When I woke up today, I was not expecting to go anywhere; I had expected a lethargic Sunday in which I stuffed my face with Cheez-Its from the Lounge, read my 5.111 textbook, scribbled down answers to my 18.01 p-set, and dragged myself around 4W trying to find people to converse with. Since this weekend is extended due to a suicide prevention day on Monday (no idea how one day off prevents suicide, but let’s not question it), many of my acquaintances have journeyed to horizons new and old - some returned to their homes if they were close enough, and others visited friends from other schools (for example, Chao went to visit friends at Yale; Lindsey and I were originally planning to take a trip to New York, but we decided against that).
Instead, I was greeted by Hongyou striding into my room and announcing that they were leaving for Costco at three, and that there was no room in Emily’s car for me. I announced indignantly that I would manage to get there myself and back with much of the same efficiency, thanks to the wonderful MBTA subway system. In response, she just snickered and crept back out.
… fine then, Hongyou. Just watch me.
Ben and I left Next House 20 minutes before 3pm in order to visit an ATM machine and walk to Kendall station, greeted on the way by Tim Peng calling us just to say, “Did you two just pass Macgregor like, 20 seconds ago?” (which we had, but I didn’t know people still engaged in the art of watching the world from their windows anymore in this day and age). So far so good. Red line to Downtown Crossing, orange line to Wellington, which is out in the middle of nowhere in a town to the northeast called Everett. Everything’s still fine. Now all we have to do is catch bus 97 right into Gateway Center…
Oh shit. What do you mean the next bus isn’t until 4:23pm? And that it’s only 3:45pm?
There was only one thing to do in such a situation. Ben and I mustered up all the sense of direction we possessed within us and began walking across the bridge of the Revere River, eventually arriving at the Costco parking lot in 20 minutes, just in time to call Hongyou and–
WHOA-MY-GOD. THERE SHE IS IN EMILY’S CAR DRIVING OUT OF THE PARKING LOT. Hongyou, freaking turn around, we’re standing right here, loser!
No amount of arm-waving and screaming into the phone manages to register the fact that they just drove past us until 5 minutes later, when Hongyou begins to apologize profusely for not acknowledging our presence, tired and exhausted as I dropped to my knees and let out a pitiful, plaintive whine.
Since we were already there, Ben and I decided to go in anyways, and eventually came back out with two armfuls of stuff - pasta, Cheez-Its, tomatoes, potstickers, and more. Now came the hard part.. how were we getting all of this stuff back to Next House? Ah, of course. It’s only 5:20pm, we have three minutes until the bus comes to take us to the T station so we can catch the subway home.
5:23pm: …the bus must be late.
5:25pm: let’s just stand around some more, it’ll come eventually.
5:27pm: okay, if it’s still not here by 5:30, we’ll walk.
5:30pm: …yeah, it’s not here. Let us dispatch.
5:33pm, as we’re walking back towards the bridge: OMFG NO WAY. THE BUS JUST ARRIVED.
20 minutes or so later, we drop onto the hard subway station benches and pop open a box of grape tomatos. For some reason, the subway takes forever to arrive, so by the time we manage to step out of Kendall station, it was already 6:30pm or so.
Okay, that’s not too bad. Let’s find a shopping cart or something so we don’t have to carry this stuff all the way back to our dorm. Oh hey, look: it’s Hongyou and Lynda on their bikes. Passing us as we trudge back to Next House. Not wasting any pity on the fact that our weary legs are about to collapse and our arms are about to fall out of their sockets. Yeah, guys, thanks a bunch.
What’s worse, there is no shopping cart in sight, either on the east side of campus, or main campus, or west campus. So how the hell do you ECers transport all that crap you bring home with you?
7:00 pm and we’re back at Next House. I shuffled out of the elevator, stumble into the White Rabbit Lounge… and make a dramatic show of falling over from exhaustion. Thirteen freaking miles: that’s how much we walked today.
After a quick rest, Ben and I cooked pasta for everyone (rotini, angel hair, & penne with tomato sauce), and we all feasted on said food, coupled with grape tomatos, petite brownies, and Fanta. Not too bad for a day’s work. Not too bad. As you can tell my by diminishing sense of verbosity and elegance in word choice, I am totally exhausted from the adventure. It’s not every day that you get to walk 13 miles, and I guess if you need some inspirational ending statement, I will admit that it truly humbled me and made me realize how dependent we were on technology and automobiles. As Ben and I put it, we paid homage to our ancestors who had no other means of getting places besides walking for days and nights.
… and now back to 18.01 p-setting.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
yaya!!
September 24th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
“we paid homage to our ancestors who had no other means of getting places besides walking for days and nights”
Really? I wouldn’t really care that much knowing that as experience as my ancestors were at traveling, they knew how to conserve their energy while walking.
The unfortunate side to evolution is the use of fallback measures for any application. As advanced as you think you are, sometimes you just don’t have the experience (or endurance) to simply walk 13.. was that distance duplex?… miles without wasting too much energy.
Why do you think those Africans (or aliens) in Africa travel with pots on their head? It may not be stylish but the with tight rings around their necks, I doubt they would mind the offload of weight to their entire body.
Almost like load balancing your feet in Antarctica with foot attachable Tennis rackets :). Or if you fancy possibly another form of sport that includes a misnamed flying object that shouldn’t have wings or taste so delicious on Thanksgiving, maybe badminton rackets would project your interests for eloquent light gaming under crisp cool skies as the sun sets like a watery SVG object, rasterizing around the earth to lighten someone else’s morning.
…and my ancestors are assholes anyway - they don’t want to associate with me, I don’t need them. Err, some of my relatives are not dead yet but they should be in the next 10 years.
September 26th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
You fail at detecting sarcasm! D: The irony is the fact that we had to scavenge for an excuse for our innate insanity that inspired us to walk 13 miles (yes duplex, with a few detours on the side).
By the way, did I tell you I got a B+ on my first paper because I overused descriptive adjectives? Fortunately you’re not in my position, because you’d have received a fail, haha.
As you can probably tell, my mind is too shot to type a cohesive answer. You can win for today even though your response was partially too confusing for my poor mind. There are plenty of methods of getting places that do not waste insane amounts of energy but are still considerably faster than walking. Like the zip lines we plan on installing between our dorm and main campus.