Road show

It was only right that I should show up to the Red Sox parade. Dashing off an article for this week’s paper on some not very interesting local politics, I dumped the car at Lincoln Station and took a commuter train packed to the gunnels with kids and young adults skipping school or work. Not for the last time that day did I feel old.

Police were out in force, some in riot gear, others regulation issue sun glasses. Others pacified dogs, eager to get in on the action. The crowd boisterous and vocal lobbed whatever they could find and officers would tolerate back and forth. If you needed toilet paper at one of the port potties then too bad. That was among the first missiles to decorate the roadway.

But it was a fun day, the parade passed quickly, but not quietly, and an iron grip descended on the crowd as it wrapped up. North Station was a zoo as massed ranks of weary travelers tried to unravel the station announcements and weave between dazed and tired fellow members of the Nation to reach the right platform.

It was a good day to claim allegiance to the home town team.

Thank you Red Sox

I really appreciate the Red Sox response to my last post. Thanks to everyone, life can get back to normal.

I can shift the pile of Globe sports reports that has been growing taller in their "lucky place" on the dining room chair since the turnaround win in Cleveland.

I no longer have the responsibility of watching games through to the end "just in case" because they lost game 2 and 3 to Cleveland when I retired early on those nights .

It was a great year and I actually got to see a game way back in April on supposedly "unlucky Friday 13th".
Boston beat the LA Angels 8:1 that night - the very team they swept in the AL Series later in September.

Lucky for them I was there to start things rolling.

Wearing down the fan

Red Sox and Fox, you are running me ragged.

Game start times in late evening, extended innings and nail-biting finishes are giving me a serious case of nervous exhaustion.

Soccer cup competitions, with extra-time and penalty shootout formula are tense, but quickly over in comparison.

In baseball, every pitch is a potential disaster or delight, for hour after hour. No wonder everybody in the ballpark drinks or eats to distraction or spits whatever they spit (and that seems to vary as much as each game).

Perhaps it’s that I don’t understand the nuance of the sport, that it’s OK to throw a ball instead of a strike to certain hitters, or to hit a sacrifice and be out. But I see the same tensions ebbing and flowing on the faces of thousands of fans, players and coaching staff. Commentators and journalists refer to it as ‘the changing momentum’ and boy is it fickle.

Even with the Sox sitting on a commanding lead, I still expect them to blow it in late innings, and I’ve only lived here for the past for seven years, perhaps the most successful since their early years.

I cannot imagine how lifelong fans deal with each experience building on the past, like grains of sand in a sandcastle that is inevitably washed away as the tide turns.

So please stop it. Go Denver and win two more jut like 2004 in St Louis. Please, I need to feel better than this and so do the rest of Boston and the grandiose Red Sox Nation.

More required than a passenger bill of rights

Boston City Councilors are seeking to create a taxi passenger bill of rights along the lines of providing a safe, functioning and clean cab, with no music playing in the cab or cabbies chatting on cell phones while driving. In their response, according to an article in the Globe, cab drivers want a bill of rights for themselves; no drunk and vomiting passengers, no more than four passengers per cab ride and no abuse of the driver by passengers.

What I want is to pay via a fairs fare system, not take my life in my hands when I (rarely) take a cab and a driver who knows where he or (rarely) she is going.

I can say in all honesty, that I have never ever had a good or even satisfactory cab ride in Boston. Compared to the black cabs in London or even the yellow cabs in New York, Boston’s thinly disguised white coated cabs and their drivers are more like opportunists in clapped-out, cast-off cruisers. That seems to go for the suburbs too, based on my recent experience.

Journeys over 12 miles are charged at a flat, non-metered rate. A cab from Logan Airport to a town like Lincoln, 18.4 miles away, costs a flat rate $46.80, plus an airport charge of $2.25, plus tunnel tolls of $4.50, say $53.75 in all. Flat rate fares are charged at $2.60 per mile, metered fares are charged at $2.40 per mile plus a starting meter charge of 2.25. Either way the base fare, excluding tolls and airport fees, is between $46 and $47.

When I took a cab from Alewife T station to Lincoln--a distance of 9.6 miles--I assumed the same rules would apply. Not so – at least according to the driver and the dispatcher he had me talk to on his cell phone.

I should have been clued in by the fact the driver disappeared for a few minutes when we got in his sweltering cab and left us sitting there while he talked to the driver behind him. I should have known when he did not start the meter that we were in for a flat rate and as it turned out a flat out ride.

We had been traveling from Ireland to Boston via Dublin and Heathrow, including layovers, for the better part of 18 hours and were understandably tired. We took the Silver Line to South Station and then the Red Line to Alewife Station. The cost for the 40-minute subway-ride was $1.75 and it was around 9:30pm when we dragged ourselves to the taxi rank.

Then the cab took us for a ride.

Loading our bags ourselves, we found that there was hardly room in the trunk for our two modest size suitcases (they weighed less than 42lbs each – thanks to judicious packing and the weight restrictions imposed on the Heathrow to Dublin leg of the flight).

