The way Ben Franklin would have intended. . .

Boston: Day 3

Good game Boston! I have to tell you that Boston exceeded my expectations in almost every way. As I got into planning this trip New York really overshadowed Boston as the highlight, but I could not be happier with the time I had in Boston. The people were wonderful, the whole atmosphere of the town is cool. The city get the Mike Kozina stamp of approval. I didn't get around to everything I wanted to do, I missed the USS Constitution :(, but that gives me a reason to come back, preferably during baseball season.

I hit the ground running Monday morning, grabbed a quick bite at a little bagel shop, really good, and caught the train to the JFK museum. Really neat place, I would recommend it if you are going to be in town. They have a HUGE piece of the Berlin Wall which I enjoyed. After I finished I grabbed a bite from LaGrassa's. SWEET BABY JESUS, it was awesome. Corned beef and pastrami on pumpernickel, amazing. Then I hopped on the train again for the trip to the Sam Adams Brewery, another highlight! It's free, they give a nice sampling of beer and you get a free glass! When they finish they offer a trolly to Doyle's. Doyle's in a little pub in Jamaica Plains that was the first to offer Sam Adams in 1985, as a thank you, the Brewery give's nice pint glasses to give to folks when they get a beer. So for 4.50 you get some Sam and a great glass. If you go, ask for Joyce, she will remind you of a sweet Aunt, and if you badger her she will get you bacon for your nacho's, or you can steal it from the potato skins :)

I feel I would be leaving out a something if I don't mention the trolly ride. Jimmy runs the trolly. Jimmy is slightly imbalanced. Now, everyone has seen a party bus. Jimmy runs a party trolly, complete with disco ball, strobe lights, and a full sound system! Jimmy's suspension is also screwed up on the Party Trolly, so when ever he gets on the brakes, which is often, the entire thing bobs up and down like it has hydraulics! Jimmy is my favorite imbalanced party trolly operator, by far!

I ran into some fellow southerners on the tour, and we decided to see the history of the city the way Ben Franklin would have wanted it. . .via Pub Crawl. Went to the 21^st amendment pub, great name for a bar btw, they had PBR on tap for 3 bucks, reminded me of home :) We did three different bars and ended up near Quincy Market at a place, I cant remember the name, but they had the best house band. They were rocking some Miley and some Earth Wind and Fire. Finished there, grabbed some pizza, and called it a night. GOOD GAME BOSTON!

I'll miss Boston, met some crazy cool people, drank some good beer, and got to experience an amazing city! Now on to New York, they are gonna have to bring it!

Until next time. . .

-Mike

So, Fenway was pretty cool!

Good Morning All!

     I got to experience the two extremes of Boston yesterday. I started out my day in Cambridge. Beautiful town, reminds me a lot of Georgetown. Little narrow roads lined with brick row houses. Here I happened upon the site where George Washington took command of the American Army in 1775, not the U.S. army (there wasn't a U.S. yet). Just another instance of a significant landmark that you come upon without much pomp but while you are there you can feel the gravity of what took place under your feet 250 years ago. I was standing under the same tree as Gen Washington, it's still there! Lot's of very smart looking people running around Harvard Square, I overheard a group of students having a rousing discussion about the correct formula to find some angle. If you were to substitute the math for football, you would have thought it was Dan and me talking. There is a definite hippie element that is very active among the people of Cambridge. One of the people I have chatted with since I've been here called it the "People's Republic of Cambridge". He had a bit of a point, I was welcomed into the square by Revolution Books, operated by The Revolutionary Communist Party. There are homeless as there are in all large towns, but one group got my attention. I was walking past the subway station and a there was a group to my left asking for change. There were 3 of them and they were all in their twenties and had BLUE HAIR. I can't but think if they would take a shower and not dye their hair blue they be able to get some kind of job, there were like 20 help wanted signs within a 10 minute walk of where they were chilling and smoking pot on the sidewalk. Grr,

