Bean Town Blah

So I flew to Boston on Sunday. As in Massachusetts. The good news was that it was a non-stop flight. The bad news was that I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to catch the flight and got stuck in the dreaded middle seat.

The middle seat was as bad as could be. The gentlemen next to me, though amicable, were of above-average size and therefore not only took up their entire seats but ballooned over into mine. Not only did I have no arm rest on either side, I was literally shoulder to shoulder with these men the whole way.

After 5.5 rather unrestful hours, we landed. My travel companion from Mentor was Emily and we made our way to our rental car which we ensured came equipped with GPS. Neither of us were at all familiar with the fine city of Boston. We departed the Hertz parking lot with grand visions of a late Sunday afternoon purusing the greater Boston tourist attractions. Instead, the blasted GPS lady led us the wrong way down one-way streets and in the same loop around Boston Commons 3 times. After seeing the same Dunkin Donuts establishement for the third time, we scrapped the whole tourist idea and proceeded to dinner and our hotel in Marlboro.

The rest of the trip consisted of due diligence work at Mentor's newly acquired company's US operations and a flight back to Portland that night. Instead of sharing the sortid details of that, I thought I'd leave you all with my 1 day waking hour impression of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

1) It looked exactly like Oregon but with less ranch style houses.
2) For every 1,000 residents, there are a minimum of 4 pizza establishments.
3) For every 1,000 residents, there are a minimum of 5 Dunkin Donuts establishments.
4) The turnpike toll booths would get pretty annoying pretty fast.
5) The architecture in Boston is cool.
6) Who would build a hotel over a freeway?!?
7) The Boston accent requires a translation guide.
8) Did I mention the toll booths were annoying?!?
9) Honking is encouraged.
10) Why are they a "commonwealth"? Isn't statehood good enough?

Really though, Boston seemed like a great city and one that I really do hope to go back and spend more time in someday. The rest of the state was likewise beautiful and I can see why people from there are proud.

I wouldn't recommend flying there one day and back the next though. Not only did we have the same flight crew coming back, my a$$ is still sore from sitting that long.

Sorry, no pictures this week. Deal with it. Its been a long week.