1. Joe at the Millennium Bostonian
2. Joe Running through the Quad at Dartmouth
3. Joe Climbing up the top of the Chin
4. Montreal Street Scene
5. Joe Commenting on Montreal
6. Shelburne Museum
Friday, August 15, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
#8 - Post Script – It’s a Bag, Mr. Walker, It’s a Bag.
I would really be unfair if my life went back to normal after a great trip to the Northeast with Joe. So I knew that when I woke up the next morning and resurrected the familiar cadence of family breakfast, that it wouldn’t be business like usual. Today was different because after getting back from Burlington and Chicago yesterday, on Sunday, I had to return this afternoon to Chicago and then go on to Charleston.
I took Will, Kate and Lizzie down to the beach to ride bikes and experience the strange feeling of being at home along the boardwalk in Santa Monica in a place that millions of people experience as tourists, the same way that I had just returned from three places where I had just acted as a tourist. After rushing home to not miss my flight (which I nearly did), I made it to Chicago and then headed off to my flight to Charleston.
Since the plane to Charleston is pretty small, I had to gate check my bag on the jetway before I boarded the plane. I had done this hundreds of times because I am almost always traveling to remote locations on small planes. When I arrived in Charleston, I looked on the luggage rack for my backpack, and to my great dismay it wasn’t there. I waited some more, and next to me is the pilot on the plane who also seemed to be missing his bag. He knows the baggage crew and they start scouring the cargo holds and the inside of the plane, and nothing shows up.
We proceed to go down to the baggage claim thinking that maybe it was sent there already. Nothing. We file our claim and I proceed to go to the hotel. Oh, I forgot to mention that since I had come from the beach that morning and raced out the door, I was still in shorts and a t-shirt. Charleston, by the way, isn’t 95 with 90% humidity as was forecasted. More like 85 with 100% humidity. I call the next morning. Nothing. Fortunately some nice fellows I work with left me a golf shirt in my room, and so I went to the golf shop to pick up some golf pants that morning for a day’s worth of business meetings, most of which include people I had never met before. Out of golf pants – no one buys them anymore.
Much to the everyone’s amusement, I show up to my breakfast meeting in something less than “resort casual”. Moreover, I am wearing a striped yellow shirt with plaid tan pants, so on top of being overly casual, I’m a fashion faux pas. I keep calling United throughout the day, and still nothing. By the end of the day, I wave off requests to have someone go get me some pants, thinking that the worst of the embarrassed was over, and my bag surely had to show up soon. I even email a photo of the backpack to United. Nothing.
The next morning I went back to the golf shop to buy a new golf shirt and shorts, and as I was looking through the khaki shorts, I noticed two pairs of pants, one of which happened to fit me. While the golf shop was out of belts and I was still wearing running shoes, at least I was presentable this morning.
On my way back to Los Angeles at the Charleston Airport, I decide to have a nice chat with the baggage fellow in Charleston as I walk inside the terminal to figure out if my bag might be in Charleston. I go through security and notice that I have a chance to catch an earlier flight into Chicago. I show up to the gate as some guy is closing the door. He closes the door before I get there, so I go up to the window and bang on it. He comes back to the door and I ask him if I can get on the earlier flight. He tells me “No, there’s no way. I have to go close the door to the airplane.” I respond, “Well that’s good, because that means that you haven’t yet closed the door to the plane.” He says back to me, “Look, there’s just no way” and proceeds to slam the door in my face. So much for Southern hospitality.
It was not all for naught, however, because after I arrived in Chicago I decided to exit security, go down to baggage claim and ask them if my bag was still there. All along I have been suspecting this, and despite my numerous phone calls to United (the guy in Charleston looked up my record and noted that I am a pretty relentlessly persistent guy), no one could tell me where my bag was. As I stood in line, the minutes were ticking away and I started to fear that I would miss my connecting flight to LA (which would cause me to miss the waning moments of my 14th wedding anniversary, which would be the perfect end to bag-gate oh-eight). I finally get up to the front and perhaps the world’s nicest airline customer service person greets me with a warm smile which I desperately needed to keep me from going postal over why no one at O’Hare could find my bag until I did it myself. Anyway, I tell her my story and then show her the digital photo of my backpack that, as luck would have it, I kept from my travel blog earlier that week. I then ask her if I can go back and look at the bags. She says, “No, that won’t be necessary. We only have a few backpacks left. Let me go check.” She then goes behind the metal door, and there I wait, my life in the balance. I kept playing out both scenarios in my mind as I waited impatiently, checking my watch every 15 seconds – bag, no bag, bag, no bag, bag, no bag….
Finally, the door opens and out comes the nice lady with my bag hoisted triumphantly above her head as if to say, “It’s your bag, Mr. Walker, it’s your bag!” [extra bonus points for knowing the correct cultural-literary reference] I said, “I can’t believe it, thank you!” and proceeded to give the woman a great big hug, not caring less if they called the TSA’s on me.
After a nine day stretch in which I visited the cities of Mexico City, Boston, Stowe, Montreal, Chicago #1, LA, Chicago #2, Charleston, Chicago #3 and finally back to LA, it wasn’t a bad way to end a long long week of travel.
That is, until I received an email from United when I got home safe and sound telling me that they still have not found my piece of lost baggage, but they are working hard on it.
I’m looking forward to a good week and a half at home.
I took Will, Kate and Lizzie down to the beach to ride bikes and experience the strange feeling of being at home along the boardwalk in Santa Monica in a place that millions of people experience as tourists, the same way that I had just returned from three places where I had just acted as a tourist. After rushing home to not miss my flight (which I nearly did), I made it to Chicago and then headed off to my flight to Charleston.
Since the plane to Charleston is pretty small, I had to gate check my bag on the jetway before I boarded the plane. I had done this hundreds of times because I am almost always traveling to remote locations on small planes. When I arrived in Charleston, I looked on the luggage rack for my backpack, and to my great dismay it wasn’t there. I waited some more, and next to me is the pilot on the plane who also seemed to be missing his bag. He knows the baggage crew and they start scouring the cargo holds and the inside of the plane, and nothing shows up.
We proceed to go down to the baggage claim thinking that maybe it was sent there already. Nothing. We file our claim and I proceed to go to the hotel. Oh, I forgot to mention that since I had come from the beach that morning and raced out the door, I was still in shorts and a t-shirt. Charleston, by the way, isn’t 95 with 90% humidity as was forecasted. More like 85 with 100% humidity. I call the next morning. Nothing. Fortunately some nice fellows I work with left me a golf shirt in my room, and so I went to the golf shop to pick up some golf pants that morning for a day’s worth of business meetings, most of which include people I had never met before. Out of golf pants – no one buys them anymore.
Much to the everyone’s amusement, I show up to my breakfast meeting in something less than “resort casual”. Moreover, I am wearing a striped yellow shirt with plaid tan pants, so on top of being overly casual, I’m a fashion faux pas. I keep calling United throughout the day, and still nothing. By the end of the day, I wave off requests to have someone go get me some pants, thinking that the worst of the embarrassed was over, and my bag surely had to show up soon. I even email a photo of the backpack to United. Nothing.
The next morning I went back to the golf shop to buy a new golf shirt and shorts, and as I was looking through the khaki shorts, I noticed two pairs of pants, one of which happened to fit me. While the golf shop was out of belts and I was still wearing running shoes, at least I was presentable this morning.
On my way back to Los Angeles at the Charleston Airport, I decide to have a nice chat with the baggage fellow in Charleston as I walk inside the terminal to figure out if my bag might be in Charleston. I go through security and notice that I have a chance to catch an earlier flight into Chicago. I show up to the gate as some guy is closing the door. He closes the door before I get there, so I go up to the window and bang on it. He comes back to the door and I ask him if I can get on the earlier flight. He tells me “No, there’s no way. I have to go close the door to the airplane.” I respond, “Well that’s good, because that means that you haven’t yet closed the door to the plane.” He says back to me, “Look, there’s just no way” and proceeds to slam the door in my face. So much for Southern hospitality.
It was not all for naught, however, because after I arrived in Chicago I decided to exit security, go down to baggage claim and ask them if my bag was still there. All along I have been suspecting this, and despite my numerous phone calls to United (the guy in Charleston looked up my record and noted that I am a pretty relentlessly persistent guy), no one could tell me where my bag was. As I stood in line, the minutes were ticking away and I started to fear that I would miss my connecting flight to LA (which would cause me to miss the waning moments of my 14th wedding anniversary, which would be the perfect end to bag-gate oh-eight). I finally get up to the front and perhaps the world’s nicest airline customer service person greets me with a warm smile which I desperately needed to keep me from going postal over why no one at O’Hare could find my bag until I did it myself. Anyway, I tell her my story and then show her the digital photo of my backpack that, as luck would have it, I kept from my travel blog earlier that week. I then ask her if I can go back and look at the bags. She says, “No, that won’t be necessary. We only have a few backpacks left. Let me go check.” She then goes behind the metal door, and there I wait, my life in the balance. I kept playing out both scenarios in my mind as I waited impatiently, checking my watch every 15 seconds – bag, no bag, bag, no bag, bag, no bag….
Finally, the door opens and out comes the nice lady with my bag hoisted triumphantly above her head as if to say, “It’s your bag, Mr. Walker, it’s your bag!” [extra bonus points for knowing the correct cultural-literary reference] I said, “I can’t believe it, thank you!” and proceeded to give the woman a great big hug, not caring less if they called the TSA’s on me.
After a nine day stretch in which I visited the cities of Mexico City, Boston, Stowe, Montreal, Chicago #1, LA, Chicago #2, Charleston, Chicago #3 and finally back to LA, it wasn’t a bad way to end a long long week of travel.
