The Hill Road

There is an infamous road near here. It is one of my favourite spots. I never miss an opportunity to drive it. Today our friends ventured on it for the first time .... perfect timing as the sun was setting over the South Island and illuminating Kapiti Coast with that magical light the occurs just before sunset.


It is a place begging for proposals, tourist photo opps, date night drives, and in this case a bit of stand up comedy.
But this is the photo that captures my world at the moment.
There is a possibility of a move in my future and it is weighing me down. I can barely look forward into the future. I just want to stay here in the home that I am building for myself. But everywhere I look, all the people I love here are eagerly looking toward their own futures.. they are growing up, shifting house, changing jobs, building families, moving on... I know that staying still won't allow me to have any extra time with them or here, because it all will change. It always does. But I am just not yet ready to shake up my world at this moment. I just want to quietly be in it for awhile, a good long while, after all it took to get myself here. But the future freaks me out so much that I can barely even experience the moment any more.

Other happenings

Traveler got a new window in the corner of his office. It completely changes the energy of the space for me.

We also went to Windy Lindy a few weeks ago for some swing dancing. My left ankle has been pretty touch and go the past 6 months. I wore a long dress so I could hide the ankle braces that allowed me a chance to dance a few dances.

Boston Changes

On my last day, I took some time to just wonder around Cambridge to visit old haunts. I was amazed by how much change I saw in only a year...The alley by Club Passim was paved. I used to love to sit on the curbside listening to the folk music on sold out nights watching the rain drip and pool in the willy-woggy cobblestone. It used to look more like this:

But now is all smooth and bland... I am sure its better in some ways, but I loved how it was.The Green House restaurant, known for its mile high cakes (and honestly so-so diner food) is now boarded up. I don’t know if they are remodeling or what, but I loved to go in there. It just seemed like one of the few remaining bits of old Harvard Square – there didn’t seem to be much left of the old style Harvard Square by the time I moved there and now even more of it seems gone.
And shock of all shocks, Someday's cafe in Davis Square is no longer there.

This for me was where I would meet up with Traveler to study at the end of a long day in Grad School. It was a second home for me. Others I know think of it as the place you went to chill after a movie at the Sommerville Theatre. You can still hang out there, at it was already getting a bit cleaned up before I moved, but its now a completely different place. At least Johnny d's and diesel are still there.
Trav's old job location is now the American Red Cross
and the famous chocolate place in Harvard square is still there, but the space has been completely remodeled. Gone are the long velvet drapes and steamy tight spaces. The drinks seem smaller too – which given the wonderful richness is probably not completely a bad thing. Still strange. This was one of the first places I popped into when I first visited Boston back in the late 90's. I didn't even know I would be coming there for school, but had an inkling that this would be a spot I'd be passing through throughout my life.


I guess you can never really go back... unless you are okay with lots of change. Its easy to forget in a place like Boston that feels so historic how much change actually happens there.

Transit update...

Yes I am a transit dork. I LOVE public transport. I love the adventure of not driving. Yes I too have 'a ha' moments when driving in my car, but I don't learn as much about people and myself as I do when navigating public transport. It is very much a civic space for me, albiet more a flow of people than a set place, but it seems that it is essential for people to have places where they gather and be forced to interact a bit. Maybe this is why I love open air markets, ferries, trains, buses, and the like. The mixing of people with the goal of doing something other than mixing with people seems to be a productive way for us to at least notice that the world doesn't revolve around us and see a bit of the diversity we live admist.

That said - wow lots of changes here in Boston in the year and half since I lived here!
You can't miss these changes when you arrive by plane. The silver line has been extended all the way to the airport now and there are new 'charlie' cards for payment. No longer do you need to take the 22 bus to the blue line to the orange or green line to the red line! All the transit maps have of course been changed, but also I saw big improvements in signs across the boards. There were heaps of electronic signs stating destination, times, etc.


Some things were the same.. and I now feel less embarassed about being a tourist in my home country. I freely snapped pictures of T stops that were once an integral part of my every day routine.

Kendall – with its interactive musical pipes and metals clangers
Harvard – with is gradually slopping ramp that everyone runs down to catch their train in spite of the signs begging you to 'walk not run.”
The red line's journey over the Charles is still one of my favourite communiting moments in all the world.

Porter Square still has the windmills and insanely long escalator.

I also snapped a photo of the new Charlie card machines making a mental note that ever station has an American Flag (see below). I just don't see New Zealand's flag everywhere the way I see the American one here. And then security approached me about taking the photo. They asked what I was doing and I said "just taking photos of the station." They said that it is fine to take photos of station, but that that wasn't what I was doing. I guess where I was looking was not part of the station in their mind. I don't really know what the problem was. In the end they just dropped it. Its moments like this that made me feel very strange about America.
Maybe I don’t have enough of a criminal mind, but I just don’t see how taking the above photo is at all subversive or threatening to America’s security. But maybe they are nervous about us transit geeks because public transit does go a bit against the idea of us all getting in our cars to drive frantically between shopping and leisure and earning opportunities which at least some in power may have invested interests in us all continuing to do. I don’t know, maybe they were just bored. Maybe there had been a bomb threat early this year. It just seems so strange to me that my behavior was considered threating at all. I guess not too many people love transit enough to want to take photos of it....

I also snapped a few photos of the other major transit options in Boston... cars and walking.
It was also nice to see this horrible intersection in my old neighborhood finally fixed with the installation of a 'rotary' (as roundabouts are called here). This is one change I am thrilled to see.