Boston

Wifi on a bus is a wonderful invention. It allows me to be completing what will be one of my last blog entries of the Great Escape, Part II, Road Trip, from the bus that it taking us from Boston back to New York. A bus? I hear you say. Not only is that unamerican, but don't you have a car?

It has in fact reached that point in our journey where the car had to be sold. Our original plan was always to buy the car in Seattle and sell it on the East Coast, and hopefully in the process beat the prohibitively expensive system of one way fees that are charged on rental cars. For the plan to work out, we needed to get a decent price for the car on resale, and so we found ourselves driving around the outer suburbs of Boston, trekking from car dealer to car dealer to compare offers.

It would have been a long day anyway, but it was made longer by the fact that, after not losing anything for the entire trip, which those of you who know me will realise is an impressive effort, I had a difficult couple of days as far as keeping track of my personal possessions goes. In the space of two days I managed to leave my iphone in New York, then leave my wallet at the first car dealer, and then leave my bag containing my laptop in the car we had just sold. The wallet and the laptop have been recovered, but the phone seems to be a lost cause (on that note, if you receive any bizarre or offensive emails from me in the next few weeks, please assume they came from the person who now has unfettered access to my hotmail and facebook accounts, courtesy of my phone)

Back to the car. The first dealer we went to offered us $2000 for the car, which was less than we had hoped. The second dealer offered us $2500, then took the car for a quick drive. He returned to tell us the transmission was gone, and that he could only offer us $1500. At that point we hurried the car back to the first dealer and took the $2000. With the disappointing resale price, I'm not sure whether we beat the expense of renting a car, especially once you take into account the $900 spent fixing the radiator. But we joined the great American dream of owning a big, inefficient sedan, and had the convenience of having our own car, that could go wherever we wanted it to. Despite his poor resale value, I was pretty sad to see Yes Man go - without him, after all, the great adventure would never have been possible. For nostalgia's sake, we kept the number plates (as it was being registered in a new state, it needed new plates anyway).

Having sold the car, we had the opportunity to turn our attention to Boston itself. It is the first time in America that I have been surprised by how small something is. Given its status as the home of the world's best universities, and one of America's original and most famous cities, I was expecting a big place. Not so. The population of Boston is around 600,000, and you can easily walk the city's most famous sites, and its central business district, in under an hour.

After Philadelphia and Washington, Boston is the final stop for someone who wants to take a history of the American Revolution tour of North East America. It is a city dripping in history, as the place where the 'patriots' as they are universally called, first refused to pay British taxes, and where the first battles of the war of independence broke out. The names of the founding fathers, Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, are everywhere, including on the city's most famous beer.

My final point on the American revolution: Taking the 'Freedom Trail' around Boston, which goes from one significant site of the revolution to another over a two mile loop, you get a good sense of what sparked the whole conflict, amongst other things by participating in a town meeting that re enacts events of 1775. Really, it seems it all started because a few wealthy merchants, such as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin, didn't want to pay taxes levied on them by the British. In the aftermath there was a great deal of talk about liberty and equality of all, the pursuit of happiness and all that, but that, while it might have been a good rallying call to get people more involved, doesn't seem to have been what really kickstarted the revolution. And to judge by the state of the US deficit today, the anti-taxation principles of the revolution seem to have been amongst its most enduring.

Aside from the revolutionary stuff, Boston's other great historic claim is that it is a city of firsts. First public park in America, first subway station (though not first subway system, because by the time the second station was built New York's system was up and running), first university (Harvard), first primary school etc. This is all very impressive, but after a while it becomes obvious that, really, its all the same trick. It was one of the first cities, so much of what it built happened to be the first such thing in America. I would probably offend a few people in Boston if I pointed out that all these things were old news in Europe.

We managed to catch up with some more friends from back home, both working in the Boston office of LEK. We even crashed on the couch of one of them for the full 5 nights, thereby defraying at least some of the cost of our vehicles failed resale. If you are reading this Neil, thanks again.

A chat with Neil and Jono certainly did nothing to make me regret leaving work. Fortunately they both managed to get out of the office on Saturday night, and we went to a concert starring none other than the Bare Naked Ladies. Now, I have to admit, it has been more than one week since I looked at, or heard of, the Bare Naked Ladies, but I have to give them credit. For a quartet of clearly fast ageing rockers, they still put on a pretty good show. Someone near the front even through some underwear at them.

My final observation about Boston has to be the accent. Accents in America have changed with the regions, but never so clearly as in Boston, where they have a striking way of saying any word with an 'ar' sound in it, dropping the r and dragging out the a with a twang that somewhere between 'eh' and 'aw'. It's a little like a New Zealand accent in that it can sound normal for a couple of sentences, but then a give away word like car comes up and the secret is out. They are very proud of their accents in Boston, and their favourite saying is that a Bostonian will 'Pahk the cah in Hahved yahd'. Although a tour guide informed me that no one actually does this anymore, because you get a ticket.

We also visited Cape Cod before coming back to New York - that will get covered off in what will probably be the final post of this this trip. Once again, check back soon.