That is, until I received an email from United when I got home safe and sound telling me that they still have not found my piece of lost baggage, but they are working hard on it.
I’m looking forward to a good week and a half at home.
Monday, August 11, 2008
#7: The End is the Beginning is the End – Montreal and Vermont, Part 2
I woke up this morning a little worried that the last day of our journey through the Northeast Kingdom would be a tad underwhelming. Joe and I have been going on these trips for several years now, and I don’t think we’ve had a wasted day yet, but for some reason I didn’t have a good feeling about today.
Sleepful in Montreal. There was no doubt that Joe was dead tired from our adventures in Boston and Stowe, so I let him sleep in until 9:30 (still 6:30 at home, he reminded me) to restore just enough energy for a final push. This gave me a little extra time to figure out what exactly we were going to do today, which was in question when I woke up. We checked out of the tres chic Hotel Nelligan (see the review in a separate post) and enjoyed their complimentary breakfast in their nightclub-quality lounge, and Joe ate more croissants than a small cotillion (and four is my cap on French words in a sentence).
We finished up in Vieux Montreal – Old Montreal – that morning by investigating a historic firehouse converted into the Montreal Historical Museum (or whatever French name by which it was known), followed by a stroll through the neighborhood’s sparsely populated cobblestone streets which didn’t have nearly as much charm in the morning as they did in yesterday’s Hot August Night. Though I wasn’t surprised, at this point not even a trusty gelato could get the spring in Joe’s step back.
We ended our ramble at Montreal’s chief religious icon, Notre Dame, which from the outside looks like a surprisingly faithful replication of the Parisian original except for a lack of gargoyles. The inside, though gilded to the nines, was actually one of the more disappointing cathedral buildings I’ve ever visited. In order to pack ‘em in, there were two levels of balcony seating along the length of the church. What this did was that instead of having beautiful stained glass windows lighting up the church, the interior was dark and squat and not very soaring. I thought the radiators that had been placed in front of each of the rows of pews (it gets awfully cold in Montreal) as well as the gently sloping seating in the main part of the church were curious features indeed.
With the walking portion of our trip now completed, we retrieved our car and headed up to Mount Royal, the only hill in what is otherwise a very very flat part of Canada, so that we could survey our surroundings before heading back to the US of A. Our plan was to ride the paddle boats, so we started walking through the absolutely spectacular grassy knolls of Mount Royal Park. If I lived in Montreal I would spend every weekend here that it wasn’t 50 below; it was simply fantastic (and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead who designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park). About 200 yards into our stroll of ambiguous dimensions, we came to the crest of the final hill which overlooked the pond. Lo, in the distance, at the far end of a good sized lake, was the paddle boat dock. Joe made like our bygone Basset Hound Rockwell and got down on all fours and could not be pried loose. “Seriously, Joe?” “Nope, not going to go there.” “OK, then, let’s head back.”
Before we leave Montreal, I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on its Frenchness. I’ve experienced Montrealers during some of my business dealings in Stowe, and I know that there is always a sneering undertone of condescension to us Yankees, or really to anyone who dares utter a word of English. I was flabbergasted when I learned that Quebec actually passed a law prohibiting business owners from putting English on a sign on the outside a building and then mandated that any French, on the inside of the building or on anything printed, shall be twice as large as the English, and that there are severe fines for disobedience. It was no surprise, then, that there has been a mass exodus of Anglos from Montreal to mostly Toronto. During our 18 hours in Montreal, we saw a little of everything. All of the workers speak French amongst themselves, but unlike in France, everyone with whom I came in contact spoke perfect English. It’s like a little game. The difference is that when I’m at the counter at McDonalds in the US and two Spanish-speaking workers are speaking to each other, they will generally speak English if I’m standing there. In Montreal, they speak English to me, French to each other, then English back to me, which I found kind of rude. We also seemed to have more than our share of disinterested waitresses who just could care less about whether we wanted a menu or to order our meal or wanted to pay the bill. OK, enough of the French Canadians.
So with that pent up frustration in mind, we hit the freeway and I told Joe “Good Bye Montreal, Au Revoir” and we sped onto the underground freeway. I then gathered my written directions, merged left immediately and we were off. About 30 seconds later, I came to the realization that I turned onto the wrong freeway. We spent the next 25 minutes lost in space during perhaps my biggest directions mishap in recent memory. Of course it didn’t help that there were exits which were blocked, detours which were mismarked and lots and lots of French road signs which had about 250 words too many on each sign, all of which were in French and with names that all looked suspiciously similar.
We finally made it back to the Pont Champlain which took us over the St. Lawrence River and were headed back to Vermont. No balloons today. Returning two hours to Burlington seemed to take a lot less time than it did getting to Montreal. The border crossing this time was a non-event, and even with three cars in the line in front of me, a border patrol agent saw to it to open up a new lane. I’ve never appreciated American bureaucracy as much in all my life.
After my cell phone regained consciousness, I then began to reflect on the fact that our last day in Montreal was really good, but it lacked that one signature experience I was hoping for. I felt obliged to give it to Joe, to try and fit one more thing into our itinerary in the 60 minutes of free time we had left. It’s like trying to stuff one last piece of clothing into your luggage, hoping that the bag doesn’t explode or the zipper breaks. I had my holy grail – the Shelburne Museum located 15 minutes past the airport in Burlington. Set against this wish were two things. One – the really, really dark and ominous skies in front of us, and two – the United Airlines email updates that kept pushing our departure time back a few minutes at a time which would put us in the precarious situation of missing our connection and potentially spending the night at O’Hare.
As we got into Burlington, all hell broke loose. It reminded me of that scene in “The Truman Show”, a favorite of Joe’s and mine, where Jim Carrey is on the boat getting pelted by increasingly more violent storms. You want a storm? Well, you’ve got one now! The skies unleashed their fury. Buckets and buckets of rain dumped on us. The windshield wipers were at full speed. Lightning cracked, visibly startling Joe who has seen lighting only a few times in his life. He knew the math between thunder and lighting to tell how far away the storm was, he correctly concluded that we were in the thick of it. He was absolutely terrified that we would be electrocuted. “Dad, we need to get out of the car right now! It’s metal!” “Dad, don’t drive under the power lines, they could kill us!” “Dad, let’s go to the airport right now!” I tried calming him down by telling him that this is only going to make our trip to the Shelburne Museum that much more memorable, and he said only if we would stay indoors. When I told him that the museum was mostly outdoors but that he had the same umbrella that he used in Boston to keep him dry, he told me that I could keep my death stick and he’ll stay in the car. The good news from United was that our flight was delayed which meant that we could stay from 3:45 until the place closed at 5. The bad news was that it meant our connection through Chicago would be even more dicey, and my backup plan through Dulles was already oversold.
So I ignored all of the looming disaster scenarios and pushed full speed ahead. We hydroplaned down the interstate and pulled into the Shelburne Museum overlooking Lake Champlain (that is, if you actually see Lake Champlain), and to our great astonishment there were all kinds of people still there. Got to love those Vermonters. It did mean, though, that the gift shop looked like LAX at Christmas. I knew that in the back of his mind, Joe was just as intrigued as I was and that his Basset Hound heels-in-the-dirt stance would melt away once he saw the place. I’m not sure that melting ended up being the appropriate term, but armed with my plastic bag of a rain slicker and our mini umbrella, we took the plunge into the maelstrom.
So from there we can both honestly say that the Shelburne Museum was wonderful. It might be the most unique and well done presentation of historical material that I’ve ever seen. A very wealthy New York heiress, Electra Havemeyer Webb, who owned homes all around the world including one in Vermont, donated a bunch of land to create a museum to dedicated to Americana and folk art. When we were there we saw an immaculately restored Ticonderoga steamship sitting in the pastoral Vermont countryside. There were historical buildings which have been relocated or recreated from all facets of American life – a lighthouse, a town meeting hall, a one-room school house, a covered bridge, a carriage barn, a print shop with working printing presses, a general store stocked faithfully with every last item available 150 years ago, and the masterpiece - a striking white, neo-classical plantation home with colonnaded porch in the center of it all. The home was built by Mrs. Webb’s children, and they took eight rooms from her Park City apartment and relocated them into the plantation home. More than just an opportunity to see how the other half lives, the house, and indeed many of the other buildings, also include the hands down finest collection of Americana outside of a major museum that I’ve ever seen. The parlor in the plantation house, for example, included four Monets. Joe’s favorite was the children’s toy collection – hundreds of toy fire trucks, model trains and piggy banks with mechanical penny-pitching devices. Forget Mount Royal, if I lived in this part of the world, we would be going here every weekend. Joe really got a kick out of it too. He couldn’t wait to see what was inside the next building; it was like Christmas morning. Through it all, the Vermont thunderstorm lived up to expectations, which meant that as bad as it was, the sun came out just as we were wrapping up. We had to work a bit harder today, but with some splendiferous help from mother nature, today successfully reached the operatic crescendo for which I have been striving. As we returned to the car, Joe said one final time, “Dad, I’m really tired,” and I knew he meant it.
The coda of our expedition, as always, is the flight back to reality. Flights were being cancelled right and left (but thankfully not front and center) and our connection window had been reduced to 15 minutes, but we were sailing smoothly. The Burlington to Chicago leg was painless, and when we got to Chicago, we enjoyed a few extra minutes courtesy of another delay. By this time, Joe had gone through all of personal diversions designed to keep him from fidgeting (including watching the serendipitously titled DVD “Fly Away Home” about a girl and her flock of ducks), so he practiced draining my computer battery with some minesweeper and solitaire. After landing in Los Angeles, we got back to the car and within seconds he was asleep.
