As I start with this email I find myself in a strangely familiar situation. Here I am again in the American Airlines lounge in JFK, making the most of the first of my two complementary drink vouchers, hoping that this time I won't need to make them stretch 5 hours, having just been through a security search. This time they were not content with my hand luggage, but rather went for my suitcase instead. But I was assisted by a luggage handler, who helpfully suggested that I put all my luggage back on my trolley, showed me where to wheel it, where to take it off and where to put it on a table, pointed another searchee to my trolley as the place to put his bag, and then gave me helpful hints on how to get all my luggage back on my trolley around the other searchee's luggage. Finally he wheeled my trolley off to put my luggage into the luggage handling system where it should be able to be lost.
So in such familiar circumstances, and with an email with a very similar beginning fresh in my mind, I shall continue on with the account of my latest trip to the good old US of A, despite the fact that I have a half-finished account of a trip to Rome sitting in my drafts folder, and have not yet typed a word about the intervening trips to the Cotswolds, Aschaffenburg, Scotland and Brussels. If American does it's usual tricks, it is not that unlikely that these will all be complete by the time I board the plane.
But enough of this cynicism and depression, for once I alighted from the trip across the pond of which much has already been written and of which no more needs to be uttered, I got into the immigration line, which was short. Unlike almost every other entry point to the US, a friendly immigration officer asked me if I was there for business or pleasure. Business I said, and with no question as to how long I was to be in the country for, with a smile he stamped 6 months in my passport. Our luggage made a reasonably quick appearance, and we wandered out into the humidity of Miami, feeling pretty silly carrying a leather jacket. We arrived at our hotel, and after a minor scare when they couldn't find my registration (it turned out I had forgotten I had booked from a day earlier and so they had me down as a no-show for the previous night), a shower and a drink I made my way to a meeting from 6pm - 9pm. Not the best of times, but they very kindly supplied some dinner, starting with a salad liberally sprinkled with pine-nuts, as I sat through a session about anti-trust, illegal conversations and knowing winks. The second course was somewhat less lethal.
Having done my duty until 2am UK time on Sunday night, I made up for it on Monday morning, where a dearth of meetings allowed Simon and I to hit Miami beach. It's not a bad beach as far as beaches, nothing spectacular, but having the wind in my hair, the sun on my body, paddling along the edge of the water and trying to stop the unexpected waves from shooting up the inside of my shorts brought back memories of just what I'd left behind when we moved across to England. We then wandered back via a Starbucks, where we sat in the sun and had iced coffees, watching roller bladers and thinking why oh why did we have to go back and do some work. We wandered past the art deco buildings of South Beach, which make the place look like it's out of the 50s. I'm afraid it doesn't really appeal to me. That was all that we managed to see of the beach. Tuesday night was a visit to a night club sponsored by Nokia (I'm not sure that the image of about 500 male engineers [and one or two women - WAP is not a total bastion of male domination] off together at a night club is one which deserves contemplation for very long). We did the right thing by our company and did our best to consume as much as possible of our competitor's profits.
Wednesday night I took a break from eating at restaurants, and joined a fellow Motorolan from Milwaukee, Jerome, in making a visit to the Pro Stadium, to watch the Florida Marlins* take on the San Francisco Giants in the third game of the season. In 1997 Miami won the World Series, thereby increasing the value of their players to a level where they were not able to keep them, and they now enjoy a place a the bottom of the league. The stadium had been sold out for opening night of the season, but now when we turned up half an hour before the game we were able to get tickets in the 8th row, almost right behind the plate. We later discovered it was the lowest ever crowd at the stadium (although as the next day's game was an afternoon game, this record was expected to be broken). Jerome and I had bought seats together, and made our way down to our seats to discover that although we were in the same row, Jerome was in seat 13, and I was in seat 4. Hmmmm. So, as it looked pretty empty, we sat in seats 13 and 14. Then one of the ticket checkers came and informed us that seat 14 wasn't ours. We went through a little ritual of pretending that we hadn't noticed, and so he suggested we sit in 12 and 13. Which we did, until the point where we decided to get some food and drink, or what passed for food and drink at the stadium. We returned to our seats, to discover that a group of people had occupied seats 17 through 12. So we sat in seats 11 and 10, which had bags of peanuts in front of them. We were contemplating whether or not to eat them, when the owners turned up and said we were in their seats, but not to worry, it didn't look like it was going to be too busy and took the seats next to us. The game got started, and the owner of seat 14 turned up, and made the bloke sitting in it shift, and sat amidst the larger group. The game was really interesting, helped by the scoring of 20 runs, including 3 home runs (one a 3 run home run in the top of the ninth to take the Giants past the Marlins two run lead and establish what turned out to be winning lead of their own and dash the fragile hopes of the Miami fans who had thought that the Marlins were to win the first of the season after coming from behind in the 8th inning) and the considerable baseball knowledge of Jerome who pointed out some of the subtleties of the game (including the habit of scoring the game in the program) and answered my dumb questions. We then contemplated the long walk home due a lack of available cabs until one pulled up and that was the end of Wednesday.
