Boston Trip Journal
And so it begins… Saturday May 18th, 3:15pm I
leave Artopolis in the middle of graduation week. In Manhattan it’s slightly
raining and I can’t help myself and complain about how stupid am I to be
wearing this sneakers that after four months of everyday use, developed some
“unfriendly” holes in the sole. If my dad saw me wearing these he would say –for
the gazillion time- “Sweetie, why do you wear things that are broken?”… The
fact is, I like these sneakers because they are like a size bigger than what I
should wear so they hide how ridiculously small my feet are compared to the
rest of my body.
Walking on the sides of my feet, I’m headed to
116-columbia University station to take the 1 train. Before I get in the
Downtown track, I jump into a Deli and buy 2 “Paleo Approved” protein bars,
‘cause I can feel this is going to be a long day and I don’t know if I’ll be
able to find them later. I get into the train crowded with people but I manage
to get a seat and ride all the way to 34thst – Penn Station.
First of all, I have to check where the Megabus departure is so that I’m sure I know it exists and I won’t get lost. I’m obsessed with punctuality and of course I arrive at Penn Station 2 hours before the bus leaves. I walk under the annoying rain, trying not to get my socks wet, headed to 34st between 11th and 12th ave. IT’S SO FAR AWAY. When I get there, I see the Megabus crowd, I identify the “Boston” sign and I’m relieved It’s real and I’m not being ripped off. I approach one of the drivers to ask if I have to print my ticket, but gladly having it on my phone it’s enough. That’s awesome, ‘because I have NO IDEA where to print in NYC… in Argentina we have Cyber-cafes or “Locutorios”… here I’m still clueless.
As I still have 1 hour and 45 minutes left, I walk back to 8th ave and find a Staples where I can buy a notebook to keep a detailed journal of this crazy getaway I’m starting. I buy the cheapest one I can find, along with a green pen, because I believe everything is prettier with a bit of color. I cross the street to a Starbucks and order a Grande Unsweetened Ice Coffee with a bit of Soymilk (Yes, I’m one of those) and I set myself against the bar to write down whatever happened so far. A big part of me thinks I won’t be able to describe in detail whatever happens in the next 24hs…
This is the plan:
- Take the Megabus to Boston, MA at 6:01pm at 34th st between 11th and 12th ave, and arrive to Boston South Station Bus Terminal at 10:25pm.
- 11:10pm take the MBTA, Franklin Line Train to Rt 128 Station in Westwood, MA. I should be arriving the station at around 11:30pm
- WAIT… until it’s morning and walk (or take a cab) to the Reebok International Headquarters in Canton, MA… to see the last day of the North East Crossfit Regionals.
What I JUST REALIZED is that tomorrow (Sunday)
the heats start at 10:20am…….. Well, I guess I’ll walk then…. After not having
a WOD on Friday or Yoga on Sunday, I could really benefit from the exercise.
A couple of minutes ago I checked online and the Reebok Crossfit 5th Ave Ninja Team is still on for tomorrow… THANK GOD… I can’t imagine how funny (and depressing) would be to arrive there after all of this and not knowing anyone competing….
Anyway… with a book in my hand and long hours of traveling ahead, I leave to catch the Megabus…. Half hour early, of course.
6:10pm (Not 6:01 as my brain imagined) I leave
on the Megabus to Boston. As I was one of the first’s ones to get in the bus I
scored a seat next to the stairs with a lot of room for my long legs. I sat
down with my pink bag and texted Val to let her know my wild trip was starting.
As soon as she replied “Good Luck”, a curry-smelling Chinese woman sits next to
me, eating what probably was the largest hot dog in the world. I almost threw
up on her. Five minutes after the bus departed, they turned the AC on… I am
jumping into the conclusion that the ticket was really cheap because it’s an
experiment on how people survive under extremely cold weather. Everyone is
taking out blankets, wool hats and I curse myself in clear Argentine language
while I zip up my hoodie.
After a while, I finally fell asleep. I slept about 45 minutes, to find out that the Chinese woman had changed seats and that we haven’t left Manhattan yet… fuck! I really hope I make it in time t catch the train or, as we say in Buenos Aires, “I’m in the oven”. A taxi fare from Boston to Canton is not less than $65… and I have $57 in my wallet….
We finally enter the highway and leave Manhattan. We drive past the Bronx, which seems like a complete different country compared to Manhattan… we drive past signs for White Plains and New Rochelle and in my head I can hear the Broadway Cast Recording of “How to succeed in Business Without really trying”.
Right in front of me, a couple of feet away, there’s a guy talking on the phone but really loud… and it’s all College crap…. Nothing interesting. Behind me, there’s a girl snoring as if she was possessed by Chewbacca… The idea of falling back asleep is now close to impossible.
