Summer 2021 – The East Coast

Summer 2021 – East Coast - Day 1. Taking flight.

I am not quite sure if I will be able to keep a daily blog this time round, but we will see how it develops. After a particularly trying pandemic and house arrest, I have a lot of destinations in mind, so I will have a lot to talk about. To start with I am heading to Boston to spend a few days with Sonya and Brad. You may remember that it was last time I went to Boston, in December, that I slipped in black ice and broke my right leg, so I am going back on a double-dare spirit, to show Boston and Somerville that I am not afraid of them (at least not in the hot summer).

Relatively simple day. I spent the morning tidying my house and emptying the many science experiments that I have been running for the last few months inside my fridge, and then tried to eat all sorts of leftovers just before they went bad. I like living on the edge 😉

DJ and Ronnie came to pick me up at noon, took me to the Sacramento airport, and after a modest wait I took off for Phoenix, and from there took the overnight flight to Boston.

Summer 2021 – East Coast – Day 2. Boston.

I landed at 6 am, and by 6:20 am Brad had collected me and brought me home to Somerville. There he handed me to Sonya and their little one, Rocket. First order of business was to take Rocket to the vet, for teeth cleaning; he knew something was amiss and didn’t want to stay behind, but there is only so much a small dog can do to show his displeasure.

Boston/Somerville is so pretty when the sun shines and the flowers are in bloom. Sonya and Brad have a small but very productive back garden, with all sorts of herbs, tomatoes, string beans, and peppers. Lots and lots of different types of peppers, which I hope will translate into tasty home-made salsas and grilling rubs.

After we took Rocket to the vet Sonya had a few Zoom meetings to attend to, so in the spirit of living of the land I cooked us a tasty mushroom pilaf for lunch. Immediately after lunch she had to go to the dentist (for the fun-filled activity of getting a root canal) and afterward pick up Rocket, so I spent the afternoon window shopping in the town when, all of a sudden, I found a well-stocked butcher shop. Yummy! At the end all I bought was a package of turkey necks that I plan to cook in a bean soup tomorrow.

Brad got home early, with the exciting news that he is getting a promotion at work! Woo-Hoo!

Summer 2021 – East Coast – Day 3. The Museum of Fine Arts.

I got up early because I wanted to go for a walk through Tufts University, which is only a few blocks from the house, and to start cooking my turkey necks. Let me see, I will add some mushrooms, garlic, pepper and … a few chiles. They have jars and jars filled with dried chiles, so I chose three small wrinkly ones, tore them into small pieces with my bare hands, and pretty soon had my broth simmering on the stove. I will add some tomatoes and pre-soaked beans in the afternoon, a couple of hours before we sit to dinner.

Then it was time to take a shower and dress up, because Sonya is taking me to the Museum of Fine Arts, where they were having a special exhibition of paintings by Monet and other Impressionists. At that moment I had an urge to wipe my eye, and I immediately experienced a searing pain. The chiles had left an aggressive residuum in my fingers! Gingerly I brought my fingertip to my tongue and … jeez! … these chiles are hot!

The museum is extraordinary, and we had a lot of fun meandering through the Nubian and Egyptian displays, the old masters, the Tang dynasty ceramics, and old American artifacts, furniture and paintings.

Sonya had to stop by her company, which rents lab space from MIT, so while she went to work I bummed round the campus, walked along the Charles River, and had a very good time being a tourist (except for the fact that all campus buildings were closed to non-MIT people and I had to go!). Sonya was delayed and Brad picked me up, and at that time my anxiety about the turkey stew started to mount. Will it be too spicy?

It was raging hot! Even I had trouble not shouting in pain, so I knew the super-tasty broth would have to go ☹ So I dumped the whole pot of broth, rinsed the turkey necks, and quickly created a new soup with some vegetarian jambalaya Brad and Sonya had in storage, a bit of tomato soup, and a generous serving of beans. It ended being delicious, but the dish was still too spicy, and we all ended the meal sweating and sucking air through our teeth. “Say Brad”, I asked, “what are those wrinkly chiles you have in the jar?” “Oh, those are Ghost Peppers (aka Bhut Jolokia Devils), some of the hottest chiles on Earth.” “No kidding?”  

Summer 2021 – East Coast – Day 4. Puttering at home.

I am sorry to have to acknowledge that due to the pandemic I am carrying a few more pounds than I used to carry a couple of years ago. That was also the last time I tried the pants I normally carry in my traveling adventures, so I could not be surprised when they felt a bit tight until … rip!

