Monthly Archives: September 2004

Week Three Wrap-up

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Base of the trail

I spent most of my third week on my computer purging a lot of old unused files and reorganizing things. More than that, I was hacking away at this site and boning up on my dusty coding skills. I hadn’t concentrated on the site for a long time. Plus, I was going through the process getting the domain registered and set-up for the big launch. Unfortunately, there were a few snags in the works that delayed things. Other than that I was laboriously reviewing my code, tweaking things here and there, and trying to make sure I was producing good valid documents using proper Web Standards, but that’s enough of that.

Ali's brothers

I was still scooting around my new hometown and getting the lay of the land. I finally started doing some of the basic things, like changing over stuff and such. Of course being the bookworm that I am, I headed to the Waltham Public Library and got myself a card. There is a fantastic irony about the local library, however. After Ali’s first moved to Waltham she discovered that a distant family member worked at the library for years. Neither she nor her sister aware of the connection at all, until the name of the town prompted someone’s memory. Interestingly, both sides of her family pretty much hail from New Jersey despite having migrated all over in recent years. So, it was pretty much a surprise that of all the towns in the Boston area, a relation had beaten them to their own.

View from a vista

However, the peak of the week (pun deviously intended) was hiking Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Ali’s dad and I packed up her little brothers and headed for the hills before they ventured back into the classroom. Apparently, it is a very popular summit in the New England area. Rumor has it Monadnock is the second most hiked peak in the world, but I don’t have any verification on that and probably doubt it. Regardless, this is not a hike for the weak.

The Crew

Having hiked extensively as an adolescent, I’ve spent time in the Rockies and along the Appalachian Trail. Anybody that has hike in both areas can relate to the enormous difference in ruggedness between East and West. Out West most of the mountains are higher but switchbacks climb you up to the peak. Usually they grade everything so that for every 100 feet you run the rise in elevation is only 10 feet. So, it takes a lot longer but the climb isn’t at all dangerous. In the East, the trails just head right up the side of the mountains. There is no method other than the straightest path to the peak. Even though the summits don’t reach as high, hiking in Appalachia resembles mountain climbing at times. It is rugged and borders on dangerous, at times. Mount Monadnock is no exception. There are a number of trails of varying difficulty, but they are all rock strewn ascents that require all your appendages working, as the pictures will attest. Ali’s rubber-legged brothers had no problem scaling the first half like a couple of mountain goats. However, on the way back down they started to run out of gas. It turned out to be a great day as the fog burned off and overall it was great fun.

Nik-Nik running on top of the summit

In looking up some things on the mountain, I discovered the origins of the word monadnock, which is rather interesting. A Native American word meaning “mountain that stands alone,” it makes perfect sense that the Chicago building bears its name. The Monadnock Building was the first skyscraper in Chicago, when it was built. Constructed with pre-skyscraper technology, all 16 stories rise from the street completely supported by brick. No steel reinforcements were used as a rule, yet. Thus, the walls grow thinner as all that masonry surges in the air. At the base the walls are 6 feet thick, making this an impressive throwback to turn-of-the-century architecture. It is a building that certainly would have looked like a mountain that stood alone, when it was built. It really is a beautiful building. I have been in it a number of times to visit my friend Bill who has an office there.

Notes from Week Two

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Apologies for the ribbon of pictures at the bottom of the last post, I’ll see if I can make the visuals a bit more stylish to come.

The first few days were a bit rough. A week before the move, I had wrenched my back similarly as I did in November while preparing to play Macbeth. This time it wasn’t nearly as bad, but on top of the move the timing couldn’t have been too much worse. Needless to say, I was still tender for the load and drive. By the time we had unloaded the truck all day on the 15th, I was hurting again. That meant pretty minimal activity on the settling front. Plus, with the school year rapidly approaching, I had to get on the stick looking for a teaching gig. Much to my chagrin, my endeavors to secure a position molding the youth of America have bore no fruit. It took the better part of the first week to even unpack the essentials.

Week two began with some investigation of my new surroundings. So here are some details of local color. We are in Waltham, MA, which is about 10 miles west outside Boston, along the Charles River. Most notably it is known as home of Brandeis University. However, the Waltham Watch Company, started in 1854 and lasting until 1957, made it known as “Watch City.”

For just over a century, the company was a maker of finely crafted timepieces and became particularly innovative in its manufacturing practices. They were so pioneering that after Henry Ford visited their plant he incorporated many of their methods into his assembly-line process for automobiles. More interesting than that, however, is the fact that Waltham was home to the Boston Manufacturing Company. This makes the town essentially the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Imagine that! The Boston Manufacturing Company, a textile company founded in 1813, was the first factory where all processes that carried raw cotton to finished cloth were completed mechanically in a single mill. The building still stands right where the train and bus drop-off is, between the Waltham Common and the Charles River. In fact, there is a dam that is visible from the main drag in the town, Moody Street, which the company once used to power the looms. Most of you know I like to know a little about where I am and such. So, having the opportunity to explore a little was a good way to get my history fix. Plus, since I’ve been free during the day, looking for a job, Ali and her sister Keri have been giving me research assignments. I get to do the dirty work of finding answers to all the history questions they have had and not had the chance to find on their own.

At the conclusion of week two, we spent a good chunk of the day at Crane Beach, up the northern coast on the Castle Neck, in Ipswich, near Cape Anne. Cape Anne is up Gloucester way, the centuries old fishing town and site of Perfect Storm fame, among other well-known references. It was a really nice beach. Named after Chicagoan Richard T. Crane, Jr., no less, he was a turn of the century industrialist who summered in Northern Mass. He was a Yale grad with a lot of New York friends, but apparently was not interested in building in Newport, RI, like everyone else. Apparently, Junior took his dad’s Crane Company from a brass foundry and built it into a giant manufacturer of bathroom fixtures, valves, and steam engines. He must have been a bit of a robber baron. He built one mansion on the property, decided he didn’t like it, and hired then world famous architect David Adler to tear it down and build another one that still stands. After his wife died, she donated half of their 4000 acres to the public. The other half got donated after their son punched out in the sixties. Now it’s all a National Landmark.

