adventure in boston
Let me preface this travelogue by telling you that my idea of adventurous is taking my wife to some place other than Phil’s or Arby’s for dinner. So when I decided one recent Wednesday evening to fly to Boston three days later, I was taking a bold leap into uncharted territory, both literally and figuratively.
This wasn’t some frivolous mid-life crisis. Instead, it was a chance to watch Carter Hamill and Margaret Davis, two friends and former Collegiate cross country and track athletes, compete for Amherst College in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) championship.
As my personal children will attest, I feel that no adventure is worthwhile unless you find some lesson in it, and during my whirlwind tour of eastern Massachusetts, I saw and learned plenty. First, I learned that if Bill Hamill, Carter’s dad and my tour guide for the day, hadn’t been driving, I’d still be looking for a way out of Logan Airport. I’m sure there’s some logic to the traffic pattern that would make the Figure 8 Demolition Derby look like a Sunday drive, but it completely escapes me.
On our way to the race site, we had some time to kill, so my sidekick, who graduated from the Harvard Business School and worked in Boston for a year afterwards, pointed out several very important landmarks. Among them were Fenway Park and the Green Monster (if only the back side), the Fleet Center where the Celtics play and the Boston Gahden, parquet floor and all, once stood, Cheers (of course), and his wife Susan’s childhood home on Beacon Street.
Oh, yeah, we also rode by the historic Old North Church which is now ensconced in a neighborhood with very, very narrow streets and a lot of Italian restaurants. If Paul Revere were to ride today shouting, “One if by land, two if by sea,” he’d no doubt find himself stuck behind a garbage truck blocking two lanes of traffic or be blown off his horse by some obnoxious motorist sitting on his horn, which, I came to learn, is the most important automotive part in Beantown.
Next, we circled Boston Common, then crossed the Charles River into Cambridge and saw the campuses of M.I.T. and Harvard, two renowned universities that were on my short list 35-plus years ago before I settled on the University of Richmond. Our driving tour completed, we made our way westward toward North Grafton, home of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine and the site of the NESCAC championship.
There we found a very nice cross country course with hills both rolling and daunting and much lush pasture land set against an idyllic backdrop of the beautiful New England foliage. We also saw a building with a sign proclaiming it the Center for Animals and Public Policy, a monument to liberal arts education at its best.
We learned that Tufts' colors are light blue and brown-I bet nobody steals their equipment-and that the mascot is a Jumbo, actually an annoying guy dressed in a gray elephant suit with large pink ears who this day was riding around in the back of an all-terrain vehicle.
Finally, I learned, or actually had reinforced, that cross country athletes are a hardy and fearless breed. The temperature this afternoon was in the mid 30's, and the steady gale pushed the wind-chill factor to "brutal" which is just past "miserable" and one notch above "unbearable" which would have been the case if the predicted rain and snow showers had materialized. Unfazed, the runners shed their warmups, donned gloves, and attacked the course, ignoring their windburned skin, nearly frostbitten noses, and tears running from their eyes not so much from the discomfort as from the bitter cold.
Carter, a three-season Division Ill All-American last year as a freshman, placed 6th out of 127 in ·18:21. Margaret, a relative newcomer to distance running, was the Lord Jeffs' No. 8 finisher in 20:25, one of her best times of the year over a SK course. As they always did in high school, they faced the challenges of the day without complaint, gave all they had to the effort, and accepted congratulations on their performances with humility. They smiled and shivered through the photo-ops afterwards, we talked of their former teammates back home, and then they boarded their bus for the trip back to Amherst.
Bill and I hopped in the rental car, took a detour through Concord, and visited the Minute Man National Historical Park. As twilight descended, we crossed the bridge (actually, the replica of the bridge) where "the shot heard round the world" was fired and then, with him thankfully still at the wheel, found our way through the maze back to Logan.
Running on fumes after a day that began at 4:15 a.m., I pulled into my driveway just after 11 p.m. The adventure was over, but the memory remains. The best lesson of all, you see, is that time spent with friends is a singular joy which, despite the fatigue, the effort, and even the enduring memory of that funky Tufts Jumbo, made the experience incredibly worthwhile.