It’s 8:06pm and we’re crossing Connecticut. IT’S SO FUCKING COLD IN HERE. Damn the fucking menopausal driver, his heat waves and his whole family. I look at my phone to check the time, and I have a Facebook notification inviting me to play “Candy Crush Saga”…. I’M SO FUCKING TIRED F THOSE NOTIFICATIONS! YOU CAN GRAB THAT GAME AND STICK IT UP YOUR………. I’m running out of battery in my phone and this bus is supposed to have power outlets – or so they advertised. OF COURSE I can’t find any of them so I keep peeking from my seat like a retarded meerkat in vain to decide I’m going to charge it when I arrive in Boston.
8:49pm: we’re still in Connecticut. The guy on
the phone just ended his loud conversation, Chewbacca is still snoring behind
me, and I have lost all sensibility in my feet because of the cold. I think
once we get to Boston they will cut my frozen limbs and sell them as fresh cuts
of meat. It seems the phone call left my friend a bit anxious, because he just
opened a Tupperware with food which I bet was cooked in 1548…. The bus now
smells like a school’s cafeteria… plus, the girl sitting 2 seats away from mine
just ate a banana…. Between the hot dog from the Chinese woman, the rotten food
and the banana I’m going to get to Boston and throw up the 2 Lara bars I ate.
9:17pm: the bus stops at a Burger King and in a very basic English we hear “Break, 15 minute break”. The good thing about this is that they turned on the lights and I found the power outlet….under my own seat….
10:01pm……. We are still in the fucking “15 minute break”…. Everyone in the bus got off to buy burgers and Pepsis and stuff. I sat down and plugged my phone. It’s still freezing cold, of course, and now there’s also the smell of Whoppers and fries…. And I want to cry craving a super mega burger with extra everything… to make it worse, the ones holding the biggest, nastiest burgers are super skinny girls…. Fuck them! I hate them! I hope we arrive to Boston in time so I can buy some tea to at least recover some of the heat I lost from this trip. In the meantime I repeat to myself “Paleo is a lifestyle… you’ll get in shape…. You’ll be pretty” like a Buddhist mantra. It’s my own “Paleo mantra”
10:10pm: we just left Burger King. We are supposed to arrive in Boston in half an hour… and I don’t even know in which state are we.
11:15pm: fucking Megabus, fucking driver and fucking cold temperature! After the longest fifteen minute break in world history, we haven’t arrived in Boston yet. I, logically, lost the train I was supposed to take so now I have to figure out what to do…
12:41am…. Sunday…. I CAN’T BELIEVE I MISSED MY TRAIN!!! My awesome plan disappeared into thin air thanks to the fat-ass driver and his ambition for a fucking burger. Apparently there are no local buses to Canton or Westwood. I have 4 hours until sunrise. There’s no way I’m walking all the way from Boston to Canton… I’ll get there by year 2025!!
3:00am… GOD BLESS GOOGLE MAPS!! I found a way to get there without spending a fortune on a cab or walking 15hours! It so appears, I can take the subway to Forrest Hills, then a bus to Readville and from there it’s only a 3 mile walk! I’ll make it to the venue with enough time to buy my ticket and have a cup of coffee before the event starts! WHAT A RELIEF!
In the meantime, I’ve been sitting for the last
2 hours at Boston South Station, reading a book. I have water running down my
nose… side effect from the cold-cold weather inside the bus…. What a lovely
bus…. Nothing positive about it….
I’m freezing. It must be because I didn’t eat more than the 2 larabars, didn’t even have a cup of tea after riding the freezer… not even counting the fact that I didn’t sleep at all…
Two characters just walked into the lobby of
the station. I can’t figure out if they’re drunk or what but they entered
directly to find their spot to sleep in here. One of them made a snoring sound
even weirder that the girl in the bus… I don’t want to stare too much… I find
it comforting to know the acoustics in this place are awesome so if something
weird happens I can scream and the police will come (I saw them around
earlier.). The idea of sleeping is completely discarded, not because I can’t (I
could, I’m really tired) but because it’s too scary.
The only positive thing about being stuck at a train station is that you get to people watch a lot. I am particularly amazed by the couples I see: gorgeous girls with ugly boys, gorgeous boys with awfully in-need-of-a-mirror girls… and the classic combination of the perfect high school sweet hearts, and the weird who found the perfect weird. I always wonder why even the ugliest girls are with someone and me, that I’m not that extreme, I’m this alone…. Whatever…. Those issues are a complete different chapter that can take forever.
