The next morning we grabbed our bikes and surprised the parking attendant in Satellite Parking Lot One by cruising up to her booth from inside the lot by pedal power. We asked her what was the easiest way for us to get to the T with our bikes, and she gave us directions which saved our butts later when we had to drive our rig out of Boston.
So at the terminal, the ticket master gave us a look as we stood there with our bikes and told us we needed permits to take bikes on the T. "Where can we get them?" we asked, wanting to follow the rules. He told us you could only get them at Back Bay Station, which was on the other side of the Bay, reachable for us only by the T. We promised him we'd go right to Back Bay to get our permit. He unlocked the gate to let us through and looked the other way.
"If anyone asks, you didn't get on here!" he called after us.
Faithfully, we took all the necessary connections to get to Back Bay, where I went up to get the $5 bike permits so we could be legal. It took all of 20 minutes, as I had to wait for the ancient Xerox to warm up to get a copy of the form. Now we can take our bikes on the Boston T until December of 2002. We're set. Of course, we only used them for the next eight hours or so.
A bit of Harvard.
First stop, Harvard. We biked around the nation's oldest university, and pondered how different it would have been to go to school on a campus so fully integrated with the city. Our native UCSC was like a village unto its own.
Charles River Trail.
From there we found the Charles River trail, which wound along the river by the Esplanade, the gorgeous wood Half Shell auditorium where free outside concerts are held throughout summer, and into the downtown Boston area near the Museum of Science. We shared the trail with lots of bladers, bikers and joggers, as the weather was a perfect temperature with clear blue skies and a slight breeze. Sailboats glided along on the river, and Boston natives found private pieces of dock or grass to sunbath on the river shore.
Boston the beautiful.
At the end of the trail, we headed into the Boston Commons, a huge grassy park in the middle of industry. There we picked up the Freedom Trail, a 2.5 mile stretch that leads past all the historic sites in the city, including Paul Revere's house, which still stands as it originally was erected.
Downtown uncrowded.
We found ourselves in the Italian district around supper, and to keep the wallet from running on empty we dipped into a pizza joint that looked as authentic as you could find. Regina's served up amazing pizza in classic Italian style, and our waitress was a hard young Italian woman who chomped her gum like it was a stubborn piece of gristle. Think Mystic Pizza on a bad PMS day.
When we finally closed the chapter on the day, we crowded into the T with our bikes and headed back to sleep with the 747s and the rumbling SkyChef trucks trambling back and forth behind Satellite Parking Lot One.
