boston – Page 4

Boston Pre-Game

October 5, 2014 by Taco

[Warning: Lots of pictures in this post]

So, its been awhile since SB and I moved to Boston. As I write this post we’ve been about a month and a week. By the time you read this it will be more in slighty-over-two-month range. The point being, we’ve been here long enough to get past the “settling in” phase and have moved into the “life” phase. With this phase comes work and school. However, before those two things started we spent a lot of time doing fun stuff around Boston. The biggest highlight of this period was undoubtedly our Salem trip (forewarning, if you haven’t read that post yet its really long, but you should read it). Salem wasn’t the only thing we did though. We did exploring from right around out apartment, to some of the further reaches of the Boston area. The idea was simple, does as much as possible before school starts since we knew we would have very little time to do such things once it did. The basic premise of this post is to give you a very abbreviated run down of some of the things that we did. I’m limited by a couple of things. First, is time. As I start to write this its 10:45pm on a Saturday and I’ve already had two beers (Bud Light Lime, so nothing worth mentioning again). Second, is memory. Its been long enough since we’ve done some of these things that I don’t have enough details to make individualized postings. Plus, on top of those two things I don’t think I have the stamina for another Salem-esque post right now. So, keeping that in mind, lets go through a very quick run down of some of the stuff we did for our “Boston Pre-Game.” If you would like more specifics about something I mention, or have questions about something I don’t mention but likely did, drop me a comment below. There are a lot of pictures I’ve left out, primarily for the aforementioned reasons. I’ve also linked articles explaining some of the stuff I talk about in order to prevent me from going off on my typical tangents. You can either click or ignore these, dependent on your level of interest.

Our adventure starts near our apartment, at Harvard Square:

Beyond that road and gate lies one of the best (likely the best) universities in the world. Only smart people can go there, or rich people. I’m not bitter about my rejection though, I’m quite happy at Cleetus’ College of Law and Learnin’. This spot is actually about a 10 minute walk from where we live, so not too bad. Its part of the larger area of Harvard Square, which is one of the more popular squares in Cambridge.

That’s a bookstore near Harvard Square. Its not actually a Harvard bookstore, but boy do they sure push the Harvard theme.

Cambridge is actually known as the “City of Squares” which does not mean its a city full of boring people. There are squares everywhere. From where we live, if you go the other direction from Harvard Square, you get to Inman Square. Inman has a lot of cool little places, such as the Druid. One of the coffee shops (1369) had a board outside with Doge on it, so we had to stop, it was very good.

In addition to our immediate area, we headed out to Chesnut Hill to check out SB’s school, Boston College. I have to say, they have a very impressive campus.

Gasson Hall is sort of their “centerpiece” and it is a very awesome building.

In fact, many people credit Gasson Hall with the revival of Collegiate Gothic style and other universities (such as that TTT Yale) have copied it. Pretty cool. When we first entered, it was pretty epic. There was an ensemble playing music in a nearby room, so we walked into a big fancy hall with powerful classical music playing, it was pretty much straight out of a movie.

We also visited the Boston Commons. Which were actually very pretty for a commons (compared to some, which are just a field).

As you will notice above, they actually have a public area to play in the water. I wouldn’t go quite so far to call it a water park, but it has a fountain and it is totally free. I’m sure its half urine, but that is beside the point. One cool thing is that near the common there is a “Capital One Cafe” which is a PEET’S coffee that Capital One has made behbehs with. We got free fancy coffee drinks because we have Capital One accounts. Score.

Next to the commons are the Public Gardens.

They were freaking gorgeous. For the sake of space I only include one environmental shot here, but they have ponds, swan boats, statues, streams, trees, flowers.. you name it. They were the first public gardens in the Unites States and were obviously modeled after the European Style. They are SERIOUSLY worth visiting, plus they are free. They also include the famous “Make Way For Ducklings” statue.

Its normally crawling with children (and me) so they never actually have to polish it, all the people keep it clean. Love it.

After the parks we started the ole’ Freedom Trail.

If you are too lazy to click the link above, the Freedom Trail is basically a brick trail that runs by a lot of historical stuff in Boston. Its actually really cool.

One of the first stops is the Massachusetts State House (seen in the background above). Its a cool building, and yes, that is actually gold on the dome (which covers copper supplied by none other than Paul Revere). Inside we checked out the House and Senate Chambers, the house is seen below.

