been good for him.
- The Giant Sea turtles have a lot inertia and can’t see well. We had one just come right through the game in slow motion. Just pushed us all out of the way.
- You can see out of the tank as well as the kids outside can see it. And it really surprises them when you turn around and wave at them. (I have a picture someplace….)
This time we were only on the outside of the tanks. This is a really fine aquarium. We had great views of large Sea Dragons (like sea horses, only more so) and a giant Pacific Octopus, that put on a nice show. Plus a lot of fish. The place was really crowded also, it turns out that it is Spring Break in Massachusetts.
One more observation before I get on the plan for Punta Delgada…. I lived in Boston (well, across the river in Cambridge) for like 9 years, and I never really explored the city much. Never went for a real walk around like Paige and I did on this trip. We saw so much today. Things that were very close to places I visited (like Haymarket) but never really walked up to. For instance, whilst looking for the State Street entrance to the blue line, we found the site of the Boston Massacre. And right there is this really cool and very old building. Not sure what it is, but if you go in the door you will find yourself at….. The State Street Blue Line Stop !! Go Figure.
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| Ride the MTA |
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