Sleepful in Montreal. There was no doubt that Joe was dead tired from our adventures in Boston and Stowe, so I let him sleep in until 9:30 (still 6:30 at home, he reminded me) to restore just enough energy for a final push. This gave me a little extra time to figure out what exactly we were going to do today, which was in question when I woke up. We checked out of the tres chic Hotel Nelligan (see the review in a separate post) and enjoyed their complimentary breakfast in their nightclub-quality lounge, and Joe ate more croissants than a small cotillion (and four is my cap on French words in a sentence).
We finished up in Vieux Montreal – Old Montreal – that morning by investigating a historic firehouse converted into the Montreal Historical Museum (or whatever French name by which it was known), followed by a stroll through the neighborhood’s sparsely populated cobblestone streets which didn’t have nearly as much charm in the morning as they did in yesterday’s Hot August Night. Though I wasn’t surprised, at this point not even a trusty gelato could get the spring in Joe’s step back.
We ended our ramble at Montreal’s chief religious icon, Notre Dame, which from the outside looks like a surprisingly faithful replication of the Parisian original except for a lack of gargoyles. The inside, though gilded to the nines, was actually one of the more disappointing cathedral buildings I’ve ever visited. In order to pack ‘em in, there were two levels of balcony seating along the length of the church. What this did was that instead of having beautiful stained glass windows lighting up the church, the interior was dark and squat and not very soaring. I thought the radiators that had been placed in front of each of the rows of pews (it gets awfully cold in Montreal) as well as the gently sloping seating in the main part of the church were curious features indeed.
With the walking portion of our trip now completed, we retrieved our car and headed up to Mount Royal, the only hill in what is otherwise a very very flat part of Canada, so that we could survey our surroundings before heading back to the US of A. Our plan was to ride the paddle boats, so we started walking through the absolutely spectacular grassy knolls of Mount Royal Park. If I lived in Montreal I would spend every weekend here that it wasn’t 50 below; it was simply fantastic (and designed by Frederick Law Olmstead who designed Central Park and Golden Gate Park). About 200 yards into our stroll of ambiguous dimensions, we came to the crest of the final hill which overlooked the pond. Lo, in the distance, at the far end of a good sized lake, was the paddle boat dock. Joe made like our bygone Basset Hound Rockwell and got down on all fours and could not be pried loose. “Seriously, Joe?” “Nope, not going to go there.” “OK, then, let’s head back.”
Before we leave Montreal, I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on its Frenchness. I’ve experienced Montrealers during some of my business dealings in Stowe, and I know that there is always a sneering undertone of condescension to us Yankees, or really to anyone who dares utter a word of English. I was flabbergasted when I learned that Quebec actually passed a law prohibiting business owners from putting English on a sign on the outside a building and then mandated that any French, on the inside of the building or on anything printed, shall be twice as large as the English, and that there are severe fines for disobedience. It was no surprise, then, that there has been a mass exodus of Anglos from Montreal to mostly Toronto. During our 18 hours in Montreal, we saw a little of everything. All of the workers speak French amongst themselves, but unlike in France, everyone with whom I came in contact spoke perfect English. It’s like a little game. The difference is that when I’m at the counter at McDonalds in the US and two Spanish-speaking workers are speaking to each other, they will generally speak English if I’m standing there. In Montreal, they speak English to me, French to each other, then English back to me, which I found kind of rude. We also seemed to have more than our share of disinterested waitresses who just could care less about whether we wanted a menu or to order our meal or wanted to pay the bill. OK, enough of the French Canadians.
So with that pent up frustration in mind, we hit the freeway and I told Joe “Good Bye Montreal, Au Revoir” and we sped onto the underground freeway. I then gathered my written directions, merged left immediately and we were off. About 30 seconds later, I came to the realization that I turned onto the wrong freeway. We spent the next 25 minutes lost in space during perhaps my biggest directions mishap in recent memory. Of course it didn’t help that there were exits which were blocked, detours which were mismarked and lots and lots of French road signs which had about 250 words too many on each sign, all of which were in French and with names that all looked suspiciously similar.
We finally made it back to the Pont Champlain which took us over the St. Lawrence River and were headed back to Vermont. No balloons today. Returning two hours to Burlington seemed to take a lot less time than it did getting to Montreal. The border crossing this time was a non-event, and even with three cars in the line in front of me, a border patrol agent saw to it to open up a new lane. I’ve never appreciated American bureaucracy as much in all my life.
After my cell phone regained consciousness, I then began to reflect on the fact that our last day in Montreal was really good, but it lacked that one signature experience I was hoping for. I felt obliged to give it to Joe, to try and fit one more thing into our itinerary in the 60 minutes of free time we had left. It’s like trying to stuff one last piece of clothing into your luggage, hoping that the bag doesn’t explode or the zipper breaks. I had my holy grail – the Shelburne Museum located 15 minutes past the airport in Burlington. Set against this wish were two things. One – the really, really dark and ominous skies in front of us, and two – the United Airlines email updates that kept pushing our departure time back a few minutes at a time which would put us in the precarious situation of missing our connection and potentially spending the night at O’Hare.
As we got into Burlington, all hell broke loose. It reminded me of that scene in “The Truman Show”, a favorite of Joe’s and mine, where Jim Carrey is on the boat getting pelted by increasingly more violent storms. You want a storm? Well, you’ve got one now! The skies unleashed their fury. Buckets and buckets of rain dumped on us. The windshield wipers were at full speed. Lightning cracked, visibly startling Joe who has seen lighting only a few times in his life. He knew the math between thunder and lighting to tell how far away the storm was, he correctly concluded that we were in the thick of it. He was absolutely terrified that we would be electrocuted. “Dad, we need to get out of the car right now! It’s metal!” “Dad, don’t drive under the power lines, they could kill us!” “Dad, let’s go to the airport right now!” I tried calming him down by telling him that this is only going to make our trip to the Shelburne Museum that much more memorable, and he said only if we would stay indoors. When I told him that the museum was mostly outdoors but that he had the same umbrella that he used in Boston to keep him dry, he told me that I could keep my death stick and he’ll stay in the car. The good news from United was that our flight was delayed which meant that we could stay from 3:45 until the place closed at 5. The bad news was that it meant our connection through Chicago would be even more dicey, and my backup plan through Dulles was already oversold.
So I ignored all of the looming disaster scenarios and pushed full speed ahead. We hydroplaned down the interstate and pulled into the Shelburne Museum overlooking Lake Champlain (that is, if you actually see Lake Champlain), and to our great astonishment there were all kinds of people still there. Got to love those Vermonters. It did mean, though, that the gift shop looked like LAX at Christmas. I knew that in the back of his mind, Joe was just as intrigued as I was and that his Basset Hound heels-in-the-dirt stance would melt away once he saw the place. I’m not sure that melting ended up being the appropriate term, but armed with my plastic bag of a rain slicker and our mini umbrella, we took the plunge into the maelstrom.
So from there we can both honestly say that the Shelburne Museum was wonderful. It might be the most unique and well done presentation of historical material that I’ve ever seen. A very wealthy New York heiress, Electra Havemeyer Webb, who owned homes all around the world including one in Vermont, donated a bunch of land to create a museum to dedicated to Americana and folk art. When we were there we saw an immaculately restored Ticonderoga steamship sitting in the pastoral Vermont countryside. There were historical buildings which have been relocated or recreated from all facets of American life – a lighthouse, a town meeting hall, a one-room school house, a covered bridge, a carriage barn, a print shop with working printing presses, a general store stocked faithfully with every last item available 150 years ago, and the masterpiece - a striking white, neo-classical plantation home with colonnaded porch in the center of it all. The home was built by Mrs. Webb’s children, and they took eight rooms from her Park City apartment and relocated them into the plantation home. More than just an opportunity to see how the other half lives, the house, and indeed many of the other buildings, also include the hands down finest collection of Americana outside of a major museum that I’ve ever seen. The parlor in the plantation house, for example, included four Monets. Joe’s favorite was the children’s toy collection – hundreds of toy fire trucks, model trains and piggy banks with mechanical penny-pitching devices. Forget Mount Royal, if I lived in this part of the world, we would be going here every weekend. Joe really got a kick out of it too. He couldn’t wait to see what was inside the next building; it was like Christmas morning. Through it all, the Vermont thunderstorm lived up to expectations, which meant that as bad as it was, the sun came out just as we were wrapping up. We had to work a bit harder today, but with some splendiferous help from mother nature, today successfully reached the operatic crescendo for which I have been striving. As we returned to the car, Joe said one final time, “Dad, I’m really tired,” and I knew he meant it.
The coda of our expedition, as always, is the flight back to reality. Flights were being cancelled right and left (but thankfully not front and center) and our connection window had been reduced to 15 minutes, but we were sailing smoothly. The Burlington to Chicago leg was painless, and when we got to Chicago, we enjoyed a few extra minutes courtesy of another delay. By this time, Joe had gone through all of personal diversions designed to keep him from fidgeting (including watching the serendipitously titled DVD “Fly Away Home” about a girl and her flock of ducks), so he practiced draining my computer battery with some minesweeper and solitaire. After landing in Los Angeles, we got back to the car and within seconds he was asleep.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
#6 - The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Matt and Joe in Stowe on Day 3
In many ways, our experience today in Stowe was very similar to our experience in Boston, only a lot greener. Lots of back and forth, many unexpected surprises but all in all, a fantastically memorable day.