Shortly after that we passed through the Granary Burying Ground, seeing the grave of none other than Samuel Adam’s himself.

We also saw the grave of the woman who possible inspired Mother Goose.

Though to be historical, its very unlikely that this was the Mother Goose, as references to her go back to at least 1650. However, its possible that this was a local iteration of Mother Goose.

We also saw the grave of Paul Revere, which was covered in pennies (the exact origins of the practice are unknown, but he was a copper/silver smith, which might at least partially explain it).

Of course I left a penny, for both karmic and respectability reasons.

Another stop along the Freedom Trail was the spot of the Boston Massacre.

There was a couple making out pretty much right on the spot, I mean totally eating each others faces. It was kind of a weird choice of location, but I guess stuff such as the Boston Massacre happened so we would have such freedoms.

As we traversed the trail (which is about 2.5 miles, but you will walk a lot more than that) we were afforded a few nice views of the various Boston skylines (Boston doesn’t seem to have a “single” skyline, it has several).

We passed by Paul Revere’s house, but didn’t go in. It was a very hot day and SB wasn’t really feeling exploring an old house. I wasn’t especially sold it on, so we moved on, but we did check out the outside extensively, and of course by we I mean I.

Speaking of Paul Revere, we also walked by the Old North Church.

This is the famous “One if by land, and two if by sea” lantern church, if you have horribly forgotten your American history.

In addition to all the historical stuff we passed by some modern things, such as TD Garden, home of the Boston Bruins. (Valentino loved this).

One of the highlights of the Freedom Trail is the USS Constitution, or Old Iron Sides, if you prefer that name.

We actually timed our trip so that it was during one of the free days, which meant we got to see both the Constitution and its museum for free. Plus, we later found out that it was going to go in for three years worth of renovations just a week or two after we visited. So yeah, talk about good timing.

This area of the harbor offered up some good views of the city.

Docked adjacent to the constitution was the USS Cassin Young.

The end of the Freedom Trail is at my beloved Bunker Hill.

Why I like Bunker Hill so much is a really silly story involving video games, so I’ll spare you. The monument marks the end of the Freedom Trail.

I should note there that I cut out a lot of the stuff on the Freedom Trail, but that just gives you a reason to go walk it yourself 🙂 .

Another thing we’ve done is visit Pleasure Bay, which despite having a rather risqué name is pretty tame. Its actually just a crescent shaped bay which a couple of really nice beaches.

An interesting thing about Pleasure Bay is that planes fly right over head at they head to the airport. I mean, right overhead.

It’s probably annoying if you live next to the beach, but it was really cool for us visitors.

Out at the mouth of the bay is Fort Independence.

It was free and had a lot of historical value, so I had to check it out. It actually had some pretty nice views from the top.

You couldn’t actually explore the fort on your own, you had to take one of the free tours which was kind of odd. However, since it was free there wasn’t really much to lose so we did.

Back on the Cambridge side of things we explored some of the older areas of town, including Tory Row on Brattle Street, which was where a bunch of supporters of the English Crown lived. The Longfellow House is on this street, for reference.

Near Tory Row is Radcliffe College (now owned by Harvard), which was one of the original Seven Sisters colleges, we went and checked that out too.

A little further away is the “Radcliffe Quad” which was once housing for Radcliffe and is now undergraduate housing for Harvard (part of their House System). We didn’t actually visit the Quad on the same day, but I’m putting it here for topical purposes.

While coming back from Tory Row we ran across a street entertainer, they are slightly classier in this neck of the woods.

And yes, I tipped him, if you were wondering. I figured I probably should since I took his picture.

In this same general region is the Harvard farmer’s market.

That really isn’t the best picture of it, but it was the best I could find without digging. We’ve went there several times, getting everything from vegetables to a maple-bacon donut (yes it was awesome).

Another thing we did was take a morning run along the Charles River Esplanade.

I’m not sure what an esplanade is, but a dictionary tells me it is the same thing as a promenade, or a long open area. Either way, it was beautiful and I am really displeased that it isn’t easily accessible to us (requires taking public transit) and that my legs are in a state of dying.

Speaking of the Charles River, we went kayaking on it, which was bunches of fun. I resisted the urge to tip us over, I think SB would file for divorce.

