Week in New England

Kate and I just returned from a week visiting family and friends in New England. It was nice to get away from the furnace and even better to arrive home to downpours.

We celebrated Kate's dad's 70th birthday last Sunday (which just so happened to be our first anniversary) in Rhode Island with 70 or so fellow revelers. His wife, Mary, catered the party. I enjoyed catching up with Kate's New England cousins and eating too much. It was the first of many gastronomic overindulgences on my part.

We went over to Cape Cod on Monday to visit Kate's stepmother, Phyllis, and her sister, Eloise. I'd never been to Cape Cod before, but I quickly got into the swing of things with a lobster roll and a dip in Nantucket Sound. Kate and Eloise trounced me at miniature golf on Tuesday at a near-mythic establishment called Steve & Sue's Par-Tee Freeze, but the vanilla and coffee soft-serve swirl made defeat go down a bit easier. We also partook of traditional ice cream at Four Seas, which is one of those institutions you must partake in if you care about ice cream and find yourself anywhere near Cape Cod during the summer months.

Still woozy from a morning of mini-golf, we drove back to Kate's hometown of Worcester to stay with Kate's mom and her stepdad, Michael, for the remainder of the week. Michael treated us to a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park on Wednesday night. It was a good one against the Baltimore Orioles, but the Sox prevailed with a three-run double by Victor Martinez in the seventh inning that led to a 7-5 win. While all this was going on, the couple in the seats next to us stood up with an officiant and got married. Hopefully the Red Sox will maintain their wild-card lead over the Texas Rangers or the happy couple's honeymoon will be flat-out scotched.

Once we settled in Worcester, the days became more languid. Despite losing an hour, I found myself getting tired uncharacteristically early and having uncharacteristically vivid dreams once I fell asleep. As Kate and I hiked in Wachussett Meadow on Thursday afternoon, you could feel the end of summer approach in the cool, crisp air.

By Friday, it was rainy and overcast, with daytime temps in the mid-50s. We warmed up with corned beef on bulky rolls, matzo ball soup and birch beer at Weintraub's Deli. You just can't get everyday Jewish deli comfort food like that in Austin.

Our flight back home on Saturday was non-eventful, but after a week in the remote parking lot at Austin-Bergstrom, my car wouldn't start. Fortunately, AMPCO dispatched someone to jump-start the car and that gave us enough juice to get home, unload the bags with the car running and go to Pep Boys for a new battery. Not the best way to conclude a vacation, but at least it wasn't the alternator.

Austin to Boston - Part 2

I took this photo of Kate and myself Thursday morning before we left her dad's house in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Incidentally, Portsmouth is actually on the island that gave the state of Rhode Island its name.

After a quick breakfast, we headed back up to Boston to do a little sightseeing in the Italian-flavored North End. After years of being cut off from the rest of downtown Boston by an elevated freeway, the massive (both in terms of scale and corruption) "Big Dig" project has rerouted Interstate 93 underground. Nevertheless, parking space remains at a premium.

After parking illegally mere blocks from a police precinct, we walked a sliver of the Freedom Trail past the Old North Church and Copps Hill Burial Ground. Although the North End is teeming with Italian food, we opted for seafood at the Union Oyster House, which purports to be the oldest continuously-serving restaurant in America. I had crab cakes with Newburg sauce and a Harpoon IPA. Then we warmed up with some cappuccino before returning to Kate's blissfully unticketed rental car.

Twilight was fast approaching, but we decided to do one last bit of walking through the 19th century brick row house enclave of Beacon Hill. We located a parking spot right across from the statehouse and hoofed it over the brick sidewalks to Boston Common, which is the oldest city park in the U.S., dating back to 1634. There was no snow on the ground, but looking across the Common's ice skating rink as the sun went down still made for a perfect winter scene. We briefly considered skating ourselves, but the line was too long.

Masspike traffic had abated by the time we left Beacon Hill, so the drive west to Kate's dad's condo in Shrewsbury went relatively fast. Shrewsbury is a suburb of Worcester, which is where Kate grew up. Oddly enough, I knew of Shrewsbury even before I met Kate because it is one of the few U.S. cities with a municipally-owned cable television system, which was the topic of my oft-cited 1993 master's thesis.

After a tasty supper of Christmas leftovers, Kate and I fell fast asleep. My long-overdue examination of Shrewsbury's cable TV offerings would just have to wait.

Austin to Boston - Part 1

I just got back from a three-day whirlwind tour of Boston and vicinity with Kate. The fast clip of events left no time for posting, but I had a great time visiting there for the first time at the hand of a native New Englander girlfriend.

I caught the year-old JetBlue nonstop to Boston on Wednesday morning. They service the route with Embraer E190 regional jets, which are bigger than most regional jets but smaller than mainliners. Without planes like the E190, Austin probably wouldn't have nonstop service to Boston.

You can watch live TV at every seat on JetBlue flights, which is a decent way to wile away four hours. They're also pretty generous with the Cokes and snacks, going so far as to invite you to ask for seconds. I wish they'd start flying to the West Coast from here. A nonstop to Oakland would suit my personal travel needs quite well.

Kate was already in Massachusetts for the holidays, so she picked me up at Logan Airport. We drove to Cambridge and had a very nice dinner in Harvard Square at a place called Upstairs on the Square.

Although the cold weather didn't exceed the hard freezes we have in Austin once or twice a year, it was still pretty bracing to my Texan frame. Therefore, I had no complaints when Kate suggested a stop at Burdick Chocolate for a cup of the best hot chocolate you can imagine. We also had some fine beer at John Harvard's Brew House. Boston is one of the world's great beer cities and I'd like to go back there and do a little more purposeful sampling one of these days.

As it was, Kate's dad graciously invited us to stay at his new vacation house overlooking Sakonnet Bay in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The drive down there took an hour and a half. I was plum-tuckered out by 10pm, a function of both a long day of traveling and the fact that it gets dark around 4pm in Boston during the winter. Having the sun retire so early can really do a number on your circadian rhythms.