Back to Boston

This image is modified from a Charity Tee by Gildan for sale online. LINK

Yesterday my husband and I drove to the Anderson-Woburn MA commuter rail station, parked, and took the train into Boston to attend a rescheduled BSO concert.  I was struck by the quiet demeanor of everyone.  I am rural person through and through so I normally find entering the land of mass transit to be noisy, dirty, and I go into a mild state of alertness even though I love many assets that can only found in an urban environment.  None of those feelings yesterday.  OK there may have been one or two discarded newspapers on the floor of an Orange Line car but really the young people (tweens, teens, college students, 20 somethings) were all displaying a respectful reserve along with their elders. The security checks of bags when entering Symphony Hall was professional, but did not feel intrusive. After the concert we ended up walking quickly past the area where the Patriot’s Day bombing took place.  We were trying to make it to North Station in time for a train (which we missed by 2 minutes) so we were not really gawking.  Everything looked quite normal, the way it would at the end of April any year except as I have already noted quieter and cleaner.  My husband commented when we got home how the streets showed no evidence of the recent dramatic tragedy.  We did not walk directly passed the stretch of fence where memorial displays had been relocated but could see a moderate crowd of people viewing those items as we turned the corner to head in the opposite direction.  Again my ears were struck by the relative quiet.  There was plenty of traffic but I only heard one or two car horns.  People might be carrying on conversations but there was no yelling or screaming to friends in the distance.

We will be back in Boston this coming weekend and spending a couple of nights in one of the chain hotels in that central area.  I am going to be interested in observing if things are still somber, and comfortable for the simple country kid I will never out age, or whether the noise, grit, grim, and activity of the Boston I remember from years past is starting to return.

For those people and families who will never regain their pre Patriot’s Day 2013 normal please consider donating to The One Fund – Boston.

Travel Tuesday # 25 – Watching a Vintage Steam Train

One morning during our August 2005 trip to England while of walking into the Bristol Temple Station to board an ordinary train we noticed a vintage steam train readying to depart on an excursion.  My husband, the train fan, decided  we should hang around and watch the old-timer take off.

   

 

 

Travel Tuesday # 22 – Vale of Evesham

Time to share another scrapbook page.  I pulled a red binder off my shelf and found memories of an August 2005 trip to England.  My husband was on a mission to see a number of cathedrals and while there are tons of pictures of them I enjoyed taking shots of the landscape while we traveled mile after mile on trains.  These photos include some crops being harvested.  I could not figure out what the crop was.  If you know, or have an educated guess I am interested in learning.

I’ll be posting more pages from this particular trip in the weeks to come.  Until then…

Travel Tuesday # 9 – The National Railway Museum in York England

There photos were taken in 1999.  The Road Train  that takes you to the National Railway Museum from Duncombe Place (next to York Minster)  gets you into the mood. 

A historic logo -

The National Railway Museum in York & Shildon is the largest railway museum in the world.   Learn more by clicking here.

Word for 12/29 – Scare

I have not been really scared recently.  It took me a while to figure out what to post today, but then it came to me.  It might have been one of the last trips my husband and I took before purchasing a digital camera.  We had done this long rail road trip on vintage equipment where we got in late each night due to equipment problems and were up very early each morning to begin again.  When we had left Prince Rupert by B.C. ferry and arrived in Port Hardy it had been another long day and short night.   I was actually fairly pleased we would have a day on a bus.  But things did not go that well.  The bus had a mechanical problem, and it was a holiday.  In order to keep the bus moving we could not have A/C.  Our bus driver was a kindly older man dealing with a grumpy bunch of travel weary Americans.  But he was doing his best, until he slumped over and the bus started to go off the road.  Well my husband leapt up and took the steering while and managed to apply the brake.  He called back to the rest of the passengers asking for a doctor, no one answered, but in a few seconds a couple of people who had some emergency training came forward.  They were able to take the driver, a good-sized man, out of the bus, and to revive him, although I believe he remained unconscious .  My husband, however, was hesitant to leave his position holding the steering wheel and brake.  Now that is the part of this adventure that was the biggest scare for me.  I so wished someone more mechanically inclined would step forward and figure out how to turn the bus off.  It seemed like eternity before someone who had driven lumber trucks came forward.  My husband wasn’t eager to give up control but I was much relieved once he did.

Not to leave you hanging, everyone on the bus was OK, but the driver did not survive.  I already had a head cold on the bus ride.  I still had it two or three days later when we flew out of Vancouver and back to Montreal.  My ears did not unclog for sometime after landing.  Like I needed another scare to end that trip.  As vacations go that is the one I would never want to relive.

Word for 11/20 – Moo

As you look at these ‘Moo Cows’ you are probably thinking that they are Holsteins.  And maybe they are, although it is safer to say that they are British Friesians.  Historically, Friesians and Holsteins have the same origins, but whether they are still the same breed or not seems debatable. This is yet another of the hundreds of photos that I have taken out the window of a moving train while traveling around England.

Word for 11/17 – Tremble

A little snow is no reason to tremble where I live.  In fact the economy is helped by a good ski season.  But in the U.K. a little snow, like that pictured below, causes much of normal activity to grind to a halt.  They are not set up to deal with below freezing temperatures.  The train signals may fail.  So on the trip when I took this photo, near Rochester, England in late December we made just a quick visit to the Cathedral & headed right back to the train station to make it back to London where we were staying.

Word for 11/12 – Thick

This tethered balloon hovers over the thick of Bristol, England.  Bristol is a University & science and technology city now.  Historically it was a port involved in the ‘Triangular trade’  of manufactured goods  taken to West Africa where they were exchanged for Africans who were transported to the Americas where most of them became slaves, and then plantation goods (sugar, cotton, rum. rice, & tobacco)  & a few of the Africans were returned to England.

The excellent train service from Bristol makes it a great base for exploring SW England.

Word for 11/8 – Less

As we are taking less trips to the U.K. now I find myself finally looking through and editing more old photos.  Here are a few taken on a train day trip:

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Word for 11/3 – Conductor

 

The train conductor from the Severn Valley Railway trip we took in 2004