After the oppressive relaxation of Maine and the automobile touring of Rochester and Syracuse, Boston was a welcome change. My aunt and uncle live less than a mile from a T stop, so we rode the T nearly every day into and out of Boston. For those of you not familiar, if the Portland MAX train and the NY Subway had a baby, it would be the Boston T. In downtown Boston, all the train stops are underground, but as you get further away from the center the T pops up onto the surface and becomes much more a light rail experience. As much as I complained about the forty minute ride into and out of the city each day, it was much better than trying to drive through Boston.
Speaking of driving, our first full day back in Boston started with another pleasant drive out to Maynard to retrieve my motorcycle from Duncan’s Beemers. As we were approaching the shop, I looked at Amelia and in all seriousness told her she should expect to be at the shop for a minimum of twenty minutes. Despite the hours we spent there the first time, I was hoping we could arrive, Duncan could tell me everything he did, we could pay and then leave. Boy was I wrong.
We arrived to find the bike sitting outside, all back together which was very nice, and after we said hello, Duncan showed me around the bike pointing out what he did. He replaced my leaking engine seals, changed my oil, inspected the clutch, replaced some bad bearings and he even had his welder fix a rattle in my exhaust pipe. Needless to say I was impressed by his thorough work but also a little worried about the price tag. After we finished walking around the bike I asked, but it turned out Duncan hadn’t looked up the prices for a few parts so we had to wait another ten minutes while he tried to find the right numbers. At this point we had been at the shop for over a half hour.
Finally, after what seemed like an awful long time, Duncan found the parts and gave me the bad news: just over one thousand dollars. More than I was quoted, but they also fixed much more than we initially talked about too, so overall I felt pretty okay about the situation. I gave him my card and I was just about to suit up when Duncan remembered he heard a rattle when he test rode my bike. Before I knew it, he was on the ground looking around the front of my bike trying to find anything loose while I was awkwardly standing by trying to figure out the best way to tell him it was fine and I just wanted to go. After some poking and prodding, Duncan declared that there was a missing fairing screw and off he went into the depths of his shop looking for a replacement, which took another five minutes to find. With a new screw installed, I was finally able to suit up and go, an hour and a half after we arrived.
Normally taking forever at the mechanic would have been fine, but we still had plans to go into Boston. Amelia and I rode the T into town and met Carol and Dave at Harvard to see the Harvard Natural History Museum. According to Carol, we just absolutely had to see their collection of glass flowers, beautifully hand crafted with the original intention of being used as teaching models.
Now I appreciate dedication, but there comes a point beyond which continuing is pure madness. The Harvard glass flower collection defines that end of the scale. These two brothers, before the age of photos, wanted students to be able to study exotic plants all year round, so they created glass replicas as well as enlarged glass models of important flower parts for that purpose. Tediously hand crafted, the two men spent nearly forty years creating several hundred exquisitely detailed specimens, each of which was meticulously hand painted using a technique that has since been lost. Honestly, until I saw one of the flowers that had broken, I didn’t believe that they were glass. They looked either real or like very good plastic replicas.
In addition to the glass flowers, Amelia in the mineral room was like a kid in a candy store. The room was exactly what you’d expect: a big room filled with rocks and minerals of the every shape and color organized by chemical structure. I’ll admit to not being the biggest geology buff, but some of the samples they had were pretty cool. The four foot tall amethyst geode and the cases full of cut gemstones specifically come to mind. I was also particularly fond of the minerals that glowed different colors under UV light. We probably spent an hour in that room, most of which was following Amelia and she cheerfully flitted from one specimen to the next with a look of great happiness on her face.
Finally, no traditional museum would be complete without an uncomfortably large selection of taxidermy, and Harvard’s museum is no exception. They had several rooms full of large stuffed mammals as well as many birds and even a fair collection of skeletons. For both Amelia and myself, our general response to the stuffed animals was that things are bigger in real life than they seem on TV. In particular, even though I’ve seen them at the zoo, hippos are absolutely massive creatures. Tigers, moose and buffalo are also much bigger in person than one would expect. I appreciate taxidermy’s role in educating, but there is still no way around the fact that most of it is pretty creepy.
