Clever Name TBD

This past weekend I went back to Cambridge for my 10-year M.I.T. class reunion. Kristen met me at Logan and we had a great time.

One of the things once does on reunions is all those touristy things people that live somewhere never get around to doing: we went to the Boston Pops and took a Boston Duck Tour. The Pops were cool until they broke out into Billy Joel, which is a bit lacking in the interesting department, at least without lyrics. That said, having never been, it was good to go. The Duck Tours are entertaining, even though they keep asking everyone to quack at passersby.

Benana provide the best hospitality in the Greater Boston Area.

Boston is an amazing town. My friend Rodney took us for a marvelous lunch at a Spanish restaurant on Newbury Street called Tapeo, then Ben and Ana joined us for an extensive walking tour of Boston, which is nearing completion of the largest public works project in history, specifically an 8-lane freeway that goes under the city, built through landfill with skyscrapers overhead.

The Big Dig is a phenomenal project that, among other things, got rid of a nasty eyesore of an elevated freeway. When you walk past Quincy market, you longer see a green monstrosity; instead: sky. And two blocks past that, Boston Harbor, which I'd never walked to before. The entire waterfront is being revitalized, with parks, a new massive federal court building, hotels, and so on. A metropolis older than the union of several states that ran out of real estate a long time ago has a whole new district. It's mind boggling, and it's not the first time Boston has seen such change (eg. the Back Bay used to be… well, a bay).

Kristen and I finished the day with a trip to Finale for Molten Chocolate and a Flight of Five Ports, which is simply a sublime way to end the day.

The one negative to the trip was travel. Air travel is rarely pleasant, but American Airlines managed to disappoint on a grand scale on all four legs of my trip. I connected through Dallas in both directions. Leaving San Jose, the flight was delayed because the plane didn't arrive from it's last trip on time. Leaving Dallas, we had to wait for an hour and a half in a warm airplane because the flight crew didn't arrive from their last trip on time. Leaving Boston, the flight was delayed because the flight crew was again absent. And finally, leaving Dallas, we had a delay in boarding because the cleaning crew needed more time and then we had to wait in a hot airplane for half an hour while they replaced a part for the air conditioning system, then for another two hours in a warm airplane to wait for the weather that developed while we were waiting for the A/C to get fixed. Does air travel really have to suck that much? Never mind the joy that is buying tickets in the first place.