Of course I, in all my intelligence, thought, “It’s a cool day. This is New England, and much further north than Chicago. I don’t need to use any sunscreen immediately.” Well, needless to say, that was an extremely stupid notion to have crowded my melon. Despite putting the lotion on a bit later and actually getting out of the sun at some point earlier than Ali and Keri, I paid the price. My back got progressively redder from the burn as the night wore on and by morning I was one hurtin’ dumb-ass! You’d think I would know better. The only good thing was that despite the burn, my back started to feel a whole lot better.

From Chicago to Boston

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Picking up the truck.

I left for Massachusetts three weeks ago to the day. For those of you that were unaware here is the catch-up. After a long-distance romance that reunited me with my high school sweetheart closed in on a year’s length, I picked up and moved across the country so we could be together. Some wondered “What took so long?” and others responded more on the order of “You’re moving?” Nevertheless, Ali and I became serious enough that someone moving was inevitable. My moving was the path of least resistance, while satiating a bit of my long-buried wanderlust. So, now I am “Live from New England.”

Ready to hit the road.

First, I couldn’t have done it without the help of a small group of great people (You know who you are!). Thanks again to everybody who helped. This group includes anyone who helped with packing or took various items off my hands, so as they required no packing. I am extremely grateful to those that helped pack the truck, considering it was a weeknight and I was slightly overwhelmed with all the necessities. Yet, only three weeks ago Ali and I jumped in the U-haul, destination Bay State.

Coffee for the road. Day 2.

The drive took a bit longer than either of us would have liked, but we still managed to have as much fun as we could. We started the trek after the morning rush, since loading the truck took us well into the prior evening. Of course we got completely hung-up by the parking lot known as Interstate 80/94. Anybody that has ever had the pleasure of sitting on that godforsaken stretch of pavement will have just sighed in sympathy. Note that I was driving a 15 foot box-truck while dragging my Maxima in tow. Fast forward a few hours and we were cruising down the Ohio Turnpike. By the way, anyone traveling that ribbon of asphalt is treated to some of the nicest oasis stops in the nation. Passing through approximately five minutes of rain the whole leg, we pulled off in wonderful Barkeyville, Pennsylvania to lodge for the night at 11:00 PM EST. Combined with the weight, speed capabilities of our transport, and pit stops we were only to average about 55 mph. We ended the first day just shy of the half-way mark.

New American Gothic.

Road-tripping always renders the greatest opportunity to meet the most interesting people. On the dawn of day two, we had the pleasure of encountering an elderly couple from Little Rock, Arkansas. On the surface they were quite cute. They made the trip back to PA for the gentleman’s 60th high school reunion (How about that?!). Being a magnet for the social folk, these two took a shine to me and Ali immediately. That’s when everything took an amusing turn. The woman began chit-chatting about the weather. Hurricane Charley was the news of the day, if you’ll remember, so the television was abuzz with weather reports. That’s when she dropped the first comment that charmed my feminist girlfriend to no end. Mentioning those media-savvy meteorologists, the lady mused, “They (the weather reporters) sure think they know what they’re talking about, even the women.” Quite frankly, I was a bit surprised Ali didn’t pull a spit take with her coffee, but she really didn’t have time. The hits just kept coming from these sincere, sympathizing seniors.

Safely in Waltham, MA.

After learning we had come from Chicago, the older man proudly let me know, “I served with a bunch of boys from Chicago, in the War. They were all Polocks.” At this point, Ali jumped up to get more food and I seized the moment as a teaching tool, explaining how the Polish population in Chicago is greater than any other city with the exception of Warsaw. This and questioning them about their trip seemed to stabilize conversation for a short time. Yet the old lady had one last obscure ethnocentric tangent to weave into the conversation. She mentioned they had taken a local coal mine tour. Here was the topper! “Did you know that most of the coal that is mined here in the States is shipped off to China. I don’t like sending things to China. You know we sent a lot of scrap metal to Japan before they bombed us at Pearl Harbor.” At this point, all conversation seemed to screech to a halt as Ali busily tried to pick her jaw up, as it had dropped from the table, to her chair, and landed with an almost audible thud on the floor. Meanwhile, I was doing everything I could to stifle a welling laughter that nearly brought me to tears. It is safe to say that the last comment effectively ended our meal together. Once Ali had found and managed to reconstruct her talker, she screwed her eyes on her watch, and curtly but politely supposed “We should probably get on the road.” Not realizing we were breakfasting with the Bunker’s kicked the day off with fodder for a number jokes that traveled with us most of the second day.

All told, it took about twenty hours to complete our crossing to the coast, give or take an hour or two. So, pulling into Massachusetts around 7:30 PM EST was welcome relief. We dined with the Boston contingent of Ali’s family, took in some of the Olympics, and crashed for the night.

New home amidst the boxes.

First thing next morning, the unpacking began. With the help of Ali’s dad, step-mom, and younger brothers, we removed nearly all items on the truck marked for storage and headed for the homestead. Nearly all day was spent unloading that mobile crate into a space about half the size of my previous residence. Looking at the pictures below, one can appreciate my mild amusement with this reality. Truth told it is no doubt cozy, but not really problematic. As most of you know, I am capable of living out of boxes for long stretches of time. So, a few weeks of upheaval is nothing.

Hope you enjoy the pics. I have to say I think Ali did a great job of chronicling the voyage.

More to come…