Thursday was unremarkable until the evening, when we made our way back to the restaurants of South Beach, which comes alive at night. Our restaurant of preference had a 1.5 hour wait, so we continued on to another, which appeared shut, so then it was on to another, perched above the sidewalk watching people go by. Most of the restaurants (and at this point I will take a short diversion. While I'm sure most of you have very little interest in my bodily functions, the need to relieve myself has allowed me to verify the existence of the changing area in the men's in the AA lounge at JFK. Thus if one ever finds ones'self in the AA business class lounge in at JFK, in need of a quick switcheroo of the old attire, may I humbly suggest that rather than availing one's self of the somewhat small and cramped cubicle, one makes use of the rather large and roomy changing area. If on the other hand one finds oneself in a hotel in Waterloo in which one is not staying and one is in need of a change of attire, I'm afraid the only consolation I can offer is that the presence of lids on toilets does make the whole process somewhat easier, and that probably deals with the highlights of the trip to Brussels, although doing 100 miles an hour plus in a taxi van with 6 other people is probably worth a mention) spread out across the pavement, with the people out walking having to make their way between tables. It was a pleasant way to spend an evening, watching the crowds go by and trying to guess the nationality of our waitress.
Friday was the last of the meetings, and with rumours of long holdups due to riots over the discussions of where Elian should reside (a young boy who's mother died attempting to cross from Cuba to Florida, and who's Cuban father had just arrived in the country in order to take him back against the wishes of Elian's US resident relatives) we wondered if we would make it to the airport in time for our flight to Boston.
Why Boston? Because Simon has family up there (most of whom were away) and we reckoned it would be more interesting than Miami or White Plains (just outside New York and where we were headed the next week). We did make our flight, with no sign of rioters, and arrived in Boston, and made our way to the Hertz desk to pick up our rental car. This may sound quite sensible, except that we were staying at the Airport Hilton which is physically attached to the airport, and by the time we picked up the car we were actually further from the airport than when we started. At this point I think it is appropriate to state a few facts before Simon gets in and makes some wild claims. We only missed the entrance to the hotel once. We missed the car park entrance once. I was suffering the common mirror effect of switching from a right hand drive to a left hand drive, and it might have helped if Simon had mentioned which left when he told me to turn left. The hotel was too new to have any signs to it, and the airport was one huge building site. And if Simon wants to insinuate that the fact that it took us about 20 minutes to cover what should have been less than a mile, I will caution him to remember a 5 mile left turn out of CompUSA before he opens his mouth (and I will keep the little jaunt down to the cinema in White Plains in reserve in case he is still eager to say something.)
That night we ate in the hotel and planned the next day. We ate a large meal, to give us time to consider carefully how we would approach sightseeing in Boston. The major objectives were to ensure that we arrived at the good Italian restaurants of the North End at lunch time, and at Legals seafood (who's clam chowder has been featured at 5 presidential inaugurations) for dinner, and in between do our best to work off the effects. We arose bright and early, or at least the weather was bright and it felt early, and asked the best way to the T (the tube, underground, subway, mass transport system directionally controlled by rolled extruded metal, whatever you want to call it, although personally, when in Boston, calling it the T will probably help make sense of what the big signs with a T on them mean) and were directed to the hotel shuttle. We leapt on it when it arrived, and leapt off it again when we got to the Airport T stop. We hopped off again at Aquarium, just across the road from Legals, but as it was not yet dinner time, nor in fact lunch time, we wandered across the road to the aquarium to possibly catch a glimpse of dinner. Instead we watched some seals doing tricks as they were fed. And then we followed the Freedom Trail.