Speaking of driving, our first full day back in Boston started with another pleasant drive out to Maynard to retrieve my motorcycle from Duncan’s Beemers. As we were approaching the shop, I looked at Amelia and in all seriousness told her she should expect to be at the shop for a minimum of twenty minutes. Despite the hours we spent there the first time, I was hoping we could arrive, Duncan could tell me everything he did, we could pay and then leave. Boy was I wrong.
We arrived to find the bike sitting outside, all back together which was very nice, and after we said hello, Duncan showed me around the bike pointing out what he did. He replaced my leaking engine seals, changed my oil, inspected the clutch, replaced some bad bearings and he even had his welder fix a rattle in my exhaust pipe. Needless to say I was impressed by his thorough work but also a little worried about the price tag. After we finished walking around the bike I asked, but it turned out Duncan hadn’t looked up the prices for a few parts so we had to wait another ten minutes while he tried to find the right numbers. At this point we had been at the shop for over a half hour.
Finally, after what seemed like an awful long time, Duncan found the parts and gave me the bad news: just over one thousand dollars. More than I was quoted, but they also fixed much more than we initially talked about too, so overall I felt pretty okay about the situation. I gave him my card and I was just about to suit up when Duncan remembered he heard a rattle when he test rode my bike. Before I knew it, he was on the ground looking around the front of my bike trying to find anything loose while I was awkwardly standing by trying to figure out the best way to tell him it was fine and I just wanted to go. After some poking and prodding, Duncan declared that there was a missing fairing screw and off he went into the depths of his shop looking for a replacement, which took another five minutes to find. With a new screw installed, I was finally able to suit up and go, an hour and a half after we arrived.
Normally taking forever at the mechanic would have been fine, but we still had plans to go into Boston. Amelia and I rode the T into town and met Carol and Dave at Harvard to see the Harvard Natural History Museum. According to Carol, we just absolutely had to see their collection of glass flowers, beautifully hand crafted with the original intention of being used as teaching models.
Now I appreciate dedication, but there comes a point beyond which continuing is pure madness. The Harvard glass flower collection defines that end of the scale. These two brothers, before the age of photos, wanted students to be able to study exotic plants all year round, so they created glass replicas as well as enlarged glass models of important flower parts for that purpose. Tediously hand crafted, the two men spent nearly forty years creating several hundred exquisitely detailed specimens, each of which was meticulously hand painted using a technique that has since been lost. Honestly, until I saw one of the flowers that had broken, I didn’t believe that they were glass. They looked either real or like very good plastic replicas.
In addition to the glass flowers, Amelia in the mineral room was like a kid in a candy store. The room was exactly what you’d expect: a big room filled with rocks and minerals of the every shape and color organized by chemical structure. I’ll admit to not being the biggest geology buff, but some of the samples they had were pretty cool. The four foot tall amethyst geode and the cases full of cut gemstones specifically come to mind. I was also particularly fond of the minerals that glowed different colors under UV light. We probably spent an hour in that room, most of which was following Amelia and she cheerfully flitted from one specimen to the next with a look of great happiness on her face.
Finally, no traditional museum would be complete without an uncomfortably large selection of taxidermy, and Harvard’s museum is no exception. They had several rooms full of large stuffed mammals as well as many birds and even a fair collection of skeletons. For both Amelia and myself, our general response to the stuffed animals was that things are bigger in real life than they seem on TV. In particular, even though I’ve seen them at the zoo, hippos are absolutely massive creatures. Tigers, moose and buffalo are also much bigger in person than one would expect. I appreciate taxidermy’s role in educating, but there is still no way around the fact that most of it is pretty creepy.
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