Ryan's Journal

Five o'clock hit and I was out of the office like that. It was too beautiful to spend hours of daylight staring at a monitor, faking headway against a presently intractable problem.

How best to use the last three hours of sunlight on a day like today, 74F and bright, especially in light of tomorrow's forecast nearing 100F? I opted for blading.

I meandered home and grabbed the blades, walking my way past the construction all over Mass Ave. until I got to MIT. I flew over the miles between the Great Dome and Hatch Shell, then sat on the pier and just watched. It was a good day.

They're playing free movies on Friday nights at the Hatch Shell. Raiders of the Lost Ark plays on August 5 (woefully hinted at as "Arc of the Covenant." "Arc" indeed - teach your interns some history of western civilization, Indy isn't looking for a circle segment), I think I'll try to go. I didn't know of today's, so I decided to blade into Boston to grab some grub before coming back to see if the movie was worth it.

Here's where the day gets a bit weird. As I crossed over Storrow Dr., I saw a large pack of cyclists coming down Beacon and making their way to Newbury, hooting and hollering as they went. I couldn't quite tell what they were doing, so I instead went down Commonwealth and avoided the inanity.

But when I turned down to Newbury, my ultimate destination, I saw they were blocking all the traffic and progressing slowly as a hoard. They had even trapped a limo in the middle of the street, corraling it with their bikes until all had passed, and then some. So I joined them. For a bit.

What made my day, I left the pack to stop at my intended restaurant. One of these nutty, probably illegal traffic snarlers slowed down and kindly asked, "Are you all right?"

I have no idea what they were trying to prove, yelling at everybody sitting in the open air dining, talking to passengers who'd rolled down their windows. But my what nice folks.

Anybody know what that was about?

The movie was A Hard Day's Night, some Beatles flick. I wonder if contemporary moviegoers thought it was more like Glitter or 8 Mile.

You must login to leave a comment