The Freedom trail was created for the Bicentennial, and goes through a number of the historic sites and sights of Boston. To guide the inept tourists who would (and no doubt have done and continue to) flock to this trail of anti-British sentiment it was marked with a great big thick red line. So, "Follow the red line!" is the catch cry of those who start down the trail, but alas, the intervening years and the fact that red is the fastest of all the colours to fade quickly convert the cry into "Where's the red line?" But despite the losses, we were lead through a number of interesting places and as Simon had been in these places before, I was able to quiz him about just what the Yanks had done to the Poms in each of the places we passed through. To briefly digress, Boston is a place in which pedestrians are more highly regarded than cars, a strange characteristic for an American city, and apparently the Boston police are rather rigid on making sure that cars give way to pedestrians. In fact they have a strange ritual that they subject lost tourists to at the airport, where a police officer will walk down the middle of the road at you so that another can book you if you run him down - fortunately Simon warned me so I managed to avoid him. Now to make a move away from the digression, and back towards the main gist of the paragraph, hopefully in a somewhat more direct route than that taken by a certain car looking for a hotel the previous night, the Bostonians appear to have taken the opportunity afforded by a line which wound its way amongst the historic sites and sights of Boston to emphasis the fact that pedestrians rule the city and at every possible point in the walk they will take you across a street. If you've been walking along one side of the street it's time to have a stroll along the footpath on the other side before crossing the road again so that you can turn left. Strange, but true. Having taken such a convoluted path we arrived at the Bunker Hill Memorial. This is an interestingly named memorial, situated atop Breeds Hill on the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill, so named because someone couldn't read a map. Bunker Hill is a mile or two away. This had a very nice display of how the American troops fought a battle and lost the hill but imposed crippling losses on the Brits who eventually captured it. It gives a little perspective as to how different wars used to be in that the battle took all of two hours, and the Brits lost 600 men. To commemorate this victorious defeat, there is an obilisque (you know, one of those things which Asterix's mate's named after but I can't remember how to spell, and can't even get close enough to have my spell checker suggest the real spelling) which one can climb by merely mount a trivial 294 steps. So we did. And discovered the significance of trivial numbers. So with burning thighs, and puffing breaths, Simon and I eventually gained the summit of the monument, from where there is a breathtaking view (hence the puffing). In fact the view was so good, that we spent a goodly while up there admiring it while our thighs recovered for the descent. We descended, and made our way towards the USS Constitution, the first of the ships commissioned by America**, and one which is sailed out into the harbour each Independence Day as a floating firework launching pad. On the way, we were asked by a workman if we knew where he could buy a soda. I was about to give the "Don't look at me, mate, I'm a tourist" answer, but before I could open my mouth Simon was handing out directions left right and center (sic) and I remembered that his brother used to live just down the road from Bunker Hill, or at least the Bunker Hill memorial, and I'm not sure if Simon's directions took into account the displacement of the two. I'm not sure if Simon was sure either, but by the time the workman worked out that he was lost he would be too lost to find us again so we would be OK. We got to the USS Constitution, and as it wasn't quite lunch time yet, we lined up to have a wander on the boat and rest our legs. Making the most of the time, I phoned Felicity, and raved on about the wonderful sunshine and laughed at her having snow back in England, ho ho ho, it's 25 degrees here (Celsius, for those who thought I was thinking that subfreezing temperatures are warm) I'll probably be getting sun burnt, ho ho ho, and then we wandered around the Constitution. It's a tall ship, with lots of canons on it (but now I'm not sure if I've just positioned multiple members of the clergy on the boat as I've forgotten if great big guns which shoot out big metal balls are spelt 'canon' or 'cannon') and people wandering all over it making somewhat inane comments as tourists do. After that we went into the attached museum, spurning the slide show about the battle of bunker hill as there was another at the top of the John Hancock building which we were going to visit, and bought ourselves a soda each, all the while looking over our shoulders for irate workmen who had scanned all of Charlestown for a soda machine. It was on the way to this museum that we passed the point at which Paul Revere landed on his historic ride, and one of the better "Employee of the month type awards." The "Sailor of the month" was awarded a car park right next to the door of one of the buildings, a building which one would assume (or at least hope) that the particular sailor being named to the award would frequent. That's a lot better than a badge to wear.
