Mark up another one of my new all time favorite cities. Boston was awesome. Beautiful scenery, great public transportation, and very walkable. I went out with my roommate Kyle Smith, and my buddy Mike Cummins. We left early Saturday morning, at something like 5 am, (for those of you who know me well, thats not a good time for me), and got into town around 8:30. Hello cold weather and rain. Not exactly what I had in mind when planning a trip to New England in June. In fact I had brought along only one long sleeved shirt and no jacket, so this became my primary clothing for the weekend. We also had no rain gear (umbrella or poncho), so we were pretty much in for whatever God had in mind to throw at us. First day we pretty much planned all indoor activities due to the rain, however the issue of getting to these so called activities was still a problem. Well Kyle and Mike being the smart people they are (a lot of sarcasm was in that statement), thought we'd walk to the New England Aquarium. "Oh, Ben, its not that far." Approximately 15 minutes later, we arive at the aquarium and I am absolutely soaked and miserable. Oh, by the way, it turns out that there was a subway stop approximately 1/2 block away. My mood at this point is pretty well depicted in the photo shown, supplied by Kyle. The aquarium was pretty cool by the way, and one of the most interesting aquatic creatures I have ever seen was there and called a Sea Dragon. The thing looked just like a leafy plant, but yet was some sort of fish. We spent the second half of the day at the Boston Museum of Science, which the highlight for me was the worlds largest Van de Graaff. Those of you from the good ol days of Fairfield High School will remember this device from physics and Mr. Ulrich. In those days we called the generator the "Big Ball," and would begin to chant in class, "Big Ball, Big Ball...." until Mr. Ulrich would get the thing out and let us play with it and shock each other. Well this one was huge and threw off electric sparks approximaletly 8 feet long. Pretty cool. The one in high school would shock you from maybe a 1/4 inch away.

Day two turned out to be a little nicer, still cold, just not as rainy. We headed up to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which was very moving and informative, and on our way back probably had one of the more interesting things on the trip happen to us. We saw a drug addict jump on the subway tracks and severly hurt himself to the point where he couldn't get up and was laying about 5 feet below us on a live subway line, with what looked like a severely fractured broken arm. I've always wondered what I'd do in a situation where someones life is in danger, and I pretty much froze up and had no idea how I should help this man. Kyle went up and got a transit officer, while Mike and I made sure that no trains were coming by while he laid there. There was also something like a 480 volt live power line right beside the guy too. within minutes they shut the line down and around 20 firefighters and policeman show up. Pretty sad situation, in talking to the officers they say bums often try to commit suicide in this manner and thats probably what he was doing. He was pretty out of it, and you could see heroin needle marks on his arms. We ended up having to give out our contact information, and gave some statements and ended up leaving once they oppened the station back up, I'm hoping I don't end up receiving a phone call or a something in the mail about this. Off to better things. Harvard and MIT. Harvard was an absolutely beautiful laid out campus with awesome buildings, while MIT was a bit more industrial although still very magnificient. I guess that kind of explains the difference between a liberal arts school and a technology school.


We also began on this evening a little joke of which we started posing with any sort of stature/bronze figure we could find. Well Boston being a historical city, these statues were everywhere. I thought I'd supply a small sampling for your viewing pleasure.






























We finished up the weekend with the historical side of Boston. There is this really cool walking trail that goes past 15 or so historical sites such as Paul Reveres house, the Old North Church, and things like that. It finishes up at Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). There was also an old 1940's era Destroyer battleship called the USS Cassin Young, we showed up at just the right time and were able to take a below deck tour, and I think we bothered the tour guide a little with all of the buttons and levers we were flipping and pushing. I still don't see how people lived on these things. In some of the beds there was only around a foot of up/down space. Something like this makes we even happier I never signed up for the Navy's nuclear power officer job, I heavily considered in college. Another cool site was one of the graveyards that containted the graves of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and several other notable figures, who weren't notable enough for me to remember here.

Have a great week!