After falling asleep after midnight (“It’s still only 9 PM at home”), Joe was DOA at 7:45, 8:00 and 8:15 when I tried getting him up for our 8:30 fly fishing lesson. I’m not surprised that Joe didn’t want to get out of bed seeing that when we arrived last night, Joe walked right into the master, set his stuff down and declared that this was his room. I was happy to oblige, since there are not many days that he gets a king size bed all to himself. He does have the wake-up routine down pat, and we still made it down to the Orvis Center in the retail boutique in the hotel on time.
Our guide welcomed us by noting what a beautiful day it was, which it was, and how the forecast was for no rain today. I told him that my sources came to a different conclusion, but I was happy that we were starting early enough that we may both be correct. He took the two of us over to the pond at the golf course where we learned everything we needed to know about knots, rods, reels, line weights and casting techniques. I had never fly fished and Joe claims to have done it once with my dad. As we were looping our knots, the drops became sprinkles which became a steady drizzle. The gentleman’s bet was edging my way, but as is the case in Vermont, if you don’t like the weather, just wait ten minutes. With an angelic parting of the clouds on our little patch of the 18th fairway, we gave it our best shot. No fish were caught, but there were certainly a suspiciously fair share of risings (fishspeak for “we saw some fish jumping”) for a newly minted, unstocked snowmaking pond. “There are lots of rumors floating around that a couple of guys around here are putting in some brooks and some rainbows. Since this spot doesn’t get much play, it’s going to become the best fishing spot in all of Stowe.” Joe did surprisingly well, getting some good distance and only hitting me in the face with the fly two or three times.
From there, I pointed up the mountain to the top of the gondola and told Joe that’s where we were going next. “You mean I have to hike all the way up the mountain?” “No Joe, today you get to take the gondola almost to the top of the mountain, but you’ve got to hike the rest of the way.” “Is that hard?” “Well this map rates it a Triple D for difficult.” No answer from the domesticated 10 year old flatlander from Southern California. We headed down to the Edelweiss General Store (the apples don’t fall far from the Sound of Music tree here in Stowe) to stock up for our trip and then drove to the gondola. Joe’s slight ambivalence was quickly replaced with astounding enthusiasm once the reality of his first gondola ride sunk in. The intoxication of the E-ticket special wore off a bit when we walked out the gondola into gale force winds, swirling clouds all around us and some chilly weather. “How do I know if I have frostbite?” asked Joe during Question #245 out of 754 that day. “Well first it has to be below freezing, and if that were the case you would be looking at snow on the ground instead of all this water.”
The face of Mt. Mansfield is broken into several features – the nose, the lip, the chin, etc.. We were headed for the highest point – the Chin. To get there we had to take the aforementioned DDD trail up 750 vertical feet which I surmised was a pretty decent hike on a pretty well worn trail, this being Vermont where I think they have high school proms along our path. With both us donning our Tevas (shoes were sitting ready, willing and able in the car), we stepped into the wild. For the first 25 minutes there wasn’t a flat step to walk on. Within five minutes Joe started complaining that he was hot and I told him that he might want to go back and stand outside of the gondola then to cool off. There were some pretty tight spaces we had to navigate, a few sheer faces of Vermont green granite that we had to scale and a few crevasses where I was a little bit nervous as a father where and I otherwise wouldn’t have thought twice. In the end, though, it wasn’t really all that difficult, but I will say that there are a lot of people that just couldn’t do it. Joe, to his credit, absolutely loved it. He said it was like our hike in Hana a few years ago except there weren’t any palm trees. I told him he could turn around and he kept pushing ahead. We finally made it to the Chin – the highest point in the state of Vermont – and as the clouds were swirling around us, the view of the hotel down below and all of the valley opened up below us. It was pretty incredible. We ate lunch, took some photos with the couple dozen other people who shared the moment with us, and then made our descent. On the way down, we could see all the way to Lake Champlain to the west. Joe quickly concluded that this was the best thing that he’s done on the trip (“The hike was amazing, dad, what’s next?”) and that he really loved Stowe.
Back down on earth, Joe and I took it up a Notch by driving up to The Notch (Smuggler’s Notch, a very very windy road through the pass at the end of the canyon where the Stowe Mountain Resort ski area is located). We then headed over to the alpine slide area to get some not-so-cheap thrills, and to our great dismay, the wait for the slide was more than an hour. There were only about 20 people in line, so that didn’t make sense, but the wait for the trampoline was a half hour, and that was also more than we had the patience for, so we headed back to the hotel. Joe consumed his 10th apple from the bowl in the lobby – they got the hint and finally sent us a bowl in our room – and we changed and headed to the pool.
The pool was great, as was the hot tub. Joe particularly enjoyed the ability to enter the pool from indoors and swim through the curvy channel to the outdoor pool. Back in the room, Joe was so enthralled with his digs that he didn’t want to leave. We finally checked out around 2:30 and headed over to the Trapp Family Lodge just to put the suspense out of its misery. Trapp really is a quaint place. Joe liked all of the posters of Von Trapp’s on the walls. We walked through the on-site cemetery, really an idyllic garden with some gravestones (not creepy like Boston at all), and I started looking a little more closely and noticed that Maria Von Trapp was all 8 years older than the oldest child she was looking after. “What’s the big deal with that Dad?” “Well Joe, if your mother passed away, it would be like me marrying an eighteen year-old.” “Your right dad, that is creepy.” I’ll never watch The Sound of Music the same way again.
We then took off for a quick tour through downtown Stowe, but when we got halfway down the hill from Trapp, we were met with mile upon mile of old historic car heading our direction. It was the Annual Classic Car Parade – the biggest event of the year in Stowe I was told. There was no way we were going to just slip into the parade with our vintage 2005 PT Crusier, so we headed out of Stowe, and along the way got a great view of the historic cars. We checked out Cold Hollow Cider Mill, then headed back up to Downtown Stowe, checked out the cars as they passed in front of the judging stand, and then took off for Montreal.
I was told that Montreal was two hours away and that getting across the border was a piece of cake. We were making great time, but when we got to the border there was at least a 45 minute wait – all of the Classic Car folks and a pitifully few number of lanes open at the checkpoint. We finally made it through and as we were turning from one backroad to another in the middle of rural Quebec, we came upon festival #2 for the day – the Quebec National Balloon Show. Hundreds of hot air ballons were all around us. I can’t say that I’ve seen anything like it.
We finally pulled into Old Montreal around 8:30 PM and wow were we in for a surprise. In my complete rustiness, I had no real map of where we were going and my phone’s mapping had some standoff with its French Canadian server, so we finally found our way onto the Rue St. Paul, we met every other Canadian and tourist who wanted to get out that day. It was sheer mayhem of a Mardis Gras scale. When we crossed the Place de Jacques Cartier, there were people all around us in our narrow street like out of some movie. I equated it with Joe as two Third Street Promenades intersecting with each other. We finally made it to our hotel – the Hotel Nelligan (see review) – a very well located chic hotel in a historic building in Old Montreal. We went out and ate amongst our new French friends, checked out the 30 to 40 caricature artistics (it’s like Venice Beach on steroids, only they can really draw here in Montreal), and then returned to our room, exhausted once again.
The good news is that we don’t have to wake up for anything tomorrow, and for the first time in three nights the hotel we’re staying in won’t start any construction before 8 am, I think. We’ll enjoy Montreal for a day and then head back to Vermont, finish up with some things there, time permitting, and will then Fly our Friendly Skies back to LA. The USS Constitution was our unexpected pleasant surprise on Day 1, and the hike up Mt. Mansfield was it for day 2. I can’t wait to see what Montreal has in store.
After falling asleep after midnight (“It’s still only 9 PM at home”), Joe was DOA at 7:45, 8:00 and 8:15 when I tried getting him up for our 8:30 fly fishing lesson. I’m not surprised that Joe didn’t want to get out of bed seeing that when we arrived last night, Joe walked right into the master, set his stuff down and declared that this was his room. I was happy to oblige, since there are not many days that he gets a king size bed all to himself. He does have the wake-up routine down pat, and we still made it down to the Orvis Center in the retail boutique in the hotel on time.
Our guide welcomed us by noting what a beautiful day it was, which it was, and how the forecast was for no rain today. I told him that my sources came to a different conclusion, but I was happy that we were starting early enough that we may both be correct. He took the two of us over to the pond at the golf course where we learned everything we needed to know about knots, rods, reels, line weights and casting techniques. I had never fly fished and Joe claims to have done it once with my dad. As we were looping our knots, the drops became sprinkles which became a steady drizzle. The gentleman’s bet was edging my way, but as is the case in Vermont, if you don’t like the weather, just wait ten minutes. With an angelic parting of the clouds on our little patch of the 18th fairway, we gave it our best shot. No fish were caught, but there were certainly a suspiciously fair share of risings (fishspeak for “we saw some fish jumping”) for a newly minted, unstocked snowmaking pond. “There are lots of rumors floating around that a couple of guys around here are putting in some brooks and some rainbows. Since this spot doesn’t get much play, it’s going to become the best fishing spot in all of Stowe.” Joe did surprisingly well, getting some good distance and only hitting me in the face with the fly two or three times.
From there, I pointed up the mountain to the top of the gondola and told Joe that’s where we were going next. “You mean I have to hike all the way up the mountain?” “No Joe, today you get to take the gondola almost to the top of the mountain, but you’ve got to hike the rest of the way.” “Is that hard?” “Well this map rates it a Triple D for difficult.” No answer from the domesticated 10 year old flatlander from Southern California. We headed down to the Edelweiss General Store (the apples don’t fall far from the Sound of Music tree here in Stowe) to stock up for our trip and then drove to the gondola. Joe’s slight ambivalence was quickly replaced with astounding enthusiasm once the reality of his first gondola ride sunk in. The intoxication of the E-ticket special wore off a bit when we walked out the gondola into gale force winds, swirling clouds all around us and some chilly weather. “How do I know if I have frostbite?” asked Joe during Question #245 out of 754 that day. “Well first it has to be below freezing, and if that were the case you would be looking at snow on the ground instead of all this water.”