By that time we were reaching the North End and lunchtime. Lunch was an extended affair, consisting of some very yummy pasta and wine, and resulting in contented feeling of lethargy. Unfortunately this was not to be allowed, and we pushed on towards the centre of Boston. We made a stop in a bookshop where I was able to purchase a number of books, one of which remains half-read in a bed a hotel at the Boston airport, and tried on many shoes at the Finenes Basement, a spot which has a date based discount system and across the street at the shoe warehouse which a sign on the T informed us would be opening soon. From there we wandered through the Boston Common, pausing to admire the gold leaf roof of some official and famous building which we were too lethargic to examine closely, and on to the Hancock Tower. By this time we were experiencing a very interesting meteorological effect, where a wind which was blowing a gale behind us at one end of the street, became a wind which was blowing a gale into us at the other end of the street. It was the sort of wind which blew over newspaper dispensers, caused rubbish bins to roll along the road, blew awnings off shops, caused skate boards to run away from their owners, and caused our shopping bags to spin crazily in our hands until the handles had wound themselves up into tight finger crushing loops. Fortunately we were carrying lots of ballast from lunch, and hence were the immovable objects that irresistible wind encountered. The point of being in this place was not scientific, but rather to go and examine the view from the top of the John Hancock Tower, and to justify skipping the slideshow earlier. But first we had more pressing needs to attend to, namely to get a drink for our sadly dehydrated bodies. We did this at a little store where we queued for a bit to get drinks, and then wandered upstairs to find a table and a loo. We found the loo, alas to get into the loo required a token from the cashier, where of course there was no sign indicating that such a token would be useful and if you were planning on making a little nature stop, then when you were paying you could kill two birds with one stone so to speak, and we didn't really feel like queueing again. So I just sat there, not more than 5 feet from a toilet door knowing that it was unattainable, until finally it all got too much and refreshed but not relieved, we headed back to the John Hancock Tower. Fortunately this does not draw the same number of tourists as the tall buildings in Chicago, and the line was quick, and we rose the 60 floors to the top, had a quick look at the view and went and found the loos up there. Emerging to consider the view in a much more relaxed frame of mind, it really is very spectacular. You can look across the Charles River to MIT and Harvard, back into the town and the old buildings there which a man with a slow voice will describe to you over the loud speaker from the days of his youth, we could see Bunker Hill and be glad that we didn't have to walk up the stairs to the top of this building. In addition we saw the reason for the strange winds down below. It would appear that the wonderful sunshine of the day was causing thermal air currents, which were bringing much of the paper which was blowing around in the gale at ground level up 60 stories and blowing it around where we could examine it at eyelevel. Such thermals must have been creating some very low pressure systems down on the ground, which were sucking in air from around them to create strong winds which could extract rubbish from all around the ground and then collect the rubbish so that it could be displayed to us up 60 floors. So, our physics lesson complete, we decided it was time for our history lesson, and went and watched the little display which was pretty cool - LEDs showing who when where when in the great battle of Bunker Hill, the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere's ride - the best bit being where they showed how much of the bay around Boston is now Boston instead of being water. It is a bit strange, given the amount of land around Boston, that instead of building on what was already there, they have reclaimed huge amounts of the bay and built on that. It is quite funny because for most of the display, the model of the John Hancock Tower sits way offshore in the middle of a bay. It is only when they show where Boston extends to now that it finds itself on land.
Descending in the ear popping lift, we got back down, and sought out a T-station. We found one, and it was on the line we wanted, but alas was only for outward bound trains (and we needed to catch one in and then change for one out). We searched in vain for the obvious sign pointing us to where the corresponding station for the inward trains was, and in the end just started walking in the direction which Simon assured me was the correct one. It was, and in the fullness of time, we found ourselves back at the Airport T station. We emerged, and found a sign which gave us the numbers of all the hotels which ran shuttles from the station to the hotel. But of course, the Hilton is a new hotel, and so is not included on the sign. We thought we'd wait for a bit, but then an Mass Transport (Mass Transport being a clever pun on large quantities of people and the first part of Massachusetts) shuttle bus to the airport turned up, and looking at the route map, it had the Airport Hilton as one of it's stops, although someone had scratched it out but we decided that even if it didn't stop at the Hilton we had more chance of catching the Hilton shuttle from the airport than from the station. So we hopped on, and waited for the driver to get back on. A driver looking type person hopped on just after us, but disconcertingly walked right to the back of the bus and sat down. He then even more disconcertingly started muttering under his breath at the delay, and what's going on etc, and concern switched from why would a driver sit at the back of the bus to is this man completely stable or is he about to start rampaging through the bus when our imaginations were spared any further wild thoughts by the driver getting on and driving straight past the Hilton (in a manner not dissimilar to us the previous night) and on to the airport terminals, where we alighted, and wandered back to where the hotel and car rental shuttles stopped. The night before, as we lamented the infrequency of Hertz shuttles it seemed that Hilton shuttles arrived at regular intervals to give us ominous warnings of the stupidity of hiring a car to drive to the Airport Hilton. Now, the roles were reversed. In the end, we gave up and walked into the terminal to call the Hilton on the courtesy phone to get them to pick us up, but our calls were courteously answered by a machine and an error tone. Now, there was a walkover bridge to the hotel which we had seen (thinking erroneously that it lead to the T station) and tired, weary and footsore, we still thought that it couldn't be worse than walking up 294 steps, so we made our way into the car park reasoning that from somewhere in there must be the other end of this bridge. About 3 car parks, 2 terminals and 5 levels later we proved our reasoning correct. We had got off at the terminal furthest away from the hotel, and had located the sign to the Hilton - it was on the end of the bridge - and so we walked across the bridge and into a convention being held at the hotel in the rooms around the hall into which the bridge led (the presence of such conventions meant that we had to pay a convention center tax to stay in the hotel as well as the usual state taxes) and back to our rooms.