The cleaning guy just came in to mop the floor with the most adorable machine. It’s like a zamboni but with soap and water. I could mop the floor that way too!
Well….. Damn my luck, one of the drunken guys I mentioned earlier sat next to me and started to talk to me. He’s so drunk that if I lit a cigarette next to him, the whole station would blow into pieces. He first came asking for money to buy some food, I told him that I didn’t have any –which in fact is true-but still he sat next to me and starting talking like for half an hour. He told me his name was Nicholas and that he and his friend John were stuck in Boston trying to get to Cape Cod. He asked for my phone number and I said I didn’t have a phone. He then said the trip from NY to Boston was only 3 hours long, that if he could give me his phone number so I could call him and go out some day……. SERIOUSLY?!?!?!? That’s it…. I only attract bugs….
4:04am… the guy left to keep begging for money and told me that if I was there when he came back we could continue talking. Of course the minute he left I ran away. I hid in the girl’s bathroom and used the time to recharge my phone –as I drained the battery finding my way out of Boston to Canton.
5:00am… still wondering around… every loony in Boston seems to find me… I left South Station because I didn’t want to run into Wacko #1, I haven’t walked half a block that I run into a group of 4 completely wasted guys that ask me for cigarettes… thankfully, the sun is coming up and everything is more pretty. I have one more hour until the subway opens…. But everything is closed, closed, closed… luckily, with the sun and the birds, friendlier faces appear on the street.
5:20am: I take back what I said about friendlier faces. Not one, or two but THREE nuts appeared through the last 20 minutes, staring, or saying things, or asking for my phone number… FREAKY SCARY… after 4 months in NY, coming to Boston and feel like I’m back in the Argentine insecure streets was scary. Now I’m at a 7/11 drinking tea, talking to the guy who works here who’s my hero and told the stalkers to go away or that he would call the cops. With all the nerves of the stalkers and everything I could have eaten a big chocolate bar and a huge sub… but no…. I bought tea and an apple…. I hate my life…
I’m impressed of how different Boston and NY are. At this time of the day, you can walk though Washington Heights as if it was Magic Kingdom…. Its Pleasantville… here there are popping shadows everywhere… I don’t like Boston…. Not-one-bit.
I just found happiness because my apple was good…. How bad things can be that I find that SO amusing….
6:00am: Sun is up, subway is open…. Do I dare to walk one block to the station?
6:32am: I did dare… but the station was really confusing!!! There were no employees, no vending machines for the fucking “Charlie Tickets”… however, I did ran into one of my stalkers who chased me 4 blocks to the next station and then 2 more blocks until I jumped into a cab terrified and ran away from him. I couldn’t ever tell the driver where I was going. I ended up telling the guy I was being followed by a homeless guy and that I was nervous. As soon as I said that I saw the guy standing next to my door. I told the driver to drive away. He locked the doors and drove off. He’s my hero #1 of the day. We drove away from that son of a bitch stalker and I ended up spending $17 on the cab to Jackson Square station…. Or Jackson Heights… Jackson whatever station. Now I’m back to plan #114 or whichever plan I’m in right now…..
7:01am: I’m taking the #32bus from Forrest Hills Station to Wolcott Square. From there all I can do is walk 3 miles to Reebok HQ… Being poor SUCKS. Please no more crazy people on the way! I deserve a prize for this adventure!!
9:04am: I MADE IT TO REGIONALS!! OMFG!!!! I’m so happy…. Really tired!...but so happy!!! During my 3 mile walk I talked via Facetime with a friend in Argentina who cheered for me and kept my mind away from thinking how much more I had to walk.
Now I’m at Reebok surrounded by athletes and Crossfit
related stands… I didn’t pay to get in…. I think I’m a “Regionals-crasher”
11:26am: It’s confirmed…. I crashed Regionals. I do like to think about it as a prize for being early and for everything I went through in the last 12 hours.
Regionals is awesome. I’ve never seen nothing like it before. These athletes are out of this world good… all of them… It’s really motivating to see this…. All I can think about is training to one day be a part of that.
The Reebok Crossfit 5thave Ninjas did AWESOME! They came in 5th!!! Only 2 spots away from making it to the next round…. It’s SO INSPIRING to see them compete.
After the last heat, we picked all our stuff,
and got into the cars to go to a restaurant to celebrate. I feel kind of out of
place still… but just smile and nod…. :D
I really made an effort to stay awake on our
trip back to NY with Val and Jackie… but I fell asleep the whole ride. I woke
up just a couple of minutes away from the box.
It was a HELL of a trip. But is definitely an AWESOME story to tell the kids…
Would I do it all over again?
Heck yeah!