The face of Mt. Mansfield is broken into several features – the nose, the lip, the chin, etc.. We were headed for the highest point – the Chin. To get there we had to take the aforementioned DDD trail up 750 vertical feet which I surmised was a pretty decent hike on a pretty well worn trail, this being Vermont where I think they have high school proms along our path. With both us donning our Tevas (shoes were sitting ready, willing and able in the car), we stepped into the wild. For the first 25 minutes there wasn’t a flat step to walk on. Within five minutes Joe started complaining that he was hot and I told him that he might want to go back and stand outside of the gondola then to cool off. There were some pretty tight spaces we had to navigate, a few sheer faces of Vermont green granite that we had to scale and a few crevasses where I was a little bit nervous as a father where and I otherwise wouldn’t have thought twice. In the end, though, it wasn’t really all that difficult, but I will say that there are a lot of people that just couldn’t do it. Joe, to his credit, absolutely loved it. He said it was like our hike in Hana a few years ago except there weren’t any palm trees. I told him he could turn around and he kept pushing ahead. We finally made it to the Chin – the highest point in the state of Vermont – and as the clouds were swirling around us, the view of the hotel down below and all of the valley opened up below us. It was pretty incredible. We ate lunch, took some photos with the couple dozen other people who shared the moment with us, and then made our descent. On the way down, we could see all the way to Lake Champlain to the west. Joe quickly concluded that this was the best thing that he’s done on the trip (“The hike was amazing, dad, what’s next?”) and that he really loved Stowe.
Back down on earth, Joe and I took it up a Notch by driving up to The Notch (Smuggler’s Notch, a very very windy road through the pass at the end of the canyon where the Stowe Mountain Resort ski area is located). We then headed over to the alpine slide area to get some not-so-cheap thrills, and to our great dismay, the wait for the slide was more than an hour. There were only about 20 people in line, so that didn’t make sense, but the wait for the trampoline was a half hour, and that was also more than we had the patience for, so we headed back to the hotel. Joe consumed his 10th apple from the bowl in the lobby – they got the hint and finally sent us a bowl in our room – and we changed and headed to the pool.
The pool was great, as was the hot tub. Joe particularly enjoyed the ability to enter the pool from indoors and swim through the curvy channel to the outdoor pool. Back in the room, Joe was so enthralled with his digs that he didn’t want to leave. We finally checked out around 2:30 and headed over to the Trapp Family Lodge just to put the suspense out of its misery. Trapp really is a quaint place. Joe liked all of the posters of Von Trapp’s on the walls. We walked through the on-site cemetery, really an idyllic garden with some gravestones (not creepy like Boston at all), and I started looking a little more closely and noticed that Maria Von Trapp was all 8 years older than the oldest child she was looking after. “What’s the big deal with that Dad?” “Well Joe, if your mother passed away, it would be like me marrying an eighteen year-old.” “Your right dad, that is creepy.” I’ll never watch The Sound of Music the same way again.
We then took off for a quick tour through downtown Stowe, but when we got halfway down the hill from Trapp, we were met with mile upon mile of old historic car heading our direction. It was the Annual Classic Car Parade – the biggest event of the year in Stowe I was told. There was no way we were going to just slip into the parade with our vintage 2005 PT Crusier, so we headed out of Stowe, and along the way got a great view of the historic cars. We checked out Cold Hollow Cider Mill, then headed back up to Downtown Stowe, checked out the cars as they passed in front of the judging stand, and then took off for Montreal.
I was told that Montreal was two hours away and that getting across the border was a piece of cake. We were making great time, but when we got to the border there was at least a 45 minute wait – all of the Classic Car folks and a pitifully few number of lanes open at the checkpoint. We finally made it through and as we were turning from one backroad to another in the middle of rural Quebec, we came upon festival #2 for the day – the Quebec National Balloon Show. Hundreds of hot air ballons were all around us. I can’t say that I’ve seen anything like it.
We finally pulled into Old Montreal around 8:30 PM and wow were we in for a surprise. In my complete rustiness, I had no real map of where we were going and my phone’s mapping had some standoff with its French Canadian server, so we finally found our way onto the Rue St. Paul, we met every other Canadian and tourist who wanted to get out that day. It was sheer mayhem of a Mardis Gras scale. When we crossed the Place de Jacques Cartier, there were people all around us in our narrow street like out of some movie. I equated it with Joe as two Third Street Promenades intersecting with each other. We finally made it to our hotel – the Hotel Nelligan (see review) – a very well located chic hotel in a historic building in Old Montreal. We went out and ate amongst our new French friends, checked out the 30 to 40 caricature artistics (it’s like Venice Beach on steroids, only they can really draw here in Montreal), and then returned to our room, exhausted once again.The good news is that we don’t have to wake up for anything tomorrow, and for the first time in three nights the hotel we’re staying in won’t start any construction before 8 am, I think. We’ll enjoy Montreal for a day and then head back to Vermont, finish up with some things there, time permitting, and will then Fly our Friendly Skies back to LA. The USS Constitution was our unexpected pleasant surprise on Day 1, and the hike up Mt. Mansfield was it for day 2. I can’t wait to see what Montreal has in store.
Friday, August 8, 2008
#5 - Back and Forth in Boston on Day 2
I might be getting a little rusty at this, because try as we might, we were tested beyond belief today in our whirlwind second day tour through Boston. It seemed like we were just a hair too late for just about everything, but I think I would characterize our entire day as one big diving-save catch.
We were planning to have breakfast at 7:30 with my friend Ken but he was still trapped in Phoenix in a travel nightmare that seemed all too familiar to me. This was just as well because I let Joe sleep in until well after 8:30. From there, we checked out, left our bags at the hotel and headed to the Old State House. I thought we would walk in and walk out, but Joe lingered and really enjoyed himself. I still can’t believe that they built a major subway station under a historic building and put the entrance right in the middle of the building – kind of a primeval Big Dig.
From there we continued along the Freedom Trail until we hit the Granary Burial Ground, the Mother of All Creepy Cemeteries. Joe had a field day. I’ve never been asked so many questions about dead people in my entire life. Paul Revere, John Hancock, Peter Fanueil (of Fanueil Hall fame), and of course, not Ben Franklin, but Ben Franklin’s parents in what was the largest and most misleading gravemarker ever.
Hunger set in, so as we arrived at the Boston Common, I saw the sign for the cleverly named Finagel Bagel, and inside we saw the world’s coolest bagel cutter. Here’s some video:
With food in our stomachs, we checked out the Boston Common which had more homeless people in it than I’ve seen in recent memory. Joe and I instantly saw all kinds of attractions that would’ve been fantastic for Joe’s four year-old brother Will, above all the Duck Pond – a huge lake for kids which is all of 6” deep (it’s an ice rink in the winter). So we’re then off to ride the Swan Boats in the Public Garden next door, and just like that the camera breaks.
What to do. We scrapped the swan boats and decided to go look for a new camera or some sort of temporary replacement. Joe also said that he wanted to take the Boston Duck Tour where brightly colored amphibious vessels on wheels take you through Boston (it’s a ever slightly more tacky version of the London double decker buses). Tickets for the Duck Tour and our new camera would both be found at the mall in the Prudential Center. On the way we headed up Boylston Street stopped into Trinity Church which we just missed the day before. I thought it was a spectacular church interior, and Joe kept telling me that opening the backpack was way too loud for the handful of other more reverent onlookers. After walking forever to get to the Pru (my crummy hotel map was cut off so I didn’t see that we could’ve taken the subway), we find out around 11 am that the next Duck Tour was at 2:30 – too late for us – and alas there was nothing close to a camera store in the mall. We got a disposable camera and departed with our tails beneath our legs (for the rest of the day, Joe would tell the people we asked people to photograph us by telling them that our camera broke – I told him there’s no shame in a disposable camera).
The USS Constitution was our consolation prize, but en route again on the subway, nothing says despair like Joe says “I’m hungry”, so we took a time out at Quincy Market for a quick lunch. We walked over the Charles River, where a bunch of guys were actually casting their lines about 100’ below. And just like that some heavyset Bostonian pulls out a 24” fish right before our eyes. We finally get to the dock and slip right into the guided tour (which Joe as a rule detests) of the Navy’s first boat. The tour was for both of us the highlight of our trip thus far. It’s hard to describe in words, but something about the enthusiastic PFC tour guide, seeing all the canons lined up on the deck below and seeing the rows and rows of hammocks on the deck below that – all made for a memorable trip.
Making the long walk back to the subway was going to be painful for me to hear, so luckily I saw a sign for a water taxi and found out that we had 5 minutes to catch one at the end of the dock one dock over. After getting Joe to put a move on it, we hopped onto the ferry using our subway day pass and they lifted the gangway. Whew. By this time it was a beautiful day in Boston and the harbor view was outstanding. The ferry dropped us right off at the New England Aquarium which Joe had no interest in seeing (“Dad, I swim with the seals in Santa Monica,” he said authoritatively). It was, however, a strategic location because the world’s largest parking garage housed our rental car. I had changed my 5 pm reservation until 3 pm online that morning but didn’t think it would be a problem to pick it up at 1 pm. Well apparently that would require an Act of Congress or at least some valiant speech in one of the historic town meeting houses, because the folks at National would have nothing of it. “The car’s not here, sir.” Another well intended plan foiled at the last minute.
