Sunday, July 29, 2012

Rain, Rain go away...

Oh well...we'll still play.

Saturday, after Janet finished her conference we planned to bike ride the Minute Man Trail.  Well a storm brewed and it started raining...actually pouring.  But Janet had free babysitting arranged and we decided to continue on with our plan because...  it might stop. So Chad and Janet loaded the bikes in an almost  downpour.  The first time using a new bike carrier...the first time using their bikes since moving to Boston.  I love being the cause of an adventure:)
.
Mounted up and ready to
We started at the Minute Man Museum. It was about 6 pm, the museum had closed and the parking lot was deserted.
Chad doing a last minute repair.
The rain had slowed down to a nice drizzle and we were riding under a canopy of trees most of the time so we barely noticed the rain.
 
 The trail was also deserted.  We didn't see another soul the whole way.
The rain really helped us there...it's prime tourist season and the trail should have been packed with walkers and bikers to dodge.



 
Chad says the poncho is deceiving...he's not that fat.
 


 The trail was a beautiful mostly downhill ride.
   
At about 7pm we decided we'd better start back.  Janet and I  were dreading the return trip knowing a nice gradual downhill was going to be a slow grueling uphill and it would probably get dark on us.   The solution...Chad would ride the grueling uphill back to the van...being the tough man.  Janet and I would continue on with the beautiful down hill journey through the quaint and historic Concord township to the North Bridge where Chad would pick us up.



The ride was still slow going,not because of hills, but because we had to stop so often to gawk at these amazing house and read the plaques.

 We arrive at the North Bridge just as it was getting officially dark and just minutes before Chad arrived with the van.
 It seemed like it started to rain harder just as we got in the van...or maybe we just hadn't noticed..

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A quick trip to Baltimore


Testing our skills on the 5-12 year old playground.





At the Pool







Friday, July 20, 2012

Exploring Boston

 Flying standby always comes with the risk of not being
able to get on a flight...we've now experienced that. Due to a flight to NYC being canceled the "Red-eye" flight to Boston we hoped to get on was full of NYC travelers.  But with a mix of hope and dread we watched and waited as all the passenagers boarded...we hoped as they announced the final boarding call for some tardy passengers that they wouldn't show. And watched as they ALL straggled in...the very last person to board, a  women, was irritated at the gate agent  because there wasn't an aisle seat for her...while a half a dozen standby customers would have gladly   taken that middle seat.   Then we called Ryan, our renter who had taken us to the airport, to come and get us ...at 11:45 pm.

The next day headed to the airport again hoping to get on the noon flight...greeting our standby comrades that had waited with us the night before.   This time we made it on the flight. Our Boston adventure had began...12 hours later than originally planned.
 Chad picked us up at the Boston airport sparing us of the anticipated subway ride to Alewife...which was fine since to was 9pm and  we are still novice at big city subway riding.

Exploring Boston Day 1
Exploring a Battleship







 

The USS Constitution







City view from the harbor ferry.

Seal watching outside the Aquarium.

Street musician


Winding our way through downtown Boston
 Canoeing on the Charles river.