Boston, 1999
The long awaited trip to Boston to attend a Hell night, which has been at the back of my mind
since I attended C2 and enjoyed Cusraque's shindig, finally rolled around. It had started out as
a huge Toronto invasion, but lack of money, time and other commitments whittled away at the
number of people going until it was only Tetsab and myself going. I made an effort and ensured
that I was back from my road trip from hell in time to give me
a day to rest, do laundry and catch up on email. I didn't sleep nearly long enough, the pile of
things I had to do getting me up and about after only 6 hours of sleep. I called Louise to make
sure we were still on and arranged to have her show up at my place early on Friday morning.
I made the mistake of bringing my car in for the free oil change that I received with my auto
club membership, and it took three hours for them to get to it. I browsed the shop and picked
up stuff to aid in the reattachment of my spoiler, wrote up the last of the Atlanta trip diary and
read. All this contributed to putting me in a bad mood.
Jul 9, 99
8:30am a quiet knock sounded on my door. Louise had arrived ready to go. I bustled around
finishing breakfast in my robe, got dressed and packed the last of my stuff then we trooped down
to settle things in the car. We were on the road by 9am, an hour earlier than my estimated time
of departure. I had wanted to get to Boston by 8pm in order to give us time to recover and
change for the Hell night. We had no problems at the border at Queenston, not even being asked
where we were going. Jumped on the I90 and struck east. One stop near Syracuse for fuel for
the car, and near Albany for food for us. I'd packed enough to be able to avoid going into the
restaurant so we made good time. I stopped in Worcester and called Ron at work, being
corrected on the pronunciation of the town when I told him where we were - it's Woostah,
apparently. I dug out the directions he'd given me the last time I visited, and we proceeded to
make our way into Boston proper. A traffic jam slowed us down, but we were able to hop in the
breakdown lane and avoid the rest of the traffic. I prompted Louise for directions after we got
off the highway since she wasn't familiar with my obsessive need to know the next turn, rather
than just the next landmark on the straight route. Ron was home to let us in when we pulled up,
so we invaded his living room with our junk, unpacked a bit, and I sat and vegged, recovering
from the 10 hour drive. We ordered Chinese food and Ron went out to pick it up, letting us
rummage through his book cases and hide a few books to take back with us. Ahem, I mean read
while we were there, of course. We were informed that KV and Basinke were also in Boston this
weekend, and hoped to see at least one of them at Man Ray.
I managed to eat half of my take out using chopsticks without spilling too much on myself - it's
amazing how manual dexterity deteriorates after clutching a steering wheel all day. Of course
after the danger of spills was over, then I changed into my PVC outfit for the outing to the club.
We then sat and waited while Ron got ready, so much for us girly girls taking forever. Finally,
around quarter to 11, we got in the car and made our way into Cambridge. If Ron ever offers
you a ride in the back seat of his car, don't accept unless you're less than five feet tall.
Hatchback back seats are only glorified trunks, I swear. We joined the end of the line and were
honoured by Cusraque stopping and talking with us for a bit while we waited and gave us
pointers on finding Lady B and company. We got inside and found the front room to be very
hot, and filled with people dancing to techno music. Shirts were off and glow sticks were
twirling on the lowered dance floor. We made our way to the back room, which was a bit more
relaxed and gothy. The vendors were set up in the other room, as well as a table of bread and
fruit, but I only snagged a grape. We found Lady B, Basinke, Penny Dreadful (I think), Kurt
and Autumn and talked to them for a while before heading downstairs to check my coat. We sat
in a corner by the stage when we weren't dancing. Tetsab snagged some space on the speakers
while I elbowed my way onto the fairly small dance floor. The stage and the cage were occupied
most of the night, most notably when the stage was filled with the performance piece / audience
participation game Writhe. I danced a bit on the techno floor, in about one square foot of space.
Some guy was apparently mirroring my steps but I never noticed since he never touche me and
I tend to dance with my eyes on the floor anyways. I talked with a friend of Ron's who had
travelled to England and a few port cities in the States with the Coast Guard, but it became a bit
too much like a competition to see who'd travelled furthest. We ended up getting our coats at
last call to beat the rush, and went home instead of to Deli Haus since we were all a bit tired and
fighting off colds. I peeled off the PVC and took a quick shower before collapsing on the
couch/futon thingy.
Jul 10, 99
Ron had set the alarm for 12:30 and I woke up when it went off. I was very tired all day, read
a bit while waiting for them to get ready for the day, and ate my breakfast. Finished the last of
the takeout for lunch. Ron drove us downtown and we wandered around Newbury St for a few
hours. We were tempted by a few things in the John Fleuvog store, but the sizes were all wrong.