We could not see out of the cab windows, any of them, because they were so steamed up. More to the point nor could the driver, except through a fuzzy patch the size of a laptop screen.

When we reached the ramp at the Lexington line, we were all plunged into a blackness that the cab’s single working headlight could not penetrate. The driver did not slow down from the maximum permitted speed of 65mph, or perhaps that was just how fast the straining engine could go. The driver’s solution was simplicity itself. He straddled the lane marker, even when three lanes became two and he followed it unerringly, despite the attempts of other vehicles to persuade him to pull over.

In fairness, he did get us home or at least to the top of the drive where he stopped on a our unlit narrow, but busy two-way road, 3 feet from the curb - without hazard indicators flashing.

I waited for the driver to tell me the fare, clutching a twenty and a ten, perhaps more in hope than any real expectation. I was definitely unprepared when he said the fare was $56.

I protested and asked to look at the book of fares. After five minutes of rummaging, he came up empty. I asked for the dispatch telephone number. That’s when I made my second mistake.

He dialed a number and spoke in a language I did not understand and then handed me his phone. I should have dialed the number on my phone.

The dispatcher, or someone who said he was the dispatcher, told me that the fare to Lincoln from Alewife is $56. I paid. It had been a long day.

Did I get the cab drivers name, cab plate, registration or telephone number? No, as I mentioned it had been a long day, now going on 20 hours of travel and foolishly, I was keener to get off the pitch-black road and indoors after 17 days away.

Did I get wise to the cab industry in Boston? Most certainly.

I will never get in cab without checking that its lights work, the driver has a medallion with his picture on it and I know the price he is going to charge.

These are your rights and mine; everything else is just a load of bill.

How much is enough for us?

Should we measure the value we have in our lives by the amount about which we have to complain?

I’ve been thinking about this a great deal recently.

For example, at the regatta on Saturday, an articulate, and to all outward appearances, well-fed and adequately clothed black man clutching a bundle of newspapers approached the crowds lining the riverbanks.

“Ladies and gentleman. Ladies and gentleman. Can I have your attention for just a moment? Can you help the homeless today? Can you spare a dollar to purchase a newspaper from me to help the homeless?”

Of course, I bought the $1 newspaper, called Spare Change, as did five or six people from the all-Caucasian crowd around me. The seller went on his way smiling and calling out the same line to garner attention from the next pod of spectators.

Inside the thin paper were articles on the laws affecting homeless people, editorials and advertising copy. There was also a warning to check the seller wore a blue badge. As with most things, these days there are several scams as this report in the Globe from last year indicates.

I have to admit I did not look for an ID - not for a dollar purchase/donation. Perhaps that says something about the relative value of a dollar to me as the buyer and to the seller, whether homeless or not.

On the inside back cover, a list of organizations indicated that it was possible to obtain hot food three times a day, various food supplies and somewhere to stay overnight. I don’t know the quality or general availability of such hospitality and in truth hope never to have to test it out of need.

Food, shelter and an opportunity to earn a small wage appeared to hold a greater value to that individual than seems apparent for those given to complaining about their boss or the traffic conditions on the journey to work. Throw into that mix their angst over rising mortgage repayments, shrinking house values and the stock market volatility. Take a break from that as you sip an overpriced Starbucks' latte and ponder whether the Red Sox have the right (highly paid) players to win the World Series and the difference is glaring.

One of my former bosses, consoling me after he told me that I would not get a pay rise that year because of conditions in the industry, said that I should actually thank him.

“It’s a well known fact,” he said, “that people live 10% beyond their salaries. I just saved you money.”

Perhaps he was right.

Head of the Charles Regatta and others.

There has definitely been a theme of trying new things this year, although you will be forgiven for not knowing that due to the paucity of posts.

I plan to rectify the posting situation by resurrecting this blog and in the immortal words of Highlander, “There can be only one”, so this blog is it.

Strictly speaking I should remain the blog “An English/American in Boston” since I became a citizen last May, but it does not have the same ring to it.

Ok, I have ignored the Head of the Charles Regatta for the seven plus years I have lived in the Commonwealth. Not for me I thought – all those Ivy League types, the rowing community – men in caps and blazers that fit them thirty years ago parading with waspy-waist women in summer dresses, hospitality tents with cucumber sandwiches and white wine, jazz bands, pretentious awards and phony accents. No thanks, not for me sir.

Oh dear, it turns out that I was getting confused with the Henley on Thames Regatta, which I attended on one occasion to receive an award for design innovation – but that’s another story.

The Head of the Charles Regatta was real people having fun, pumped up with live rock and reggae music, lots of free stuff and blessed with glorious fall weather. Wave after wave of rowers, buff, synchronized, almost majestic, swept seemingly effortlessly up the river.

Being amongst fit people of all ages, doing what they enjoy is uplifting to the human spirit. It appeared so exhilarating I almost wanted to take up the sport, but I’ll probably settle for the stationary rowing machine at the gym. There’s less chance of capsizing that way.