Boston and Back with more than what we wanted

Downtown Boston
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So two weeks of settling into Toronto, I’m off again on another road trip to Boston with Yin and Dave for 4 days. We hired a white Dodge car and picked it up in the evening after Yin and David had finished work. Then we drove it home and started to pack our bags. We then left for the road at 1am in the morning. Yin started out driving, while I slept in the back seat, I was woken up near the border and after a few routine questions from customs we were on the road again. Continuing along the drive until 4.30am, we stopped for a quick toilet break and a large coffee for Dave before he took the wheel, I in turn switched to riding co-pilot and Yin rested up in the back seat wrapping herself with a sleeping bag like a cocoon. A couple of hours into it, we were pulled over by a grumpy officer for speeding and there was no hope of him letting us off the hook since we made him get out of his warm cozy car. By 8am, we pulled into Mc Donalds and took another toilet break then filled up gas once more before switching drivers again and it was Dave’s turn to sleep.

Shopping Madness...can you breath Dave?
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We made it to Wrentham Village Outlet by about 9.30am and started shopping. All 3 of us kept swiping our credit cards and leaving the stores with a new bag each time. There was heaps of stuff and cheap, named brands at reduced prices with no tax on clothing, it was great. I certainly racked up quite a bill. By 1am we stopped for a quick lunch and then continued our shopping until 5pm. I finished the day buying a unique jacket one that was branded “Howe” and was not a mass produced item so how could I say no to that?

Dave and his girls on our clubbing night out
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Following our days shopping madness, we made it to Yin’s friend’s house, Samson and his sister Patty, with whom we stayed with for the following 4 days that we were in Boston. All 3 of us took showers before happily dressing into our newly prized clothes and then heading out to a Sushi place with Samson and Patty and another friend Ritchie for dinner, and eventually winding up the night at a pub called MATCH to have a few drinks and where we met up with a couple more friends. K1 and K2 were their nicknames. But it was nowhere near the amount of drinking we did the following night at Felt, a 4 level Bar Restaurant Lounge Nightclub place.

You want a piece of me?
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We grooved it out on the dance floor in a group on the nightclub floor but this somewhat large girl drinking with her friend at the bar got a bit out of control and grabbed Ritchie and dragged him onto the dance floor and started grinding him like no tomorrow. Then a couple of girls from our group had to pull him out. But she came back for a second attempt and when that failed she tried to move in on David and then me. She was not giving up. But all in all it turned out to be a very fun night. We got back to Samson and Patty’s place by 2am and crashed. Dave and I aimed to get up early next morning to sight see.

Shopping photo with our bags in the car
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In which we made it up and out of the house by about 11am first heading to the Charlestown Navy Yard checking out the USS Cassin Young – a destroyer commissioned in 1943 who’s main mission was to protect a ship of greater strategic value. Then we checked out the USS Constitution ship before going to explore the Bunker Hill Monument, a 221ft obelisk commemorating the first major battle in the Revolutionary War. We climbed the 294 steps to the top and had an awesome view of downtown Boston. After working up an appetite climbing the stairs we hit Fanueil Hall Market Place finding some great eateries inside Quincy Market where we ate lunch. Then by 4pm the sun starting setting very quickly and we made a mad dash to Acorn St(surprisingly it is known as America’s most photographed street) little known about by the locals though. Although once we got there it was quite dark, I did take an okay picture to keep the numbers up. The street was a narrow cobblestone street with old style townhouses with light lamps lit up all along the street. Dave however wasn’t too impressed with the most photographed street in America. Lombard St in San Francisco still wins my vote. After a long day we went back to the house and met up with Yin, Samson and Patty where we found them laying sluggishly but comfortable on the sofa with blankets and mid way through their Lord of the Rings Trilogy. We joined in for a bit then got ready to try some Seafood at Boston’s Dolphin Seafood Restaurant where I tried a Broiled Fisherman’s Platter, with scallops and prawns and the catch of the day. It was quite nice.

Boston at night
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Then by the nights end, the roads had been snowed on and the weather forecasted it to keep snowing all night long. By the morning we had about 10 cm of fresh snow which made the road conditions a bit trickier to drive in so we decided to leave Boston at 9am. Once we left, we drove until 1.30pm before topping up on some more gas and lunch and then continued on the road. As we were driving, we lost traction for a moment which sent the car into a small tail spin to the left then counter steering the wheel, the car whipped to the right lane and from there back to the left at which we totally lost traction and the car slowly spun towards a guard rail and *SMAAAASH* we came to a complete stop. “IS EVERYONE ALRIGHT?” we all asked each other.

K1 and Yin
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We were all okay. Dave and I got out while it was still snowing and inspected the car, surprisingly we only hit the front and rear bumpers of the corners and cracked it a bit, a broken right indicator light, some grass stuck in the wheels and almost completely covered in mud splats but that was it. The car bounced off the guard rail and positioned itself facing the road. It was perfectly positioned for us to push it out of the ditch and back onto the highway. “Always thinking ahead” I joked to Yin as the car seemed so strategically placed for us to get back onto the road. We tried all sorts of ideas to push and floor the pedal to get out of the ditch but at first the wheels didn’t spin and it seemed the engine wasn’t using its full acceleration when we floored it, so we turned the car off for 5 minutes. We tried again and this time with Yin turning the steering wheel left and right and stepping on the gas with Dave and I pushing the car from behind. We finally edged the car closer to the highway and eventually back on the road. We drove the car 3 miles down the road to the next service station at which it seemed to be very unstable and just hopping along the road. We cleaned and watered down the wheels and got all the dirt and snow off the brakes as well, then we tried getting on the highway once again and the car drove fine enough to get us back to Toronto. So we continued along and drove through the border and within a 10 km stretch of road we saw 9 accidents with cars that spun off to the side of the road smashed up with Tow Trucks and Fire Engines and Ambulances. It was quite dramatic. We realized that we did get off pretty lightly from our accident. A couple hours later we pulled the car into our driveway and came home together in one piece. It turned out to be an uneventful road trip but we still managed to come back together in one piece, with new clothes and one heck of a story and that’s all that matters.