(no subject)

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

Well, I'm back.

Travel and I have an interesting relationship. I always get there, but it's often by quick changes of plan and a fair amount of determination. The more important it is to me, the harder it gets.

This last weekend taught me that despite the paucity of train-booking travel services on this end of the country you should not hope to make travel arrangements "after you get closer to your destination." Especially when you're trying to travel to a major American city on what is an ordinary Canadian Sunday, but in America is Thanksgiving weekend.

It turns out that Ottawa travel agents are not allowed to sell you train tickets. And via rail doesn't know anything about which trains connect to which other lines. So late at night, I sorted out the basics of my travel arrangements - then the hotel's Internet went down.

It was back up the next day in time for me to book one of the last cars in the Alamo at the Ottawa airport. Then, as I was making the final clicks, it went down again. Late in the evening, back up - car and plane confirmed. On the day of travel, the Federation misinterpreted my request to join in for a ride to the airport, and so they paid for a cab that showed up about an hour earlier than the van I was expecting to take to leave - leading to a confused phone call with a half-awake me. The compact car that I had reserved in the hopes of saving gas/carbon somehow turned into an SUV by Alamo's fiat. And the 10 am return time turned into 8am - meaning that I had to pick up the car, drive to Boston with a sometimes-accurate GPS (it can't tell which street you're on if they're close together, and idea of "the nearest gas station" is only thinly connected to my definition of "gas station"), fill it up in downtown Boston's rush hour and return it in one long stretch despite the rental station being closed.

Driving through Vermont and New Hampshire looks like those 18th-century paintings of American countryside. And when I pulled over to get food or gas and got a bit lost, I learned that that part of small-town America actually has the white houses and Oaks made familiar to us in  the movies.

Boston has an awesome transit system that runs all over the by area. RFID cards take care of your transfers - any trip is $2 each way. A weekly pass is $15.

Harvard is pretty. The natural history museum has a mostly complete kronosaur skeleton.

I got a new recipe for crepe filling (dijon balsamic, squash etc...) and some used woolen gloves that let me walk around without my hands in my pocket. I also got to take a day off. It's been awhile. Clam chowder. American TV. Boston accents. Giant buildings. Old row houses. Street names of British cities. Specks of rain. Occasional pride flags. Polite, helpful people. Very different ethnic mix. Steam. The hum of nearby rail.  Old hotels.

The text day, I took a quick stroll then had an appointment for a surgical consultation then took the plane out. I made a sketch for a women in the lobby. At the airport I met the cheeriest salesman in the world. Homeland security was scary, and flipping my passport and name-change papers was unnerving. After I transferred to Boston, I lost my passport, and was very polite, deferrent, and a bit upset - explaining repeatedly that (1) I'm going home and (2) my birth certificate is American but my citizenship (under "Graham Fox") is Canadian - that's why I only carry the latter. Mercifully, I got on the plane and back.

Overnight in Toronto. Got in last night about at about 20h.

Good to be home.

Comments

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Minus the bit where you lost your passport, that sound like an exemplary way to spend some time.