With at least 90 minutes to spare, we decided to head back over and ride the swan boats in the Public Garden (in the better half of the Boston Common). The swan boats were really great, I have to say. Joe remembered them from the “Make Way for the Ducklings” children’s book that seems to have become the new Bible for kids here in Boston. There was also a sculptural homage to the book which we stopped by for a disposable photo op. Boy do I miss that preview after hearing the “click”.
Then, on the way back to the subway station, God spoke us in the form of a Radio Shack. Yes, Radio Shack. No really, Radio Shack. We walked inside and there it was, my exact camera with many more megapixels, the same memory card and more importantly the same battery. We made a quick purchase which I really struggled with in the absence of at least two weeks of in-depth online research, and after swapping out our hardware, we were back in business, digitally speaking.
We rode the subway back across town to the garage once again (for those who know Boston, you’ll appreciate how laborious this was, though fortunately today our luck with the subway was much improved). Our car was ready, we just had to go up to the 14th floor of the parking garage to get it. Actually the 7th but it sure felt like the 14th after it took us forever to get down to the bottom. We swung by to pick up our bags at the hotel, and we were then off to the quaint historic seaside town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire on our way up to Stowe.
Three things got in our way. Traffic, another deluge of Biblical proportions, and more traffic. I always feared this would be the case when I decided to head out of town on a Friday in August, and sure enough, I fought the traffic and the traffic won. We bagged Portsmouth, unfortunately, and pressed on, the wind against our backs, or rather the trunk of our PT Cruiser, and for the next several hours debated how there could be so many cars in the absolute middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere started about 15 miles outside of Boston, by the way. Joe reinforced why I take him on these trips by mentioning “I just can’t believe it’s the middle of summer and it’s raining this hard”. Yep, we’re not in Santa Monica anymore, son.
Joe’s second hunger attack of the day came at a fortuitous time as we just passed Hanover, NH, one of my favorite classic New England towns. We pulled onto Main Street at 6:05 and hit a deli overlooking the idyllic Dartmouth University campus, and lo and behold, they closed at 6. My magic touch has certainly taken a hit. We found a back-up, and after Joe frolicked on the main quad like an golden retriever, we hit the road one more time.
In my pre-planning I had determined that we could still fit in one more activity for the day. I couldn’t remember if the last Ben and Jerry’s tour was at 8 or 8:30, but with the help of Google 411 (the world’s cheapest 411 service), I learned that it was 8, and we had about 80 miles to make it. It was about 6:45, and I was trying to do the math and figured out it would be pretty close to do 80 miles in 75 minutes with the occasional thunderstorm hitting us. About 40 miles out, road construction reduced us to a single lane. I took us up a notch to 75. About 20 miles out, another rainstorm hit. When it subsided, it took us up another notch to 80. We passed the Montpelier exit at 7:56 and rain started to come inside the car. No, that was sweat pouring down my forehead. We got off at the Waterbury/Stowe exit. Three cars were making a right onto the two lane road. It took grandmother-like restraint not to pass them on the right shoulder, but I put my best Vermont hunting hat on and mosied up Vermont 100 at exactly 35 miles per hour. We pulled into Ben and Jerry’s parking lot at 8:03. We ran up the stairs, then through the bushes, then into the factory tour entrance, and…and…and…I forgot my wallet as the tour walked through the door.
I told Joe to start crying loudly and ran back down the stairs, gave myself a stress fracture, unlocked the car, got my wallet, ran back up to where Joe was, now truly sweating like a pig, or rather a spotted Jersey cow, and ran up to the lady at desk and told her that we would like to go on a tour. “I’m sorry sir, the last tour just left. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” I had been rehearsing my speech for at least 15 exits, so I said, “Ma’am, I’ve come all the way from Los Angeles to come on this tour, and my ten year old son here is now crying…Joe, cry goddamn it….can we please catch up with the tour?”
After just missing the bell so many times that day, those few seconds of silence were painfully long. Then it came. “Oh sure, go right ahead.” Take that Clark Griswold. The tour was great, actually, all 15 minutes of it. We saw a really lousy docudrama with more spelling and grammatical errors in the captioning than I would be comfortable making, we saw the factory in action (had we come the next day on Saturday there would be none of the 250,000 pints per day moving through the assembly line), we each received gargantuan samples of strawberry cheesecake (Joe didn’t like his so I ate it), and we closed out the gift shop with some tie dies for Kate and Lizzie and a cow shirt for Will.
With a day like that, just getting into Stowe was a relief. We pulled into the porte cochere of the Stowe Mountain Lodge, a building that I’ve been working on four more than seven years, and it felt good to be done for the day. The hotel looked splendid. We were escorted up to our room, given a detailed description of every last utensil and Mario Russo shampoo, and Joe said, “This is the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in.” Then we turned on the TV just in time to see the Olympic flame light up on Canadian TV (no Bob Costas, eh). What a day. Joe had hunger attack #3, so they brought up some bread which we toasted, and after midnight we completed an Olympic marathon of a day.
And the real Olympian physical activity begins in Stowe tomorrow…citius, altius, fortius…higher, faster, stronger.
We were planning to have breakfast at 7:30 with my friend Ken but he was still trapped in Phoenix in a travel nightmare that seemed all too familiar to me. This was just as well because I let Joe sleep in until well after 8:30. From there, we checked out, left our bags at the hotel and headed to the Old State House. I thought we would walk in and walk out, but Joe lingered and really enjoyed himself. I still can’t believe that they built a major subway station under a historic building and put the entrance right in the middle of the building – kind of a primeval Big Dig.
From there we continued along the Freedom Trail until we hit the Granary Burial Ground, the Mother of All Creepy Cemeteries. Joe had a field day. I’ve never been asked so many questions about dead people in my entire life. Paul Revere, John Hancock, Peter Fanueil (of Fanueil Hall fame), and of course, not Ben Franklin, but Ben Franklin’s parents in what was the largest and most misleading gravemarker ever.Hunger set in, so as we arrived at the Boston Common, I saw the sign for the cleverly named Finagel Bagel, and inside we saw the world’s coolest bagel cutter. Here’s some video:
With food in our stomachs, we checked out the Boston Common which had more homeless people in it than I’ve seen in recent memory. Joe and I instantly saw all kinds of attractions that would’ve been fantastic for Joe’s four year-old brother Will, above all the Duck Pond – a huge lake for kids which is all of 6” deep (it’s an ice rink in the winter). So we’re then off to ride the Swan Boats in the Public Garden next door, and just like that the camera breaks.
What to do. We scrapped the swan boats and decided to go look for a new camera or some sort of temporary replacement. Joe also said that he wanted to take the Boston Duck Tour where brightly colored amphibious vessels on wheels take you through Boston (it’s a ever slightly more tacky version of the London double decker buses). Tickets for the Duck Tour and our new camera would both be found at the mall in the Prudential Center. On the way we headed up Boylston Street stopped into Trinity Church which we just missed the day before. I thought it was a spectacular church interior, and Joe kept telling me that opening the backpack was way too loud for the handful of other more reverent onlookers. After walking forever to get to the Pru (my crummy hotel map was cut off so I didn’t see that we could’ve taken the subway), we find out around 11 am that the next Duck Tour was at 2:30 – too late for us – and alas there was nothing close to a camera store in the mall. We got a disposable camera and departed with our tails beneath our legs (for the rest of the day, Joe would tell the people we asked people to photograph us by telling them that our camera broke – I told him there’s no shame in a disposable camera).
The USS Constitution was our consolation prize, but en route again on the subway, nothing says despair like Joe says “I’m hungry”, so we took a time out at Quincy Market for a quick lunch. We walked over the Charles River, where a bunch of guys were actually casting their lines about 100’ below. And just like that some heavyset Bostonian pulls out a 24” fish right before our eyes. We finally get to the dock and slip right into the guided tour (which Joe as a rule detests) of the Navy’s first boat. The tour was for both of us the highlight of our trip thus far. It’s hard to describe in words, but something about the enthusiastic PFC tour guide, seeing all the canons lined up on the deck below and seeing the rows and rows of hammocks on the deck below that – all made for a memorable trip.
Making the long walk back to the subway was going to be painful for me to hear, so luckily I saw a sign for a water taxi and found out that we had 5 minutes to catch one at the end of the dock one dock over. After getting Joe to put a move on it, we hopped onto the ferry using our subway day pass and they lifted the gangway. Whew. By this time it was a beautiful day in Boston and the harbor view was outstanding. The ferry dropped us right off at the New England Aquarium which Joe had no interest in seeing (“Dad, I swim with the seals in Santa Monica,” he said authoritatively). It was, however, a strategic location because the world’s largest parking garage housed our rental car. I had changed my 5 pm reservation until 3 pm online that morning but didn’t think it would be a problem to pick it up at 1 pm. Well apparently that would require an Act of Congress or at least some valiant speech in one of the historic town meeting houses, because the folks at National would have nothing of it. “The car’s not here, sir.” Another well intended plan foiled at the last minute.
With at least 90 minutes to spare, we decided to head back over and ride the swan boats in the Public Garden (in the better half of the Boston Common). The swan boats were really great, I have to say. Joe remembered them from the “Make Way for the Ducklings” children’s book that seems to have become the new Bible for kids here in Boston. There was also a sculptural homage to the book which we stopped by for a disposable photo op. Boy do I miss that preview after hearing the “click”.
Then, on the way back to the subway station, God spoke us in the form of a Radio Shack. Yes, Radio Shack. No really, Radio Shack. We walked inside and there it was, my exact camera with many more megapixels, the same memory card and more importantly the same battery. We made a quick purchase which I really struggled with in the absence of at least two weeks of in-depth online research, and after swapping out our hardware, we were back in business, digitally speaking.