We also saw the other famous school in Cambridge, MIT.

But more importantly, we saw the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.

I really do think that is the first time in my life that I have seen one.

Speaking of firsts, we also took a ZipCar for the first time ever. Her name was Sharla. She took us to Target to get a mirror.

[Administrative Note: So right after I posted that last image our power went out. It was weird because it was about 12:15am and the storms had passed about 3 hours prior. We have no idea why the power went out. Anyways, the power came on about 1 hour later, so they fixed whatever it was relatively quickly (It was isolated to our building, the buildings around us still had power). By that time I was too tired to continue though. So, between the last sentence and the next one, about 22 hours has passed. Anyways, without further ado:]

Another milestone was visiting the original Samuel Adam’s brewery.

The tour is actually free, they just request you give a donation, which they give to local charities. How cool is that. Almost as cool as seeing the entire mass market Samuel Adam’s lineup.

But not nearly as cool as seeing Samuel Adams being born in the aging barrels.

And undoubtedly not as a cool as getting free Samuel Adams beers, straight from the freakin’ barrel.

Overall the tour was outstanding. I’m not sure it would be worthwhile if 1. You hate beer (or don’t drink) AND 2. You have no interest in learning about beer. Outside of both of those things, there is really no excuse not to go, because its free (excluding the donation, but that is for karma, not entry). A cool thing about the Boston brewery is that it is where they test out experimental batches of beer. So whenever a new flavor goes out to mass market, it was tested and improved at this brewery. That also means you can buy fresh growlers of the experimental batches. I did, but you’ll have to wait for the beer blurb to hear about that one. 🙂

A little closer to home is the Harvard Museum of Natural history. SB and I waited to go until I had my student ID, which allows me and one guest to get in for free. One of the highlights of the museum is is gigantic class flower collection. I’m not botany enthusiast, but it was mind-boggling how intricate and lifelike the flowers were.

The pictures really do not do them justice, it was crazy cool. The museum also houses a wide variety of creatures, including creature bones, such as this humongous Kronosaurus skeleton (Tristen Approved).

The museum was set up in sections that corresponded to different areas of the world, the Asian section had a Siberian Tiger, one of my favorite kinds of naminals. It was dead of course.

They also had a pretty impressive mineral collection, including giant geodes that made me think of Meem.

Then, right before school started my Aunt came to see us and spoiled us rotten. She took us out to eat at places we can’t afford and whisked us around in Taxis. We even got to go on a sunset boat ride down the Charles.

So, all in all, we were definitely busy. Like I said at the start of the post, I left out a lot of the smaller details and heavily truncated those that I kept in. The general idea was a speed run through the month prior to classes started and with that goal in mind I believe this post succeeded. Its interesting that by the time this is posted over another month will have passed, but this is nice summary of our Boston Pre-Game. I hope you enjoyed my fast-paced reminiscing.

Until next time,
-Taco

Moving Voyage: Stage 3 – Carrying Things & Settling

August 14, 2014 by Taco

So this post will wrap up my three part series on the actual process of moving. For context be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 if you have not already done so.

So, when we last left off we were actually at the new Cambridge apartment. Us and all our crap that suddenly seemed to be a lot more crap than necessity when we originally packed it. The good news is that the apartment itself was in good shape. With these really old buildings (and just apartments in general, really) you don’t know what to expect. The last time we had rented an apartment site-unseen, which also happened to be from a university, the initial reaction upon moving in was pretty lukewarm. However, this time around SB and I took to the apartment pretty quickly. We noticed a few minor things, which I have of course since fixed, but other than that, all was well. The only real catch was that it was on the 4th floor of the building. Oh, and yeah, no elevator. But, it gets better still. The staircase is cramped. Don’t believe me? See this photo:

Sure, that might not look bad as an image and from a weird angle. But it is. If you have doubts I will be happy to give you the privilege of carrying a bed up those stairs, or a large television if that is more your fancy. Point is, it was the hardest actual move-in I have ever engaged in. Furthermore, it was very well one of the hardest physical things I have ever done. I’m not an Olympian, but I do exercise regularly in various forms from the Gym to stuff like Insanity. So, while I can’t life semi-trucks, I’m not in bad shape. That considered, this was still hard as heck. The good news is that I wasn’t doing it alone, SB was helping as well. The bad news is that I had to do most of the heavy stuff, simply because of physics. Of course there were a few items that required two people, such as our box-springs, mattress, TV, coffee table, etc. Now, I will say, at two different points people in our building helped us move an object. One was for the coffee table, the other was for one of the (still in box) pieces of Sauder furniture. So that was definitely nice, even if it was only a drop in the whole bucket of things that had to be carried upstairs, it was nice.

