It’s taken four days, but tonight on the way home I spotted my first IF in Boston, a rather nice Midnight Blue Metallic to Shark Grey Pearl fade steel Crown Jewel. In general I am really impressed by the number of bikes and riders here. Fixies and Singlespeeds are the most common bikes here ranging for ancient Raleighs and Univegas through to Bianchi Pistas and Serotta exotica.
There is a big range of bikes and people are riding them to work and for fun. They also have some rickshaw type taxiis to. People riding bikes is a great thing and the numbers here give you a lot of faith in the fact that future isn’t necessarily a car dominated certainty.
The other thing that gets you here is the number of iPods. Every 4th person you see has an iPod. The white ear phones are a dead giveaway. There maybe even more people who have them with different colour earphones. Advertising for them is also dominant especially on the transit (subway) system here in Boston. It’s hot here and getting hotter as a heatware moves eastwards across the US. I’ve spent the majority of my time in air conditioned hotel conference facilities, but the battle too and from the downtown area is a sweaty affair. It’s not just the heat that gets you, but the stiffling humidity too – especially when you’re in a suit.
My final rant about things here is that you can never find what you are looking for. Then when you don’t need it anymore you find it under your nose. For example… Yesterday I needed to get some card and a new USB Pen drive. At lunchtime I walked into the central downtown area. It took 40 minutes to find a stationers and a Radioshack electronics store. Today I spend all lunchtime looking for a pharmacy to get some Ibuprofen to counter the hideous lighting induced (the appalling carpets might have had something to do with this too) migraine headaches that have been driving me round the twist the last few days – last night they were so bad I slept for 14 hours, because I just couldn’t do anything else.
My wandering this afternoon around the maze of coridors in the Boston Sheraton led me to discover the fact that the Hotel is attached to a shopping mall that has a stationers and electronics shop. So I could have avoided an hour of getting hot and bothered yesterday by just going upstairs one floor and heading out into the mall. There was no pharmacy though. I only found that at the end of today downstairs in the lobby. Everything is so huge here that you really just can’t find what you’re looking for.
Luggage arrived eventually.
R O T H A R . C O M 