We rode the subway back across town to the garage once again (for those who know Boston, you’ll appreciate how laborious this was, though fortunately today our luck with the subway was much improved). Our car was ready, we just had to go up to the 14th floor of the parking garage to get it. Actually the 7th but it sure felt like the 14th after it took us forever to get down to the bottom. We swung by to pick up our bags at the hotel, and we were then off to the quaint historic seaside town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire on our way up to Stowe.
Three things got in our way. Traffic, another deluge of Biblical proportions, and more traffic. I always feared this would be the case when I decided to head out of town on a Friday in August, and sure enough, I fought the traffic and the traffic won. We bagged Portsmouth, unfortunately, and pressed on, the wind against our backs, or rather the trunk of our PT Cruiser, and for the next several hours debated how there could be so many cars in the absolute middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere started about 15 miles outside of Boston, by the way. Joe reinforced why I take him on these trips by mentioning “I just can’t believe it’s the middle of summer and it’s raining this hard”. Yep, we’re not in Santa Monica anymore, son.
Joe’s second hunger attack of the day came at a fortuitous time as we just passed Hanover, NH, one of my favorite classic New England towns. We pulled onto Main Street at 6:05 and hit a deli overlooking the idyllic Dartmouth University campus, and lo and behold, they closed at 6. My magic touch has certainly taken a hit. We found a back-up, and after Joe frolicked on the main quad like an golden retriever, we hit the road one more time.
In my pre-planning I had determined that we could still fit in one more activity for the day. I couldn’t remember if the last Ben and Jerry’s tour was at 8 or 8:30, but with the help of Google 411 (the world’s cheapest 411 service), I learned that it was 8, and we had about 80 miles to make it. It was about 6:45, and I was trying to do the math and figured out it would be pretty close to do 80 miles in 75 minutes with the occasional thunderstorm hitting us. About 40 miles out, road construction reduced us to a single lane. I took us up a notch to 75. About 20 miles out, another rainstorm hit. When it subsided, it took us up another notch to 80. We passed the Montpelier exit at 7:56 and rain started to come inside the car. No, that was sweat pouring down my forehead. We got off at the Waterbury/Stowe exit. Three cars were making a right onto the two lane road. It took grandmother-like restraint not to pass them on the right shoulder, but I put my best Vermont hunting hat on and mosied up Vermont 100 at exactly 35 miles per hour. We pulled into Ben and Jerry’s parking lot at 8:03. We ran up the stairs, then through the bushes, then into the factory tour entrance, and…and…and…I forgot my wallet as the tour walked through the door.
I told Joe to start crying loudly and ran back down the stairs, gave myself a stress fracture, unlocked the car, got my wallet, ran back up to where Joe was, now truly sweating like a pig, or rather a spotted Jersey cow, and ran up to the lady at desk and told her that we would like to go on a tour. “I’m sorry sir, the last tour just left. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” I had been rehearsing my speech for at least 15 exits, so I said, “Ma’am, I’ve come all the way from Los Angeles to come on this tour, and my ten year old son here is now crying…Joe, cry goddamn it….can we please catch up with the tour?”
After just missing the bell so many times that day, those few seconds of silence were painfully long. Then it came. “Oh sure, go right ahead.” Take that Clark Griswold. The tour was great, actually, all 15 minutes of it. We saw a really lousy docudrama with more spelling and grammatical errors in the captioning than I would be comfortable making, we saw the factory in action (had we come the next day on Saturday there would be none of the 250,000 pints per day moving through the assembly line), we each received gargantuan samples of strawberry cheesecake (Joe didn’t like his so I ate it), and we closed out the gift shop with some tie dies for Kate and Lizzie and a cow shirt for Will.
With a day like that, just getting into Stowe was a relief. We pulled into the porte cochere of the Stowe Mountain Lodge, a building that I’ve been working on four more than seven years, and it felt good to be done for the day. The hotel looked splendid. We were escorted up to our room, given a detailed description of every last utensil and Mario Russo shampoo, and Joe said, “This is the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in.” Then we turned on the TV just in time to see the Olympic flame light up on Canadian TV (no Bob Costas, eh). What a day. Joe had hunger attack #3, so they brought up some bread which we toasted, and after midnight we completed an Olympic marathon of a day.
And the real Olympian physical activity begins in Stowe tomorrow…citius, altius, fortius…higher, faster, stronger.
#4 - Hotel Review - Boston
My review of our night at the Millennium Bostonian, fondly titled "World’s Best View (if you don’t mind hammering at 6:30 AM)"
http://roomswithareview.blogspot.com
http://roomswithareview.blogspot.com
Thursday, August 7, 2008
#3 - Sloshin' through Boston
(title courtesy of Joe)
The phenomenon of waking up just before your alarm clock rings never ceases to amaze me, particularly when it's at the godforsaken hour of 4:55 am. Early start to a long day. At 5:15 am I walked into Joe's room and informed him that it was time to get up and go to the airport. Here is how it went:
From there, Joe scooted right along. I gave him 15 minutes to get ready and he was out the door in 5. I was even impressed that in that time he had the frame of mind to remind me to tape the swimming events at the Olympics since we wouldn't be seeing them. "How do know that we're not going to the Olympics?" He responded, "Dad, no, come on, where are we going." I told him, "All in due time." After getting on the plane, Joe then asked me if our trip was being blogged which I think is his generation's equivalent of "Am I on Candid Camera?" So I let him read the blog and then asked him if he had any questions. Nothing but a big smile.
We landed in Boston 20 minutes late at almost 4 PM which ended up fracturing my most ambitious plans for our afternoon, but not half as much as the weather did. It wasn't just wet, it was pouring. I told Joe that we shall overcome, and he was game. Fortunately we came prepared. Joe was armed with an umbrella (in hindsight we should've brought two, and I refused to buy my own out of principle), and I donned some golf tournament disposable slicker which had a hood but no sleeves. This meant that my head was wet but my arms were soaking wet. As I predicted, the rain did keep just about everyone off the street except us. I decided that the last place I wanted to be in the rain was a boat i.e. the USS Constitution, so we headed from our hotel room overlooking Fanueil Hall (see my forthcoming TripAdvisor Review) and went into the North End in the remaining 90 minutes when things would be open.
Going anywhere after London, Paris and Rome is tough by comparison, but Boston by any account is a great place for kids of any age (Joe and I went past a row of sidewalk water turrets that we said Will would've loved, especially in the rain). Joe and I checked out Paul Revere's House and then the Old North Church ("One if by land, two if by sea"). The North End is very cool - it looks like London but smells like Rome with all of the Italian restaurants. By the time we made it to the Copp Hill Burying Ground, the thunderstorm had lifted just in time for Joe to say, "Dad, this is kind of creepy." Exactly the reaction that I had when I was roughly his age and I visited my first cemetary in Boston with my parents.
That 20 minute flight delay kept us from making it over to Old Ironsides, so we headed to the T and went all the way over to Copley Square. After testing quite a few subway systems in the last couple of years, the Boston subway is horrendously slow. While you never wait more than a few minutes for a train in Boston, and they take you where you want to go, but they are the slowest most unreliable subway cars I've ever been on. We just sat there for minutes on end in between every stop.
All of this caused me to just miss by a few minutes getting into Trinity Church, a personal architectural favorite of mine. We instead checked out the reading room of the Boston Public Library and then took the T back to Fanueil Hall where we had dinner at Quincy Market. It's funny, after living near Santa Monica for several years where we are inundated with millions of tourists every year, going to Quincy Market seemed an awful lot like going to the Third Street Promenade (drum circles, street performers, eclectic food outlets, all the same retailers, etc.). All of the historical accounts work hard to remind me that Quincy Market is the mother of all lifestyle centers, but in the end I think I prefer Third Street if only because I can get Joe a hot chocolate at 8:45 PM and not have everything be closed. So we wandered around, even saw that Starbucks was closed, and then headed back over to the North End where Joe had a great hot chocolate and a creme brulee (they were out of gelato).
After getting up so early, going to bed tonight won't be tough which is good. We have an action packed day on Friday - finishing up Boston, checking out Portsmouth, NH and then head up to Stowe, where I'm still not sure where I'll be staying, but something should work out or we'll add open-sky camping to the list.
The phenomenon of waking up just before your alarm clock rings never ceases to amaze me, particularly when it's at the godforsaken hour of 4:55 am. Early start to a long day. At 5:15 am I walked into Joe's room and informed him that it was time to get up and go to the airport. Here is how it went:
From there, Joe scooted right along. I gave him 15 minutes to get ready and he was out the door in 5. I was even impressed that in that time he had the frame of mind to remind me to tape the swimming events at the Olympics since we wouldn't be seeing them. "How do know that we're not going to the Olympics?" He responded, "Dad, no, come on, where are we going." I told him, "All in due time." After getting on the plane, Joe then asked me if our trip was being blogged which I think is his generation's equivalent of "Am I on Candid Camera?" So I let him read the blog and then asked him if he had any questions. Nothing but a big smile.
We landed in Boston 20 minutes late at almost 4 PM which ended up fracturing my most ambitious plans for our afternoon, but not half as much as the weather did. It wasn't just wet, it was pouring. I told Joe that we shall overcome, and he was game. Fortunately we came prepared. Joe was armed with an umbrella (in hindsight we should've brought two, and I refused to buy my own out of principle), and I donned some golf tournament disposable slicker which had a hood but no sleeves. This meant that my head was wet but my arms were soaking wet. As I predicted, the rain did keep just about everyone off the street except us. I decided that the last place I wanted to be in the rain was a boat i.e. the USS Constitution, so we headed from our hotel room overlooking Fanueil Hall (see my forthcoming TripAdvisor Review) and went into the North End in the remaining 90 minutes when things would be open.