Out of everything in the truck, it is hard to say what was the worst. We had built the bed up to be terrible and saved it for last, and while it was indeed bad, I don’t know if it was the worst. Honestly some of the smaller stuff like the Sauder furniture hit us the hardest, simply because we didn’t have breaks and were wearing down. We were lucky that there was no rain and the temperature/humidity weren’t horrible, but that old stairwell got stuffy really fast. To get from ground level to our apartment is 53 steps. We likely went up the stairs in the range of 45-55 times (each) and so if you count the down, were tackled somewhere in the range of 2,385 – 2,915 stairs, 50% of which was traversed while carrying anywhere from 15 to 115 pounds. Needless to say, this got old really fast, but we managed.

Around this same time, the scheduled people started to show up. Comcast was first, and of course the technician tried to install stuff we explicitly had said we didn’t need (this after our bill was wrong). That was rectified relatively easily though. Next up the air conditioner guys came and boy they were streamlined, they had both A/Cs installed and were gone within 5-8 minutes would be my guess. This compared to the last people who installed our window units which took at least 30 minutes if not longer to do. But everyone came and we got everything into the apartment in time. We were on a schedule because our parking permit for Lily was only good until 4pm, then suddenly our box truck became illegally parked on a permit only street. So, with scarcely a break from carrying stuff, we were off to Medford to return Lillian. In theory this should have been less bad than the drive into Boston, but we managed to hit things right around rush hour.

Much like during the morning commute, I figured out that I would just have to smoosh people to get where I needed to go, because they weren’t going to play nice. As usual, the GPS made things more complicated than they needed to be and there were a few traffic choke-points that were just ridiculous. But, once again, we did it. We stopped just down the street from the Penske house to refill Lilly and got some snacks. Penske is kind enough to charge you 10$ per gallon if you don’t leave the truck with as much gas as it had when you picked it up, which was full for us. We parted ways with Lillian, which was oddly a little sad, considering what we had been through, then took off back home. Naturally this immediately resulted in us waiting, and waiting, and waiting (in the direct sun) for a bus. However there was a Budweiser plant right across the street from us, but no public access, so it was more cruel than cool. Eventually the bus came and we took that to a train, to another bus, to home. We slept very well that night, very well indeed.

Since then, things have slowly tapered off. It took us around 10 solid days to really get the apartment to a near final stage. Right now about the only thing not finished is my desk. Technically the desk is finished, but UPS was nice and smashed one corner of my desk, so I’m waiting on that to arrive and then I get to partially rebuild my desk. As far as clutter goes, we’re pretty good. We sold a few excess things (and even a Shiatsu massaging cushion someone had left in our storage unit) and have everything stored in the basement now. Which was a battle of Tetris-like proportions to say the least, its the smallest storage unit we’ve ever had and it is absolutely jam-packed.

So, we’re mostly settled. We didn’t have hot water the first day, or water at all the second day, but that has since been resolved and now we have very good hot water (its like a thing with us, boilers seems to break wherever we move). We’ve also been getting out and about, discovering which stores suck, which stores are good, and have experienced the joy of having someone bring groceries to you. We’ve also seen a lot in the surrounding area, from touristy stuff to townie stuff. I’ll try to write a sort of summary post of these things, but probably nothing overly detailed.

I think I’ll wrap up there, completing the process of moving. There will still be stuff popping up in the blog from before the move, so don’t let that get too confusing. Our three stage process was indeed an adventure, and while there was a lot of stress, its something I’ll look back on fondly in the future. However, next time I’ll pay the damn 500$ to have people carry stuff up the stairs for me.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. I know I was a little light on the pictures this time around, but I was moving boxes. If you want more visual stimulation, then below you will find a picture of a box, enjoy.

Moving Voyage: Stage 2 – Driving & Stopping & Driving More

August 7, 2014 by Taco

For the first part of this three stage process click here.

