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Our Boston Experience
After eating a pile of frog's legs, it was time for bed. Morning brought a brand new day. We were heading west into the college area to see a museum.
OK, that's something you don't see every day: An L. L. Bean shoecar.
This is the inner courtyard of the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum - built in 1912 as a museum and left to the people of Boston on the condition none of the exhibits would ever be removed. They add and remove stuff around the exhibits, but they don't take any of the original stuff away. It truly is magnificent and has some great art, including Rembrant's portrait of himself as a young man.
Back at the Boston Commons, Keely did the opposite of Make Way for Ducklings - which someone had taken the time to dress up like super heroes.
We hit the Paramount on Charles St. Great burgers.
While eating, we witnessed a 'dooring.' That kid on the right was riding his bike down the street and the lady by the SUV just opened her door and WHAM! Head over heels. Nothing like biking in a big city, is there? It's just terrifying. (wait a minute, did we just get foreshadowed?)
After lunch and some wandering around, we headed back down by the aquarium and joined up on a Ghosts and Graveyards Tour. This is our guide, the Demon Anthracticon, entertaining us before we started.
He took us up to Copp's Hill cemetery near the Old North Church and told us stories dating back to the Revolutionary War. He was really good and really funny.
Ghosts are supposed to show up in pictures taken next to this tombstone. Eh, we tried. We really had a blast on this tour - it was well worth the money. We headed back to the hotel at the end - because I had a big day coming up.
There I am, boys and girls, outside Copley Square and ready to start the 5K race. Only 6,000 people are allowed in to the 5K race, so the medal is even more rare than the marathon medal.
While walking around, I ran into Toby, a professional photographer for Marathon Foto. He knows Keely from events and FaceBook and we met at in Las Vegas after the Midnight, Full Moon, Extra-Terresterial Run last summer (about 3/4 of the way down the write-up.) I know he wears a panda hat at the events so he was easy to recognize.
Keely went out on the race course so she could see me run by. Can you play "Find Andy" again?
After my 5K, we wandered down to Copley Square again because we were supposed to meet some of Keely's friends from the Marathon Maniac group. There were quite a few people there, getting their pictures taken at the finish line while the workmen put final touches on the grandstands.
Keely took the opportunity to pose with some royalty. This is (l-r) Steve Yee, #1, Tony Philipi, #3, Keely, #2374, and Christopher, #2.
Here's the whole Marathon Maniac crew as represented at the 2012 Boston Marathon (play Find Keely in this one.)
More Oregonians: Andreas on the left and John on the right. Both are very fast runners.
This is Robert Lopez from Washington.
And Dave Holmen (aka Famous Dave Holmen) who is trying to Boston Qualify in a marathon in every state in the Union.
After the meet-n-greet, I left Keely to rest up at the hotel and I went back down to the Aquarium area. This whole idea of the Midnight Bike Ride was eating at my brain. I'd heard of a place to rent bikes called Urban Adventours. For $35, I got a sweet hybrid bike for the next 24 hours. Now all I needed to do was get it back to the hotel. I took this photo while stopped at a light in Chinatown. The dudes at Urban Adventours told me to "Think like a car" and it worked. What you can't see is my butt puckered so tightly I could have pooped diamonds. This is not a logical place to break the page, but it is a mathematically correct place to make the break (each page has about 25 pictures.)
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