From there I took the T to Fenway, another great neighborhood. Very blue collar working class folks. Much more my speed. I'll tell you, Fenway Park is AWESOME! They put on a great tour, my tour guide was fantastic. He was about 100 but boy was he enthusiastic. There was a group of sailors in our group from the Canadian Navy, he had a fun time with them :) For anyone interested, I want to plan a trip back during baseball season and see a game. After Fenway I went to the Boston Beer Works. Great burger, better beer. Decided after to walk back to the hotel and relax for a bit, then headed out to a bar that was playing some jazz and meet the coolest Aussies ever, Joel and Emma. If you have never drank with an Australian, I highly recommend it! I taught them about the Waffle House All Star Special. They could not believe the amount of food for 6 bucks! They had to be on the train to NYC at 6 this morning! Good luck to them :) I finished up with some late night pizza, always good! Weather is getting a little hairy. Cold, sleet, and rain. Bleh, hopefully it clears up today.

On tap for today: Freedom Trail, JFK Museum and Sam Adams Brewery!

Until next time. .

-Mike

Boston Day 1: WTF is up with the roads!

So I promised myself that I would blog on here each day of my trip, didn't get to it last night so I"ll throw something up today in the ever popular and supremely lazy list form :D

Things I learned today (In chronological order (sorta))

1. TIA is the greatest airport God gave man!
      The more airports I go to, the more I appreciate ours. As we are landing the lady sitting next to me described Logan as an, "unholy nightmare." That's probably not good.

2. Boston's subway system is. . . interesting.
     When I arrived the only place I knew how to get to was my hotel. Take the shuttle to the Blue Line. Blue Line to the Orange Line. Get off at Tufts. I complete steps 1 and 2 and get a couple stops down the line and the rest of the Blue Line is closed for construction. Ruh Roh! It all worked put though, they had shuttle buses running and a very nice MBTA worker got me pointed in the right direction.

3. Boston's road design in even more. . . interesting.

      I had been warned about this before I left but thought to myself, "It can't be that bad." In the words of Dan Sidwell, "OH BOY HOWDY!" I found this out right off the bat. The shuttle that was taking me to my connecting train traveled north for a pretty good while, then we made a left hand turn, on to a road whose only purpose was to make a right hand turn. I can't even figure it out and I was there! The founding fathers were great at inventing Democracy but they sure dropped the ball on the whole city planning thing. I was at Boston Common, the main park in Boston, and wanted to got to Quincy Market. I was due west of the Market. Surely there is a road that traverses Boston from East to West. Nope! I had to take like 4 roads to get there and got lost twice.

4: There are lots of cheap, good eats in Boston
    Example: Sal's Pizza. It was soooo good and cost $4.50 a slice, but when you open it up the "slice" is like half a pizza that's been cut in 2 and you get both halves! Good game Sal's. I ate my lunch in the park and people watched.

5. Boston is Olde!

   I know this should go without saying, but when you see a grave marker from the 1670's that's olde! That kind of stuff is everywhere! You'll come across a little plaque on a building, "On this site in 1730, something cool happened."

6. Boston has awesome beer!
   Went to 3 different pubs/ bars yesterday and had 4 different micro brews and they were all outstanding!

7. Bostonians are epically proud to be Bostonians.
   Completely different from home, where everyone comes from somewhere else. Here, these people have lived here for generations and they are pumped about it! It's actually pretty nice. They are more than ready to share it with you, like I found out from the drunk guy at Rock Bottom, the roads are terrible because they just paved over the horse trails and figured that would be good enough. By the time they weren't good enough it was too late to do anything about it. At which point my new friend chugged his beer because, "the paaaty bus is gonna be heah in five and it gonna beah wickehd!" I could get used to it here :)

8. Last but not least.
   There is man in the greater Boston area ,who goes by Roach, who wanted me to know that Whiskey's had $1.99 slices and $.20 wings. It was apparently very important that I know that :). He bid me farewell by saying, "You dew it ahp big tanaght brahh!"

All in all, an outstanding first day in Boston. Today I'm gonna check out the JFK museum, Cambridge and Fenway! Until next time.

-Mike

   

Here we gooooooo!

Well here we are! I leave in 6 hours, I have my bags packed, hotels booked. Now all I have to do is go. I should be sleeping but so much for that.