So, unlike the other posts that are popping up on the blog this one is actually being written in a semi-current fashion. Right now its about 10:30pm and I’ve had a little bit of sake (did not like, beer remains king) so who knows how this will turn out (wurse gramer dan normal i no rite?). By the time its actually posted though it will probably be around 5pm tomorrow since I like posting blogs around 5pm for some odd reason.

Anyways, when we last met in the post linked at the top of this one we had gotten our truck (Lillian) almost entirely packed. Well, we ended up getting everything in there though it was a bit of a last minute rush, which is pretty typical as far as stuff like that goes for us. It didn’t matter in the end since our landlord forgot she had even scheduled an inspection (of course she didn’t say that, but it was pretty obvious, plus she was incompetent and a liar anyways). But we got everything loaded up. For reference, this is what we were working with, the photo was obviously taken prior to filling Lilly up with our life.

There were a couple of things Penske did not tell us about, like the clearance for the door itself and the fuel tank entry being raised above the floor (we did know about the wheel wells). In spite of that my calculations, which were part based on a computer part based on my OCP, worked out nicely. Subsequently we hit the road a little earlier than we intended. It took a bit to get used to driving the truck, but since it was only around 19-20ft in total length it wasn’t a huge issue. The biggest thing was getting used to having such a limited field of vision. The nice thing was that Lilly only had around 10,400 miles when we picked her up. Which ironically meant that a moving truck is now the newest and nicest vehicle that I have ever driven in my life.

After getting used to the bells and whistles of the truck, the tiredness began to set in. SB and I had slept on the floor the previous night and on top of that we had been up late finishing things up, needless to say I was tired going on about 5 hours of floor sleep. Fortunately the day was nice and the traffic wasn’t bad. In fact we didn’t even hit and major traffic (with the minor exception of some crazy a$$ drivers in Ft. Wayne, or possible the poisonous water-starved zombies of Toledo) until Cleveland.

Ok, I know there is pretty much no traffic in that photo, but the traffic came a bit later. After that it was pretty much smooth sailing until our day 1 destination of Eerie, Pennsylvania. Eerie, obviously named after the lake right above it, seemed like a touristy kind of place. Not in the cheesy, Pigeon Forge kind of way, but almost. There were water parks and climbing things, and yadda yadda. We stayed at the Econolodge. Not really because it was in Eerie, PA, but rather because I picked a random spot on Google Maps that looked like a good spot to stop for the first day and Eerie was pretty much that spot. The Econolodge was right off the interstate too, which was even more enticing. No 30 mile journey into the backwoods of Pennsylvania to inevitable Deliverance for us. The hotel was actually fairly nice as far as side of the road Econolodges go, my guess is that this was because of the location.

There was an indoor pool, hot-tub, sauna, complimentary breakfast, Wi-fi and color TV. Of course the pool wasn’t heated, the hot-tub was more of a warm-tub, the sauna was WAY too hot, the Wi-Fi was being broadcast from Nigeria, but at least the color TV worked. It really wasn’t bad though, especially for the price and as tired as I was the back of the truck would have worked. We got some Crackerbarrel, swam a bit, I drank a beer (one of a variety pack of Samuel Adams FIL had bought me) and was out like a light.

The next morning we were up early for a breakfast at the hotel (which was pretty decent really) and on the road. It was raining, but it didn’t last long The 2nd day was around 115 more miles than the first, but we had better sleep and got started earlier. The biggest portion of the 2nd day was actually New York (not city, the state, yes they have a state too). Which meant that we entered Toll-Hell. We had incurred a few minor tolls back in Ohio, where the friendly Midwesterner working the toll only half looked like they wanted to kill you and your family. Once we got deeper into New York the tolls skyrocketed, with one toll being 30$ (of many). The scenery improved in tandem though, so I can’t complain a whole lot. We went through quite a few large gorges and across a lot of really cool looking bridges. SB failed spectacularly to take pictures of several of these things, probably because she was sleeping. But she did get a photo of one of the larger bridges we crossed.

I have no idea what that bridge was called, I was more concerned with passing a semi so we could actually see the valley below us, this may or may not have involved speeding, we’ll go with not. Speaking of not speeding, the truck was holding up very nicely, no problems at all. Penske had slated that we could expect around 10mpg but I was hovering more around 15-16mpg, even with the occasional instances of definitely not speeding, nope. Eventually we came to the outskirts of our new home.

