Boston and being sick.

I spent the day at home today because I've been sick for the past couple of days. It sucks pretty badly to be sick, but on the other hand I've enjoyed the day sleeping and watching TV. It's always nice to have some time off. Nothing of extreme consequence happened today so I figured I'd share about my trip up to Boston to see Kyle a.k.a BFK.

Last week was the end of the fiscal year and I had quite a bit to do to end my quarter gracefully, but I decided that if I were to get everything done that I needed to do by Friday night, that I'd head up to Boston. I worked until about 12 midnight getting everything done, but I managed to pull it off meaning I wouldn't need to be in till Tuesday.

I had always been the person to (almost) never do anything spontaneous... nothing major that is, so it was a combination of wanting to see new places, being completely on my own, having the weekend free, and me peer pressuring myself because I hadn't done anything like this before.

The trip up was a bit long (it's about 8 hours up there), but I used to drive a 6 hour leg to Chicago from Des Moines all the time so I was used to the lengthy trip. What I wasn't expecting is the amount of traffic and tolls headed up there. Don't get me wrong, the traffic wasn't terrible by any means and I live in DC which has been the worst for traffic congestion in the nation for a number of years, but for a Saturday afternoon it was still much more than I'm used to.

I was hoping to be able to make a few calls to friends on the way just to talk and keep myself occupied to some degree, but unfortunately my hands-free headset wasn't working and DC, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania all have very strict cell phone laws and you MUST have a hands-free headset to talk. Because of this I only had two relatively brief conversations with Colleen and my mom.

Now Let me just tell you guys about the difference between going from DC to Boston from Des Moines to Chicago. First off, you never see a sign that says next gas 45mi, you never run out of radio stations, your biggest fear is an accident with another car and not with a deer, there are about 30 miles that AREN'T on a tollway going through a major city or suburb versus about 30 miles that are and it seems like road rage is much more prevalent out here. I do like the way rest areas are set up here though. They all have 3-5 restaurants, a gas station, and a convenience store.

Most of the highways have trees on both sides as sound blockers so the scenery was similar for most of the trip, but going into New York was pretty crazy because you can see the whole skyline from the Jersey Turnpike.

I got into Boston early evening and met up with BFK. He has a pretty cool apartment near Boston University (which is where he's going for law school).
We met up with a couple of his buddies and went out for dinner at a pretty cool place. I forget the name, but they had a very wide selection of food. We went out to a couple of clubs later and apparently tennis shoes aren't allowed in any clubs (this is where all the really rich lawyer types are mind you) so I had to cram my gigantic feet into BFK's tiny and ugly-ass black boot-shoe things (ok, they weren't terrible, I just wanted to give BFK more crap). We had a pretty good time, enough that parts of the night are a little bit fuzzy, but I made it into bed successfully and we were up and around sometime around noon the next day.

BFK took me on a walking tour of Boston, and man did we walk. We went downtown to where he works, by the Cheers bar, around to the Boston Commons, to Boston Harbor, MIT and Harvard campuses and a couple more places. We mapped it out and we had walked 11.2 miles that day. Just walking though we ran into some pretty impressive cars. There was a Lamborghini Murcielago, a Bently (not quite sure on the model on that one) and two Maseritis, but hey, Boston is where all the really high paid lawyers live so I'd expect to see cars like that around.

It turned out that everybody had plans for that night so I had Sushi with BFK and his girlfriend Sarah. We spent most of that night playing Guitar Hero and hanging out.

I left Monday morning and headed back. I'm happy that I got all the way to Baltimore before rush hour because New York and New Jersey on the path I would have taken would have been bad. Baltimore was surprisingly light as was the beltway through DC by the time I got to it.

The trip cost me about $50 in tolls and two tanks of gas ~$70 and I found out later that you can book a shuttle flight from DC to Boston for around $80 but I suppose you live and learn. That and you have to book well in advance to get that price and this was a last minute type of thing. It was a lot of fun though and definitely worth it to go up.

The next couple of weekends are going to be pretty crazy though. I'll be working this weekend, but the one after we're headed to Atlantic City and after that Colleen comes into town so many Hoorays!

In case you're wondering what the pictures are, they are as follows:
The first is the Boston Commons which is a really cool park area that actually has a huge parking garage and other infrastructure below it.
The second is one of MIT's main buildings. We wandered past their campus which is actually rather unimpressive aesthetically. A lot of boxy 70s style architecture.
The third is the Lamborghini we saw that was actually sitting at a very nice hotel by near the Commons.
The fourth is looking across Harvard campus which is a really cool campus, but had better be for the price and prestige associated with it.
The fifth picture is Boston Harbor where the Boston Tea Party occurred.