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.
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