Louise and I managed to limit ourselves to one CD each at Newbury Comics (Danny Elfman's
Music for a Darkened Theatre Vol I and II) while Ron was not quite nearly so restrained. I
popped out to try and get an icecream while waiting for him to finish, but the line up was too
long so I came back and lounged outside the store again. We finally dragged Ron out of there
and we went looking for a convenience store to get some fluids and ice cream. Walgreens came
through, despite the slowest and most clumsy clerk in the universe serving us. The customers
were very push and I got bumped at least 5 times while waiting in the line up. This did not help
my mood any, but Ron steered us into the Boston Gardens where we wandered among the
greenery for a while, quite pointedly not crashing the wedding photos being taken. I wasn't
impressed with the photographer for where she set them up, there was a gorgeous weeping
willow by the pond that would have made a perfect backdrop, but she set them up in the middle
of an open area where there were people wandering through the background. *shrug* Ron tried
to lure the squirrels close enough to catch, and considered the swans and ducks but they were
too wily for us. We walked around the lake, crossed the bridge and came back out into the bustle
of the city where Ron continued his quest to get us killed jaywalking. We made our way back
down Newbury towards the car, and I ducked in to the Betsy Johnson store and unearthed a
small sequined purse for $10. After taking a second look at the bill I found out that the original
price had been $80, so it takes the place of honour as the best deal I've found so far. We
stopped at Deli Haus for supper and Ann served us well when we managed to request being
seated in her section, amid much busting on Ron. We promised to come back after the club and
toddled off home to change.
We were out of the house at 11pm and back in the line up at Man Ray. Cusraque was still there
despite warning us to show up at 10pm sharp if we wanted to see him for sure. He had more
time to sit and talk with Tetsab this time since it was technically his night off. I danced a bit to
some 80's tunes and a ska song, but my knee was bothering me from the night before so I
mostly sat and people watched, talking a bit to Kelly and her cousin. We stayed until the lights
came on at 2am and dragged Cusraque with us to Deli Haus. It was quite crowded and our group
got separated, Ron, Kelly, Rachel and one more at one booth, and Anne found us a booth near
theirs where Louise, Cusraque and I sat. I shivered through the drive to drop off The Hat and
make our way home - the temperature had dropped and for once I'd left my coat at home. I
crashed immediately and got to sleep at around 4:30am.
Jul 11, 99
This was a very very lazy day. I half woke around noon, but stayed in bed, drifting until 2 or
so when I got up to take a shower. Ron hadn't set the alarm and the phone had somehow gotten
off the hook so we didn't get woken up when Cusraque and Rachel kept trying to call us to
arrange the trip to Mt Auburn cemetery. It eventually percolated through my brain that I should
wake them up and Ron immediately began running around organising our outing. We managed
to pick up Cusraque and made it to the cemetery an hour before it closed at 7pm. Ran into a lot
of goths wandering the grounds and stopped to chat a bit with the ones Cusraque knew (ie all
of them). I'd been there before, during C2, but hadn't had my camera with me, so this time as
we were driving through I requested stops to take pictures. Took a few of and in front of the
large sphinx, as well as some of angels. We finished at around quarter of seven and drove to
Harvard Square where there was a shop selling British chocolate that we tried to get into, but
it had closed at 7pm. We had supper at a cafe nearby where I had a mexican omelette, hopefully
ending my streak of eating mexican food in the US for a while. I eyed the three layer black
forest cake, but the fries and toast managed to fill any spaces left by the omelette and I decided
to retire from the field. We dropped off Cusraque and decided that we weren't up to the drive
out to Providence for the club night there, and watched "Contact" instead, all curled up on the
couch. I fell asleep as soon as it ended, but Louise was apparently up most of the night due to
the long sleep she'd had that morning / afternoon.
Jul 12, 99
I woke up by 9am and jumped on Ron to wake up so he could get to work and lock the door
behind us when we took off. We were on the road by 10am, retracing our route out of West
Roxbury and back to the I90. I decided to save a bit on tolls and head north at Syracuse,
crossing back into Canada at the Thousand Islands bridge. The area was gorgeous, and worth
the extra hour of driving. We hit the 401 east of Kingston and headed into Pickering. I dropped
of Louise, turning down an offer of a chicken leg from her Mum for dinner, and managed to
make it home before collapsing. I am officially all road tripped out for at least a month, since
in the past 11 days, I was on the road for 6 of them, and travelled 6000km. Of course this
doesn't prevent me from taking advantage of my continued enforced vacation and an last minute
airline special to visit my parents in BC this weekend. :)
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