Travelogue

Wherein Our Heroine Meanders On.

I'm not sure if this is true for anyone else, but whenever I go somewhere - I mean go somewhere via airplane or train - upon my return it almost always feels as if I've been gone either no time at all or forever. Upon my return from a four-day trip, excepting the suitcase of dirty clothes, I can feel like Lucy, Susan, Peter, and Edmund popping out of the Wardrobe from Narnia. No time has passed at all.

I returned yesterday from a one-day trip and felt as if I had been gone for weeks.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a small business trip - I've been given the opportunity to consult for a former employer of mine, and so I went up to spend the day at their offices. I was in Boston for less than 24 hours, yet when I got back to Dulles, I found myself wondering what all had transpired in my absence. I had to remind myself that not much would have the opportunity to transpire in that period of time.

It is always strange to me to return to someplace I once lived. There is this over-arching sense that I know where things are, and yet when faced with a particular intersection, my mind goes blank and I have no idea where I am. In Boston, this has been exacerbated by The Big Dig. It used to be that you came over from Logan via The Tunnel (Callahan or Sumner - I can never remember which one runs which way). Then they added The Ted Williams Tunnel. Now, you hop into a cab, it enters the Ted Williams Tunnel and you become a fish - the cab dives down under the city, then takes an exit and surfaces for just a moment. You get a glimpse of skyline, perhaps you even recognize a landmark, then your cab-fish swishes down into the depths again and the world of space and air is gone. This happens several times - dive, surface, dive - until you get out of that featureless underworld and pop out to the surface roads (now strangely scrubbed-looking after the DNC). Bits of the old Expressway still loom like rusty gravestones, but the vast oppressiveness of the overpasses seems mostly gone.

Someone asked me if I missed Boston, and my answer was yes, and no. I miss some people, a few little corners of the place. Favorite restaurants, the ability to walk somewhere (we live too far into the 'burbs now to be able to walk anywhere. You can take a walk, but there's no destination). But that is all. Boston has recently been named the most difficult city to navigate by car, and I am not surprised. Public transport is an option, but often a confusing and complicated one. DC traffic may be bad, and the Metro Board may be daft (they have since rescinded the particular idiocy I was so het up about, by the way), but this is my home now.

Note: My plea for help is still open - if you have ideas, please let me know. Or, alternatively I may take a break from blogging next week. We'll see...

Posted: Wednesday - August 04, 2004 at 07:57 AM | |