So while everyone was gone to work, I sat in the living room mending and reinforcing the seams of my two pairs of pants, in the hope that I won’t need to buy duck pants from the captain’s locker abord Angelique.

Then I went to the basement, with the good intent of repairing Sonya’s bike so we can go for a bike ride tomorrow. The back wheel was off, and needed both the inner tube and the tire, so there was plenty of opportunity for me to scrounge for tools, huff and puff, and finally reach the conclusion that the nuts that secure the wheel to the frame were nowhere to be found. No problem. Rocket and I took a walk downtown, and a friendly bike mechanic provided the needed piece and didn’t even charge me for it!

Sonya was very excited to have a working bike again, so she suggested we rent a Blue Bike (they are all over the greater Boston area) and take Rocket for a bike ride. She put saddlebags on the bike, bundled Rocket into one of the compartments, and off we went to visit the reservoir that provides drinking water to the city of Cambridge, It was a lovely ride and everything was going perfectly until Sonya spotted a … a weird mushroom? … a weird vine? It was a vine, clinging with red tendrils to the trunk of a tree. “Hmm, what is this”, she asked herself, “let me see if my app can identify it. Oh no! It is Poison Ivy!!”

Now, it turns out that Sonya is fairly sensitive to Poison Ivy, and she had been kneeling right in the middle of a pretty healthy patch. So it was with a certain sense of urgency that she lathered herself with alcohol goop and we headed back in hopes of reaching the shower before the toxin had a chance to kick in. We made it on the nick of time! As far as we can tell the shower did the job, but we should wait until tomorrow before claiming victory.

Sonya and Brad have splurged on a giant TV, at least six feet wide, so for the last couple of nights we have sat mesmerized in front of it, admiring the high-definition rendition of the movie Avatar. What a fantastic experience!

Summer 2021 – East Coast – Day 5. Walden Pond.

One of my favorite part of visiting friends is the time visiting with friends, rather than running around checking off a list of must-see attractions. However, I had to make an exception when Sonya mentioned that the local bike path, if you followed it for 25 miles, would end at Walden Pond. This I just had to see, so we had planned a bike ride there, which was abandoned in favor of a car ride because of weather. So Brad and I got on the road, and by 10 am parked in the Walden Pond State Recreation Area, ready to admire the starting point of the American Conservation and Environmental movements.

Walden Pond is a kettle lake, formed at the end of the last glaciation, when a small mountain of ice got buried under sandy till, melted, and caused the collapse of the overlying sediments to form a bean-shaped “kettle” about a half-mile long and a quarter-mile wide. The floor of the collapse pit is 100 feet below the water table, so the lake surface is the actual water table, and the lake varies its stage but little in the course of the year. It is an interesting geologic curiosity, but there are hundreds like it all over New England and the northern states. Its true claim to fame is that it was in property owned by the famous American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who gave his permission for his young friend Henry David Thoreau to live in the surrounding woods for a period of two years, from 1845 to 1846. Thoreau was as tough as they come, built himself a small cabin, and for two years lived simply off the land, spent a lot of time mulling over his personal philosophy about the importance of living in harmony with nature, and made keen scientific observations about the plants and animals that lived in Walden Pond and the surrounding area, as well as meteorological observations regarding the pond. He can be regarded as one of the forefathers of limnology, a subject in which I have been highly interested lately. Thoreau summarize his observations in many unpublished journals, and in his famous book Walden; or Life in The Woods.

When we got back from our delightful walk, we found that Sonya had acquired a baby! She is babysitting little Caden, who is four and a half months old, so the whole spirit of the house has shifted to spin around the happy little guy. Seeing him makes you think about our responsibility to hand a clean and healthy world to the next generation.

Summer 2021 – East Coast – Day 6. Camden

Sonya is staying home with Caden, so Brad and I are driving up the coast to Maine. Easier said than done, because the 190 miles easily translate into four hours of driving, but we had a lot to catch up on so the time went by quickly.

Once in Camden we went to have a late lunch/early dinner at a seaside restaurant in Camden. Sonya is not too keen on seafood, so this was our chance to bask into fishy, smelly delicacies, so we went for a dozen of fresh oysters and two delicious lobsters. Yum, yum, yum! Afterward we went for a brief tour of the very quaint town, and afterwards Brad had to get on his way to make sure he made it home on good time.

I was by then ready to board the Angelique and meet our Captain and my fellow passengers. The crew was there as well, to help us to our cabins and show us the full extent of the boat (we are only 100 feet long, so we don’t call ourselves a ship). There will be 19 passengers, 6 crew members, and of course Captain Dennis. Today we are sleeping onboard, but we will be sailing on earnest tomorrow.