I will give SB credit on this one, she really got her phone out and snapped that picture really quick-like. Tristen and Valentino were also enjoying the scenery that MA had to offer.

Before too long, or rather, in a period of time that felt much shorter than the 3000 miles of toll road in NY we had arrived in the day two destination of Framingham, MA. We stayed in Red Rood Inn here and it was more in line with what one would expect of a roadside hotel than was the Econolodge. It was also in a slightly sketchy area, but it could easily have been one of those parts of town that looked much worse than it actually was. Either way, we had no issues and Lillian was not raided in the middle of the night. We actually got in about 2 hours earlier than I had planned (we were very good about saving time on the road, probably because I was in charge of the itinerary). This was a little odd, since our apartment was technically only about 20 miles away. So we just got a bite to eat, picked up some brochures and had a couple of beers. The only real downside to the hotel since we didn’t get highway-robbed was that it was “Pet Friendly” which translates to your room smelling like old crazy cat lady.

The next morning we walked the 30 seconds to the Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. It was packed, but seriously Dunkin Donuts are EVERYWHERE out here (Probably because they are originally from Quincy). Then we began the final leg of our trip to pick up the keys to our apartment. This actually turned out to be the most harrowing part of the entire trip. It all started with lovely ole’ Google Maps. Sweet, naive, precious i-will-you Google Maps. The trip was supposed to take about 35 minutes, el-oh-el. Maybe at 3am after a nuclear holocaust on a Sunday. The fun started when we had to get on a toll road for all of 2 miles. The interesting thing about Boston is that you pay tolls to get near it, then they let you off those toll roads, just to make you pay a toll again to get into the city. The photo below shows an entry toll booth that is literally 500ft from an exit toll booth.

We were stuck in sardine-like traffic on an overpass at that point, which if nothing else gave us a good picture of the tollbooth below us. After we finally got the tolls settled, I got a Masshole 101 driving lesson which basically translated into “No.” Its important to keep in mind, this was morning rush hour, so people had places to go. Of course so did I, and I also understand the physics of Box Truck + Prius, they did too. Between the traffic, which at time was mere inchs apart (no I am not exaggerating) and the GPS deciding at the last minute that we should have turned on that street we just passed, things were pretty stressful. Matters were made worse by the bicyclists who seemed to live inside of Lilly’s blind spots. SB snapped a photo at one point, this is actually after it had calmed down, for reference.

Long story short, we got to our key pick up. It took a few crazy maneuvers and by the time it was over I feel like I blended well into the psychotic horde, aside from the bright yellow truck of course.

In fact, the most nerve-racking thing turned out not to be the traffic, but hoping we didn’t get stuck in a tunnel. The area has a few tunnels and underpasses that get a bit low. The good news is that they warn you with those hanging “Low Clearance” signs. The bad news is that the signs (at least the one we went under) did not tell you what the clearance was, at all. So we had a brief moment where we curled our toes waiting to see if the sign drug along the top of the truck, but it did not and all was well. I actually later was told that during freshman move in time (September 1st, or “Allston Christmas”) 2-3 moving trucks get stuck in the tunnels each year.

Anyways, the fun thing about the key pickup is that there is no parking for that. Yep, no parking at all to pick up the keys to your home. Fortunately, two things happened. First, we found out that SB could pick up the keys which meant she didn’t need to drive the truck (she had had nightmares about it, can’t say I fault her). Second, I found a moving van location. Now this is the cool thing about the parking wasteland that is Cambridge. For 25$ you can actually reserve a spot on the street for a moving van, and I do mean reserve. They actually come and tie off that part of the street for you and they seem to really be on top of it and furthermore (perhaps more importantly) people actually seem to not park in these areas. Its the best 25$ I have spent in a long time. Anyways, the key pickup is actually at another property owned by the same landlord. Since its moving season, someone else had reserved a spot at that property to move their stuff in (or out). So, while SB was inside I “borrowed” their spot for about 10 minutes. I was hoping they wouldn’t come along and drive right past their spot thinking it was mine, but they didn’t, or if they did they were a FedEx driver going the wrong way down the one-way street, so karma remains neutral.