I ended up booking a room in Brooklyn, the rates in Manhattan were just a bit more than I was willing to spend. So I will take the train into the city in the mornings, it's only about a 15 minute ride to the financial district, 30 to Times Square. Another exciting NYC development, Bon Jovi is doing the Today Show Concert Series on Friday, so I think I will try and make it out for that.

I'm going to try and put a short post up here every day and post my pictures on Facebook. Hopefully I'll have enough going on to merit a post a day. I have zero idea what to expect from this trip, I am hoping for the best and am trying to keep a positive frame of mind. All the crap going on will be here when I get back, so I'm going to let myself have a reprieve.

Most of you guys know my grandfather passed away recently. I think he would have really liked the idea of this trip, he would have come with if he could have been able, and we would have probably made some questionable decisions :). As long as I could remember, he would carry a half dollar coin with him from the year he was born, 1920. He gave it to my cousin Garrett when the time came, and he was kind enough to let me borrow it for the next week. I'm happy I can bring a little piece of Papa with me.

Sometime tomorrow I will be drinking a Sam Adams Boston Lager in Boston. That's pretty good, right? I am gonna try and get a few hours of sleep and I will catch you guys up tomorrow. Until next time. . .

-Mike

Beans, Brews and Freedom. . .

Finally got my hotel booked for Boston. I'm going to be at the Courtyard by Marriott, it's a block from Boston Common in the theater district. The building is a restored hotel built in the twenties. I "named my own price" on Priceline and saved  $60 a night. It is always a little stressful booking that way because you don't really know what you're going to get. but I'm pretty happy with the hotel and the location.

My itinerary is falling into place as well. I'm going to spend one day in the east part of the city. That's the home of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston Common, Chinatown and, of course, The Boston Brewing Company. I'm gonna do half a day in the West side, there I can check out Fenway Paaak. The rest of that day I'm going to head to Cambridge to see if a can bring a little intelligent conversation to the otherwise simpleminded culture. I'm planning to devote the better part of a day to the Freedom Trail as well. I really enjoy history and am excited to really take my time on the trail.


Hopefully, if all goes to plan, this time next week I'll have my planes finalized for NYC. Only a month to go, I got to get my stuff in order! Until next time. . .


P.S.
 Shout out to Aunt Annie and the Dothan Crew. Had a great time even though Florida lost. Other than that could have not hoped for a better weekend. Thanks!

"The Jazz Corner of the World"

My plans continue to fall into place. I was having trouble sleeping so I fired up Pandora and found my way to the Duke Ellington station. It had been a long time since I had listened to any jazz, I forgot how much I enjoy it. Fast forward to the next day and I decided to listen to more and came across some Charlie Parker, who is great. There was a jazz club in NYC named for him called Birdland, it's current location is in Manhattan and has been added to my must do list. After playing so much of that kind of music in high school, this is a big deal for me. I can't wait.

I'm going to be Pricelining a Boston hotel on Friday, I'll post with my results then. Wish me luck, I think I'm going to stay across the river in Cambridge. I can rub elbows with the brains from Harvard and MIT, maybe run into Will Hunting. Until next time. . .

Opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

Well, no turning back now. I bought my plane tickets and reserved my spot on the Amtrak. For the record JetBlue is awesome. $170 round trip and that's flying into Boston and out of NYC. I also found a cool little resource, Tripit. You forward your travel confirmations to them and they organize your itinerary. They have an app for your phone so you have your trip info on you all the time, cool stuff.

When I decided to take this little trip I was having a hard time hammering down a date. I wanted to make sure I had enough time to save up the money but I didn't want to wait so long as to lose my gumption. Last week I got an email informing me of Dave Matthews Band's fall tour and how they would be playing Madison Square Garden. That pretty well settled the date. I'm gonna be out of town from November 6th to the 14th.





Needless to say (I'm gonna say it anyway), I'm ecstatic at the prospect of seeing my absolute favorite band in one of the most famous arenas in the world. It going to be great way to spend my last night in the city. I'm getting close to twenty DMB concerts and they never get old.

 I'm trying to put together a little Vacay Bucket list, any suggestions would be welcomed. Also trying to come up with a name for the whole thing. I was thinking Ridin' Solo, any ideas? I guess things are looking up, if even just the littlest bit, and I feel like there are still positive things I have going for me. Until next time.

"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."