Going anywhere after London, Paris and Rome is tough by comparison, but Boston by any account is a great place for kids of any age (Joe and I went past a row of sidewalk water turrets that we said Will would've loved, especially in the rain). Joe and I checked out Paul Revere's House and then the Old North Church ("One if by land, two if by sea"). The North End is very cool - it looks like London but smells like Rome with all of the Italian restaurants. By the time we made it to the Copp Hill Burying Ground, the thunderstorm had lifted just in time for Joe to say, "Dad, this is kind of creepy." Exactly the reaction that I had when I was roughly his age and I visited my first cemetary in Boston with my parents.
That 20 minute flight delay kept us from making it over to Old Ironsides, so we headed to the T and went all the way over to Copley Square. After testing quite a few subway systems in the last couple of years, the Boston subway is horrendously slow. While you never wait more than a few minutes for a train in Boston, and they take you where you want to go, but they are the slowest most unreliable subway cars I've ever been on. We just sat there for minutes on end in between every stop.
All of this caused me to just miss by a few minutes getting into Trinity Church, a personal architectural favorite of mine. We instead checked out the reading room of the Boston Public Library and then took the T back to Fanueil Hall where we had dinner at Quincy Market. It's funny, after living near Santa Monica for several years where we are inundated with millions of tourists every year, going to Quincy Market seemed an awful lot like going to the Third Street Promenade (drum circles, street performers, eclectic food outlets, all the same retailers, etc.). All of the historical accounts work hard to remind me that Quincy Market is the mother of all lifestyle centers, but in the end I think I prefer Third Street if only because I can get Joe a hot chocolate at 8:45 PM and not have everything be closed. So we wandered around, even saw that Starbucks was closed, and then headed back over to the North End where Joe had a great hot chocolate and a creme brulee (they were out of gelato).
After getting up so early, going to bed tonight won't be tough which is good. We have an action packed day on Friday - finishing up Boston, checking out Portsmouth, NH and then head up to Stowe, where I'm still not sure where I'll be staying, but something should work out or we'll add open-sky camping to the list.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
#2: T minus 30 hours and counting...
One day left before we lift off. So far the plan is intact, just barely. Our close call came as we were driving back from Manhattan Beach on Sunday after Emily and Joe completed the Hermosa to Manhattan Pier to Pier swim. Joe called his great grandmother to thank her for something. Apparently my blog kickoff email wasn't as clear as I thought because about 30 seconds into the conversation my grandmother asked Joe, "So when are you and your dad leaving on your trip together?" Oops.
Joe might be really good at playing along, I don't know, but he sure had me convinced when he passed the phone over to me with the look of total confusion on his face. Afterward, I shamelessly threw my grandmother under the bus by telling Joe it was she who was utterly confused about our upcoming family vacation to Lake Tahoe. Later that day to stave off a potential light bulb moment I offered up to Joe - "Maybe we should have you fly up a couple weeks early to Santa Clara (to stay with my parents before Tahoe)...". While that generated an onslaught of "Can I go to Grandma's?" requests, I think I threw him off the scent. I was even toying with the idea of roping a compliant friend of Joe's into a sleepover the night before we left, just to leave no stone unturned, but that plan came with too many strings attached (not to mention the fact that there would be some really bewildered neighborhood kid would wake up asking "Where's Joe?", forcing Emily to respond, "Oh, he flew to Boston with his dad. Would you like eggs or pancakes?").
The forecast for all 3 1/2 days is for partial rain, so we'll have to come prepared (As an aside, I once intentionally sought out a day at Disneyland when there was a rain forecast under the correct assumption that it would be less crowded, though it came, not surprisingly, with some rain). So armed with our waterproof windbreakers and travel umbrella, we're ready to conquer revolutionary Boston.
And while this revolution will not be televised, we may come close. Below is a quick test run of a how-to-ride-a-tricycle-video-and-nearly-make-your-daugher-cry. There are millions of potential applications. My plan is to video capture Joe's reaction to when I wake him up at 5:15 AM and tell him that he's got 15 minutes before we leave for the airport, and then post it before we take off. Gentlemen, synchronize your in-boxes!
Joe might be really good at playing along, I don't know, but he sure had me convinced when he passed the phone over to me with the look of total confusion on his face. Afterward, I shamelessly threw my grandmother under the bus by telling Joe it was she who was utterly confused about our upcoming family vacation to Lake Tahoe. Later that day to stave off a potential light bulb moment I offered up to Joe - "Maybe we should have you fly up a couple weeks early to Santa Clara (to stay with my parents before Tahoe)...". While that generated an onslaught of "Can I go to Grandma's?" requests, I think I threw him off the scent. I was even toying with the idea of roping a compliant friend of Joe's into a sleepover the night before we left, just to leave no stone unturned, but that plan came with too many strings attached (not to mention the fact that there would be some really bewildered neighborhood kid would wake up asking "Where's Joe?", forcing Emily to respond, "Oh, he flew to Boston with his dad. Would you like eggs or pancakes?").
The forecast for all 3 1/2 days is for partial rain, so we'll have to come prepared (As an aside, I once intentionally sought out a day at Disneyland when there was a rain forecast under the correct assumption that it would be less crowded, though it came, not surprisingly, with some rain). So armed with our waterproof windbreakers and travel umbrella, we're ready to conquer revolutionary Boston.
And while this revolution will not be televised, we may come close. Below is a quick test run of a how-to-ride-a-tricycle-video-and-nearly-make-your-daugher-cry. There are millions of potential applications. My plan is to video capture Joe's reaction to when I wake him up at 5:15 AM and tell him that he's got 15 minutes before we leave for the airport, and then post it before we take off. Gentlemen, synchronize your in-boxes!
Friday, August 1, 2008
#1 - Trip, what Trip?
It's hard to follow up a trip to London, Paris and Rome. At the beginning of the summer I asked Joe where he wanted to go this year. He said Beijing. What was his second choice? Australia. How about Boston, I asked. Do I need a passport? No. Um, how about Tokyo. Then back to Paris? Clearly, I had created a monster.
So I took a different tack. Delay and confuse. Silent treatment. No more questions from me. Dad, are we going on a trip? Yes. Where are we going? You know, we're all going to Lake Tahoe at the end of August. That's not what I meant Dad. What do you mean Joe? Are we going somewhere next week? Well I'm going to Mexico City on Monday if that's what you mean. Daaad. What, Joe? Junior Guards is over and I'm not doing anything next week. Do you want to come with me to Mexico City? Yeah! Sorry, you can't. DAD!
And so it goes. My tentative plan is to change the subject for another five days and then wake Joe up at 5:20 AM on Thursday and tell him that he and I are walking out the door in 20 minutes and that his bags are already packed. He'll know he's going to Boston when we get to the gate, and even later if I can swing it.
How much I will tell Joe about what we're going to do on our trip to Boston, Stowe and Montreal remains to be seen. Unlike Europe, I haven't yet pre-programmed every last tenth of an hour yet. Yet. Boston in a day seems eminently doable. Vermont doesn't really strike me as the kind of place where you can be on too much of a schedule, but in the words of Julie Andrews, if we're going to climb every mountain, including Vermont's highest, Mt. Mansfield (with some help from the Gondola), and stop by the Trapp Family Lodge of The Sound of Music fame, and go to the Ben and Jerry's World Headquarters, and fly fish and do the alpine slide and ride the Stowe bike trail and swim in the river, and go through a covered bridge, then we need at least a little hop in our step, if only because we're on to Montreal that night. And what's with Montreal? Joe wanted France, I'm giving him Montreal. Better exchange rate. We'll follow the Freedom Trail with some Freedom Fries.
Our gear, same as before, same as always. One backback, one sound.
I'm bringing my laptop so that I can keep the blog up to date, plus it doubles as a DVD player. Everything else we can figure out as we go along. Well maybe a moment or two before...
So I took a different tack. Delay and confuse. Silent treatment. No more questions from me. Dad, are we going on a trip? Yes. Where are we going? You know, we're all going to Lake Tahoe at the end of August. That's not what I meant Dad. What do you mean Joe? Are we going somewhere next week? Well I'm going to Mexico City on Monday if that's what you mean. Daaad. What, Joe? Junior Guards is over and I'm not doing anything next week. Do you want to come with me to Mexico City? Yeah! Sorry, you can't. DAD!
And so it goes. My tentative plan is to change the subject for another five days and then wake Joe up at 5:20 AM on Thursday and tell him that he and I are walking out the door in 20 minutes and that his bags are already packed. He'll know he's going to Boston when we get to the gate, and even later if I can swing it.
How much I will tell Joe about what we're going to do on our trip to Boston, Stowe and Montreal remains to be seen. Unlike Europe, I haven't yet pre-programmed every last tenth of an hour yet. Yet. Boston in a day seems eminently doable. Vermont doesn't really strike me as the kind of place where you can be on too much of a schedule, but in the words of Julie Andrews, if we're going to climb every mountain, including Vermont's highest, Mt. Mansfield (with some help from the Gondola), and stop by the Trapp Family Lodge of The Sound of Music fame, and go to the Ben and Jerry's World Headquarters, and fly fish and do the alpine slide and ride the Stowe bike trail and swim in the river, and go through a covered bridge, then we need at least a little hop in our step, if only because we're on to Montreal that night. And what's with Montreal? Joe wanted France, I'm giving him Montreal. Better exchange rate. We'll follow the Freedom Trail with some Freedom Fries.
Our gear, same as before, same as always. One backback, one sound.
I'm bringing my laptop so that I can keep the blog up to date, plus it doubles as a DVD player. Everything else we can figure out as we go along. Well maybe a moment or two before...
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