This trip took place starting on Friday, May 11, 2007. It was our largest trip of that year (though not the most traumatic!), and took us through one of America's most venerable cultural powerhouses. Boston, Massachusetts.
Hello, My Darlings!
Yes, by special request I am breaking the “fourth wall” for this story, addressing you directly, my supportive readers. My hope is that I can help you to feel more a direct part of the experiences I have laboriously processed through my narrative taffy-pulling machine. Before we begin, I invite you to sit down, put your feet up, let out your gut and sip something caffeinated or alcoholic. This latest little vacation jaunt is going to be a bumpy and exciting ride!
As far back as January, Jennifer and I already had travel plans in play for seeing the city of Boston. However, we couldn’t have known at that time what to expect with this upcoming new year, 2007; Jennifer received an unexpected opportunity to change jobs and resume her career in newspaper. Unfortunately, her new work environment was economically a bit shakier than where she left, so we weren’t sure if this excursion would be the first and only one for us this year. Ergo, we made ourselves a promise that we would make it as memorable and entertaining as possible.
Ultimately, this trip would yield a set of experiences that we hope will delight and horrify you. By the way, apologies in advance: both Jennifer and I are studying foreign languages during this chapter of our lives (Latin for me, Spanish for her), and I can’t resist including a few words in the narrative wherever I can gratuitously shoehorn them. Gratia tibi! [Latin for “thank you!”]
Friday, May 11, 2007—Working Our Way Up to Get to the Bottom
Those of you who have been figurative homunculi riding on our shoulders during these virtual vacation tours will realize that Jennifer and I favor the use of wings for the lobbing of our bones across this sweet land o’ liberty. This current trip was to be no exception. As usual, we found that our local airport was too damn parochial to have a flight that wasn’t 20 percent more expensive and at a time other than 3 a.m. Our fallback airport didn’t do much better this time, so we booked our flight(s) through one we had never tried before.
At least we avoided the worst of the rush hour “cows.”
Indulge me in a quick explanation on the term “cows” as written specifically with the quotation marks.
As I’ve bemoaned in these stories before, Jennifer and I have become increasingly intolerant of the crowds that inhabit the public realm. No matter how intelligent or decent an individual, people in crowds seem to deteriorate markedly in civility, intellect and fine motor skills. I was telling Jennifer a couple of weeks ago that I often feel she and I are some of the only ones in public who are there with any sense of purpose. So many others blunder along with glassy-eyed looks of bovine blankness on their faces, acting like they just woke up and found themselves in the store or on the highway. They have to amble around sleepily, chewing their cud while they figure out why they’re there. Do you know those type of people? I’m sure you do. If you’ve never encountered someone like this before, chances are good that she or he is you. ;) For Jennifer and I, I’ve recently started applying the term “cows” to such people.
The Road of the Undead
Fans of fantasy fiction know that the term “undead” is applied to that which is dead but still animate; that is, something dead that mimics the living. Like zombies or vampires. Any of you who live near Jennifer and I will concur immediately that the term “undead” very aptly fits the highway known as Interstate 75. Honestly, has that road ever been in good repair? As long as I can remember, it has been peppered with those annoying orange barrels, pockmarked with potholes, and stitched together with mile after mile of concrete barricades on the shoulders that force you to smooch the cheeks of the irate driver in the lane next to you when you try to pass them. The road mimics a living road, but it is truly undead. I wish the state government would fix whatever broken part of it they’ve ruminated on for decades now and MOVE ON. *Snort*
Long story short here, we got crunched, diverted, routed, slowed down, shook and in general, just frazzled by spending two hours on this desiccated, undead interstate highway. And now that I think about it, I believe I’ve pointed out this road’s limits in several other vacation narratives….
Econo Bare Bono
Not since May 20, 2005, with our stay in Land Between the Lakes, had Jennifer and I been in a “motel.” We don’t avoid them or consider ourselves “too good” for them, mind you; no, it is usually because most of the places we visit require us to be close to the public transportation system. By and large, that means we end up in hotels rather than motels. And generally, the hotels in which we’ve stayed have had more goods and extraneous services available than we really need (or can afford).
But we were only staying in the outskirts of the aeropuerto (Spanish for “airport”) for a single night, and we did not see any reason to reserve anything but the bare-bone minimum of accommodations. Most of our necessities we had brought with us anyway. So Jennifer had found us a spot in the humble Econo Lodge. We took our exit, I pulled us over in the far right lane and we merrily sailed past our motel as it waited tantalizingly out of reach from us on the left side of the road. [Sigh] Three frustrated turns later, we managed to successfully reverse direction and pull into the parking lot of the snickering Econo Lodge.
Having become accustomed to (okay, spoiled by) the tie-wearing, formally courteous concierges of
some of the hotels in which we’ve stayed, Jennifer and I were quite unprepared when we walked inside the main lobby of the motel and found ourselves having to speak to the receptionist through bullet-proof glass. She uttered a muffled monosyllabic murmur for a greeting, prior to having us hand our payment and reservation information through the airlock on the counter in front of her so she wouldn’t have to risk us touching her hands. Then she hulked her way to the other side of the room and proceeded to shout check-in questions that were largely unintelligible through the half-inch, virtually soundproof glass. It was like being welcomed by world-famous mime, Marcel Marceau...except less audible. We really started to get worried when she directed us to our room, which was in another building over a long hill, around a band of trees, past a snoring sasquatch, and down a mineshaft. Honestly, it felt like the dark side of the moon. Jennifer and I immediately began to fear that we might end up parking her li’l gold car, “Tinky” in that lot, only to come back and find her stripped bare the next day. It seemed like a dilapidated, poorly maintained area with negligible security. We were kicked in the gut with a reminder of why we usually do hotels. Some expenses are worth the investment.
When we opened up the door to our room, it gave whole new meaning to “bare bones.” It was so simple, they’d even left out the comfort. There’s Zen and then there’s Econo. The entire room was faded, with ripped places, broken furniture and chipped porcelain. To our surprise, it did have a small refrigerator and microwave, though we came well enough prepared that we didn’t need them. A cooler held our trusty beer and coveted unsweetened tea (for the record, unsweetened tea is literally “brown gold” on our travels…almost nowhere sells it!)
Lights would have been nice.
Yes, I sleep on the left side of the bed, so Jennifer always gets to be “right” [chuckle]. But the light on my side was apparently blown. Not to be deterred, I unscrewed what appeared to be a bulb that hadn’t been changed since the last season of the Cosby Show was still on the air, tossed it into the trash and cannibalized a bulb from above the television; who needs a bulb over the boob-tube, anyway? Triumphantly, I installed the bulb in its new seat and tah-dah! It still didn’t work. [Sigh]. We finally compromised by removing the lampshade from the light on Jennifer’s side, so its putrid, nacreous ambience could ooze equally over both ends of the room.
Speaking of sides to the bed, Jennifer and I have gotten wa-a-a-ay too accustomed to our queen-sized mattress at home. This one was a smaller full-sized. After Jennifer called in a food order from Domino’s Pizza and we spread ourselves horizontally to grab a quick nap, the smaller bed immediately made us feel like we were resting cheek-to-cheek.
But for all its limits, we knew the Econo Lodge was only a temporary arrangement, a way to position ourselves to really start our vacation proper later. Thus, we were willing to suffer the limitations for what would only be an evening and a night. We knew that once we got to Boston, we’d check into our real room at the Milner Hotel, and it would be a vast improvement.
We ultimately turned in for an early night. We anticipated that come morning, we’d need all of our concentrative powers.
NEXT: The Usual Plethora of Airport Hassles and the life and death trip to the Hotel
Click here for Part II
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