After getting the keys it was one more crazy drive over to our home, where we found our spot reserved (along with literally 7 other expired reserved signs, as I said, moving season). We got pulled up and prepared for what would be one of those worst things I have ever done in my life, seriously. But we were still blissfully unaware of what was yet to come. About five minutes after us a U-Haul (just a van) pulled up behind us, as there were some people moving out (later on a larger U-Haul pulled up for a bit as well). So it was a busy day for our apartment, but ours was just getting started.

The good news was that Lillian had performed without a single issue (aside from eating so many bugs on her windshield that it defied logic) and we arrived safely. While traffic was really bad in a few spots and the GPS sent us through Timbuktu a few times, we had no major issues. All in all, a successful trip that had a non-abnormal amount of stress considering that our entire existence was pretty much behind that steering wheel. I also learned that I would not be a good truck driver, 1000 miles is good for me, thank you.

So, for now I’m going to wrap this up. As I mentioned this will be a three part post. The first was a short post about final preparations, this was a post about the trip itself, and the last post will be about actually moving in, which turned out to be the worst part of the entire trip by a landslide (even when compared to rush hour Boston traffic). I’ll also discuss returning Lillian, which since I am so damn lucky just happened to be in afternoon rush hour traffic.

In closing here is a random photo of some countryside on our way through NY that I thought was pretty.

Until next time,
-Taco

Traveling to NYC & Boston

August 5, 2014 by Taco

Today I’m going to talk briefly about a trip I took to Boston and NYC.

I say briefly because its something that happened a good bit ago now. Like most people, I tend to forget the finer details pretty quickly. That is the nice thing about blogging actively, rather than retroactively, its easier to remember the details. The one time I tried to retroactively blog about a series of things, I burnt out really fast. I guess there is something very.. not-fun.. about struggling to write something that has sort of faded from the front of your mind. For me at least, its not engaging to write about old stuff.

However, I’m going to make an exception here because I can share a few larger points.

Back in early Spring I took at trip with SB and Meem to New York City and Boston. It wasn’t a traditional trio trip as were actually split up for a fair amount of the time. Basically I was looking at law schools and SB was looking at graduate schools and Meem was contributing aid to both endeavors. This was actually a pretty important trip for me, as it was the final step in a very, very long process of deciding where I was going to go to law school. [I’ll get to the law school process in due time, that is one retroactive post I can do plenty of complaining in.]

However, outside of law school it was an interesting trip namely because I had never been to either NYC or Boston. I say that in the most extreme ways possible too, I hadn’t even been in their airports before. I have to say, I enjoyed both cities, but for very different reasons. I’ll have to add the caveat for NYC purist that the vast, vast majority of my time was spent in Manhattan and even then most of it was midtown or below. So, keep in mind that area is what I’m largely referring to (yes I realize NYC is much more than Manhattan).

NYC seemed a bit more fast paced than Boston, in both the bad and good ways. Though Boston wasn’t slow by any means, there was definitely something in the air in NYC that Boston did not have (and no I don’t mean pollutants). Boston on the other hand, seemed a bit more cordial, possibly even a bit more “Old World” than NYC did, again, in both the good and bad ways. I can definitely see how individuals come to have fierce loyalties to each city and why they would be attractive places to live. That being said, I do not see myself in either one of them long term. In fact, unless life changes my course (which in all likelihood it shall) I have no intention of living on the East Coast long term.

Why?

Humidity.

I hate, hate, hate, and loathe humidity. Anyways, to the post topic. Both cities were fun, each in their own way. To be completely honest, I think NYC surprised me more than Boston, but I was expecting far less of it as well. It wasn’t what I was expecting in a lot of ways, mostly good. However, Boston won the day in some other ways, so its close toss-up either way you look at it. But again, I don’t want to live in either place long term, for more reasons than just humiture.

The trip itself was fun though, if a bit hectic, and the drive back was kind of a pain. I mean it snowed, near white-out conditions in April, ffs. I liked spending time with my peoples though and also sort of sealing that section of the law school process, even if it had its share of topsy-turviness. For closing, here is a picture taken of NYC by SB, I really didn’t get many chances to take photos since I was so busy, so this is the best I can offer.

Until next time,
-Taco

Boston Pre-Game

Moving Voyage: Stage 3 – Carrying Things & Settling

Moving Voyage: Stage 2 – Driving & Stopping & Driving More

Traveling to NYC & Boston

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