Day 72 - Boston

The heat wave continues. It's gotta break at some point, right? It's actually supposed to break tomorrow, but with rain showers. And it'll be cooler once I get down to Martha's Vineyard anyway. Oh, speaking of Martha's Vineyard, I had a bit of a crisis earlier today. I assumed that the Martha's Vineyard ferry would be similar to the Port Aransas ferry in that you show up, they load you on a ferry, and you're on your way. Sometimes there's a wait, but you'll get there eventually as long as you're there in line. Apparently, that's not so with this ferry. In order to get your car over, you need a reservation (and it's kinda expensive). So Alex, who I'm staying with, mentioned this to me and I was like, "Oh, shit, I hope there's space available." But on a Saturday in July with one day's notice? Freak out. So I checked, and there was actually one ferry available at 7:30 tomorrow evening - the only one available all day, but surprisingly fits into my schedule almost perfectly. So I tried to book it. And the website wouldn't load. So I tried to call. And the office was closed. AHHHHHHH. New plan: call first thing in the morning. If it has sold out since now, I'll just park on the mainland and take the ferry over to the island without my car and deal with cabs on the island. 20 minutes later, I tried the site again, and it worked. Woo hoo! So I booked it. Phew. Only wrinkle is that I couldn't get a ferry off the island until 4 PM on the day I'm leaving. I would have preferred about 10:30 AM. So I'll have some extra time to kill on the island and won't be able to hit as much stuff on my way to my next stop. But it'll be fine.

But, right as all of this was occurring, I got word that the friend that I was supposed to stay with in Connecticut is going to be out of town unexpectedly for work. So I had 2 nights to kill. A bit of rework to my schedule, and it's all working out. I added one more night in NYC and one more night in Newport, RI. Because I'll now be later getting into Newport because of the ferry, having 2 nights there rather than just the one will allow me to spend a full day exploring all of the mansions. It all works out in the end.

So today. The plan was: tour of Fenway Park, visit to John F Kennedy National Historic Site, volksmarch around the Freedom Trail. I went to Fenway Park and got on the 10:00 tour. Most of the tour was outside, and it was already over 90 degrees with lots of humidity. Not comfortable. The tour was good. I don't know if it was cause it was a game day, or if it's just how they always do the tour, but we didn't get to see any behind the scenes stuff. We did get to sit atop the Green Monster and heard some great history of the park, but didn't get to see any clubhouses. After the tour was over, I was starving (I didn't eat any breakfast) and hot and sweaty. So I made the game time decision to skip the volksmarch and rearrange my schedule. So I found a local bar and had a nice long leisurely lunch and then headed over to the JFK National Historic Site.

The JFK site is the house in which he was born. It's in Brookline. The first 4 Kennedy kids were born in this house. After the family moved to a larger home, the house passed through 5 families until Rose rebought the house, recreated the way it was decorated when JFK was born (all from her memory), and donated it to the National Park Service to be opened to the public. It's a nice house, and our tour guide was very knowledgeable. Oh, and it's a free tour, so definitely stop by if you're in town.

I then came back to the house and took another nap. Yay for naps!!

This evening, Alex and I went out to a local bar for a bite to eat and to watch the Red Sox game. That was fun.

I keep forgetting to write about this dream that I had the other night, so I'm writing about it now. It was a few days ago while I was up in Vermont. So here's the dream:
I was at UVA, on the lawn, and a big airplane was either taking off or landing, but something happened and it totally crashed and started rolling down the lawn. There were people in the way, and people were screaming for them to get out of the way, but they didn't hear it, so the plane ran over them. Disturbing, right? Then, once the plane had come to a rest, a bunch of us ran over to it (at which point it became miniature), and we popped off the various panels of the sides of the plane in order to reach the people inside. I could reach in and check their pulses and everyone was in their seats and totally okay. But this guy and I got into this huge argument as to whether we should get the passengers out of the plane or not. 911 couldn't get there for 10 minutes, and I kept yelling at this guy that the plane could explode, so we had to get them all out, but he was all, "you're not in charge." So, of course, I responded, "well, no one here is, so now I am." And that was the end of the dream.

So after reading some stuff about plane crashes in dreams, here is my official analysis: I am worried that I might fail when attempting to achieve my dreams and ambitions, but I'm still willing to fight for them and not give up. Even if I do fail, I will fight to go on and try again. And so it will be.

Tomorrow, leaving Boston and headed to the Vineyard.