Strangely enough we elected to catch a taxi back to Legals for dinner that night in the pouring rain, and so our taxi arrived and parked about 30 metres away, and fortunately the rain held off while we walked to it, we got in and the driver invited us to smoke (which I think meant that he was dying for a fag and wanted us to light up so he could join us) and we made our way back to the aquarium by way of some kind of detour, a tunnel, a couple of red lights that we ran and the odd footpath, received an apology for having to print me off a receipt instead of giving me a blank one to be creative with, and we wandered in to ask if a table was available. No problem, it'll be a one and a half to one and three quarter hour wait. So we took our pager, and wandered into the bar, ordered a couple of drinks, were just settling in for the wait, when the couple next to us at the bar handed us their pager and said they'd just decided to eat at the bar, so if we wanted their table we could have it. I returned to the main desk with the pager, and when they asked if I was so and so I said yes, and surreptitiously (and probably totally unnecessarily so) put our pager down too, and then was escorted back to the bar area to a tiny table where we were wedged in between some other tables. As we were there for the food, and not the wide open spaces, this was not a problem, beyond having to talk to the people next to us for a short while. The clam chowder was superb, and Simon and I walked away from the meal knowing what it must be like to be at a presidential inauguration. Great chowder, lousy coffee (and just what is the deal with putting a bit of lemon peel on the saucer when you order espresso?)
Sunday - checked out of the hotel, priding myself of having made a last unnecessary check of the hotel room which uncovered my travel alarm clock and razors, but failed to find the aforementioned recently purchased and half-read book, and drove up to Marble Head which proudly proclaimed itself older than Boston, but I'm not sure where it falls in relation to the other towns we passed on the way there, to where Simon's mother was looking after her grandson while Simon's brother and sister-in-law were away, and I settled down to read the paper feeling very thankful that I was not the uncle being invited every 30s to play choo-choo trains (although had I been the uncle in question I would have felt the exact opposite) until we got in the car to go and have lunch and the legendary Dark and Stormies at Maddies. For those of you who have never experienced a Dark and Stormy*** they are exceedingly yummy, but have a delayed effect which hits you about 30s after you order a second. The fish pie was superb, and a walk around a cold and windy fort on the edge of the Atlantic helped ease the effects of the Dark and Stormies. After that we drove down in the snow which had just arrived to make a mockery of the day before's 25 degrees to White Plains, just outside New York to do some work and have some more encounters with allergic reactions, the most serious being from a garlic bagel in a little place where people really do ask for (and drink) "cwoorfee".
There was little else of interest to describe in New York, other that related at the start of the email, and having to explain the presence of a jogging stroller in my luggage to Felicity.
So, toodle pip, whot ho, jolly good, and as was previously said in a yet to be written email by the Indian waiter in Edinburgh, luvly jubbly,
Jonathan
*Should I happen to make reference to the Dolphins in this email, other than in this footnote, please note it is a mistake, which hopefully I have rectified. When glancing at the two magnetic season itineraries which I was handed at the gate and which are now sitting on our microwave as our fridge is covered with a wooden door and so is not suitable for attaching magnetic thingies to which incidentally has rendered our magnetic poetry original edition obsolete I noticed that the team was the Florida Marlins, not the Miami Dolphins as I had originally mistakenly put in my email, as I confused the football team with the baseball team, the Miami Heat being the basketball team which was playing at the American Airlines (boo hiss) arena just down the road from the hotel on the same night and hence extended our taxi journey by about 10 minutes as we had to fight our way through the traffic as the game had just ended, and really sums up most of my experiences associated with American Airlines but I was going to stop being cynical and get back to the point which was if there are any other references to the Miami Dolphins it's because I missed them when I was doing the conversion from (Miami) Dolphins to (Florida) Marlins.
**Please note, all historical "facts" have been kindly supplied by Simon, and filtered by my memory, and any relation to the true history is purely coincidental.
***Take a pint glass, add ice, fill it about 2/3 with rum, add ginger beer to the top and throw in a wedge of lime
© Jonathan Main 2000