joe shaw

So like a month ago my high school friends Emma, Jenny and Scott decided to make the trek up to Boston to visit some people. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun in 36 hours.

Right after they got into town we decided to drop in unannounced on our friend Kelly, who works at the Children’s Museum. She was completely dumbstruck. We invited her to dinner and then went and played in the museum for a bit.

scott and jenny under the parachute

Then we hit Harvard Square for some tourism and coffee. As we’re walking down Mass Ave., I hear Scott start mumbling something… “Rafat Hasan… Rafat Hasan… is that Rafat Hasan?” I thought he was speaking in tongues, but it turns out he was actually calling out to another friend from high school…

… underneath the serendipity sign

kelly, tara, scott, jenny, emma, and some hobo we met on the street

Wednesday I played hookie to head up to Dartmouth, where Scott went to grad school.

emma feeds a dartmouth meter

With a brief stopover at the Ben and Jerry’s factory in northern Vermont.

Later we were having drinks with one of the faculty that Scott dealt with a good deal. She had arranged for us to stay at the Hanover Inn that night, and we were going to head back to Boston the next morning. Then, Jenny got a call. She had to be back in New York for an audition for Law & Order the next morning, at 11 am. There is no way we could stay the night and make it back tomorrow. We tried to weigh our options… Train from Dartmouth? Train from Boston? Them driving back to NYC tonight, me taking a bus tomorrow morning? No on the trains. Ok, Jenny will rent a car and drive back to NYC tonight. Where can we rent a car? Nothing doing at the hotel. Maybe the airport? We rush there, and see the Avis guy walking out just as we’re walking in. “Are you still open?” we ask. “No, they’re closed.” Asshole. A late flight maybe? Of course, a flight! Planes can go far distances in short amounts of time! We ask the one remaining employee at the airport, stupidly, if there are any flights left tonight. Of course, there aren’t. We find the first for tomorrow, an ungodly 6 or 7 am flight. He says he can’t take payment because he’s shut the computers down, but he can make the reservation. Jenny will have to pay in cash the next morning.

Everything works out nicely. We head back to the hotel. Now we just need to get some sleep, but there are four of us crammed into the king sized bed. Completely slap happy and joking around until late. Jenny is the first to drift off, and I’m the next. I wake up before the 5 am wake up call, to find that Emma has moved from the bed because of the heat, and that Scott has been up all night with back spasms. We stop off for some snacks at a local co-op and head back to Boston. Scott sleeps in the back seat, and Emma and I have a nice long conversation about how there’s too much stuff to do in one lifetime and not enough time to do it. Right around when we arrive in Boston Jenny calls to let us know she’s made it safely back home. Emma and Scott drop me off at my place, rest for about half and hour, and head home.