Boston

As a longtime baseball fan, I always wanted to see Fenway Park. It's a historical stadium, one where many legends have played since 1912. When I heard that the park might not be around anymore, I figured I should go see it. But I was living under a rock, apparently, because there was announcement in 2005 that Fenway would remain standing. Both clerks at the hotel I was staying at looked at me strange when I said I thought a new stadium was getting built. They assured me that the only thing they planned on doing was adding seats to the place. Sure enough, some research later proved that point.

Of course, going to Fenway also means going to watch an American League game. American League games are almost always boring to me. Even when I went to LA and saw the Angels play the Twins in a game that was decided in the bottom of the ninth, I couldn't say I'd have watched the game if it were on TV. The last one I went to was at Yankee Stadium; an 8-1 vanquishing also of the Twins. The other two AL games I've been to were low-scoring affairs between bad teams (Indians vs Angels and Royals).

Here, Boston played the Chicago White Sox. They won 8-0 and the game was, again, pretty boring. But I did see some pretty cool things: Jacoby Ellsbury made an amazing catch to begin the game to rob Orlando Cabrera, and Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched 8 amazing innings of shutout ball. I was a little disappointed he didn't go the distance. But his pitching was almost an afterthought.

Character. I love things like this:

I turned around from my deep center field seats and looked at the surroundings. If you look on one of the steel girders you'll see someone wrote, "Manny Who?" on it. It's about the best comment on a departed selfish star as you can make. Like, "We don't even miss you."

One other thing: The Pesky Pole. I'd always loved the double-meaning of this, named after Johnny Pesky, but truly "pesky" for defenses because it's easy to knock a HR less than 300 feet that would be foul everywhere else in the world. It's unique.

The next day, I went to Harvard and scoped it out. I didn't really have much of a plan for my post-Red Sox experience, but I figured I'd go see some famous schools. It was only when I arrived that I truly realized how, not only are there a lot of schools in Boston/Cambridge, there are a lot of great schools in the area. It's amazing how many fit in the city.

After Harvard, I walked a lot and got a little lost. The highlight was seeing these:

The St. Charles River, along with many bridges with great views.

And Harvard Stadium, I thought a pretty neat structure. Apparently it's shaped like a horseshoe, but I didn't get to see it up close.

I finally ended up walking around MIT. This is a picture of their huge science lab. Many of the pictures I took are a bit hard to see, but the architecture is something akin to what I imagined Howard Roark building in The Fountainhead. A lot of stuff just looks insane. This led to probably the trip's funniest moment, when the school's architecture had me researching it. MIT made a short list in the Princeton Review of campuses that are either "tiny, unsightly, or both." I think the "unsightly" comes from the fact that there are so many strange buildings. One:

You may not be able to see it very well but in the lit room at the top, there's all this plant life growing inside. This campus may be unsightly, but it's definitely not boring. It's worth a look.

Anyway, no big deal, but worth sharing.