Amishrobot

Back From Boston 2

I had to go to Boston for work again last week and once again I loved it.

Having lost my driver's license before the trip I discovered that you can travel, at least domestically, without picture ID as long as they send you through special security. In the Salt Lake airport that included going through one of those new “puffer” bomb detecting machines. You step into a booth and then blasts of air assault you. The Boston airport doesn't have the “puffer” machine, so they have really rude security people to make up for it. Yelling every instruction in an angry angry voice ensures our safety.

I was traveling with 4 coworkers and we had to drive all over Boston. If I had been the one driving I may have lost my love of the city. Seriously, that is not an easy city to navigate! We had to pass around the map and give everyone a chance to get us horribly lost so that we could have proper respect for the job of navigator. The fact that the person driving, who happened to be my brother John, didn't have an aneurism or any serious road rage incidents is a miracle. We finally succeeded in navigating by using what we called the “cartoon map”, a cheap little map of tourist attractions that for some reason was way easier to use than the serious map. Though it did cause us to give directions like, “Turn left at Bunker Hill” and “Turn right just past where John Hancock battled an army of mercenary polar bears”. Little known fact, Boston was actually designed to be confusing in an effort to repel the Visigoths invaders.

OK, all the fake historical sites we invented did not help navigation, but really kept us entertained. I would love to rent one of those Duck Tour cars for a day and drive unsuspecting tourists around making up an alternate history of Boston. “If you look to your left you will see where George Washington and Charlemagne signed the Geneva Convention.”

Also, it is important to note that I had to ride in the back of a Durango, which is horrible horrible car. Not many people know this, but the Durango's seats were actually designed by the Marquis de Sade. I really hated that Durango.

While riding in the front seat of a cab, a much better way to get around Boston, our driver tried to change lanes without signaling and I was fortunate enough to be sitting between our driver and the angry Bostonian in the next lane who was yelling “use your directionals!” I grew up calling them “turn signals” or “blinkers” and I was going to make fun of “directionals”, but then I said “blinkers” to myself a few times. I may start calling them directionals too.

The angry Bostonian was right. How hard is it to signal when you turn? While I am talking about driving can I just say a few things to my fellow Utah drivers?

1. Stop driving once you reach 200 years of age.
2. You do NOT have to come to a complete stop every time you turn a corner. Your sedan is not going to flip over at 5 mph.
3. Pull out into the stinking intersection on left turns so that more than one car can get through a light.
4. “Use your directionals!”

Back to the historical sites; for a west coast guy like me, used to cities established in 1972, it is really nice to be surrounded by history. You would think I would hate history, being the son of a history professor, but somehow I was not turned off of it by having a dad that would answer a fourth grader's question, “Why did the Pilgrims come to America?” with “Well, first you need to understand something about the religious situation in Europe, let's start with Martin Luther... Oh, but don't let me forget about the Anabaptists and the Dunkers!”

One of the customers we visited while out there lived in a house built in 1724. If you are a European reader please try not to laugh your head off that I thought a home built in 1724 was old. That goes for you too South American readers (If there are any of you out there, say hello). I lived by Coro Venezuela and it was established in the early 1500's. OK, now that we have established it was actually a rather new little house... The owner warned me to watch my head in a very short doorway, which I did, but then I stood up into a short ceiling. I thought I broke my skull, but I played it off, “Ha ha, I am always banging my head on stuff, ha ha... someone call an ambulance...seriously.”

I also ate more seafood in one week than I had in the entire year to date. Maybe I need to visit Boston under some less ideal circumstances to know if I would really love it. I think that you could visit the worst place on earth in the Spring, eat crab and lobster, invent fake history, and think it was a great place.

There was one thing I found disturbing about this last visit. Someone tell me what kind of tree creates this killing-machine of a seed. That is not normal.

Update:
Neil has solved the mystery. The seed is from a water chestnut, not a tree at all. Also, it IS a killing machine:

“The water chestnut seed is a danger to bathers and beachcombers, its hard spikes capable of tearing through shoe leather.”