Day 8- Boston

Today we woke up in Concord, Massachusetts and were all alone in the Runyon house.  People trust us! I don’t know why! Haha.  They left everything out for us so we could have breakfast, then after getting sandwiches made and showers, etc. done, we headed down to Boston, about a 25 minute drive from here.  It was rainy from the moment we woke up until when we got back tonight.

My bloody shoe and sock

We got out of the car and headed towards the freedom trail, and before we even got to the trail, I think we were all kind of sketched out about Boston.  We had people yell at us, people cussing amongst themselves as they walked by, etc.  It was really weird that we have gone through all these cities and had zero problems, then in the first five minutes in Boston, a city we all expected to be very classy, we had maybe four run-ins with sketch people!  Oh well.  I also had my new shoes on that were starting to dig into my Achilles, so we stopped at a CVS and I took my shoe off to put a bandaid on and my heel was bleeding! Fitting for a baseball tour in Boston (Curt Schilling, 2004 ALCS game 7. Look it up…).They also kicked two separate people out of CVS while we were there!

As we caught the trail, we crossed paths with a news crew who asked us if we wanted to be interviewed.  Of course I jumped right on it!  I’m always happy to get on TV! :p  They were doing a story about Boston being ranked the number 6 city of romantic men in America.  We told them we weren’t from there and had only been there for 5 minutes, but they were ok with that and asked us why cities like Salt Lake were more romantic than Boston! Haha (SLC was 4^th on the list)  Taylor told them he was romantic because he makes picture frames with macaroni noodles, and Garrett told them SLC ranked higher because they get married younger in SLC! Haha.  We came up with so many funny things we could have said later (like, “do I look romantic?! I’m on a roadtrip with 4 dudes!”).  But we weren’t quick enough.

We continued to where we thought the freedom trail started, then turned around and headed down the trail. We saw a few churches and grave yards (Paul Revere, John Hancock and Samuel Adams graves…) and a few land marks, and before we knew it, we were at the end of the trail.  It was surprisingly short.  So we got out a baseball and started throwing in the rain for about 15-20 minutes.  We then headed to a food court where we ate our lunches and then, since it was raining, we hit up an H&M store.  I got a new hot pink polo, and everyone else also got some clothes, too.

This is me in the rain.  the hand signal says it all...

When we were done and ready to brave the rain again, we headed to the car to drop our bags off, then back towards the city.  We stopped to look at a map, and we noticed that we hadn’t covered the whole trail and we had actually started in the middle of it!  So we went back where we started and headed the other way.  By this time, my feet were soaking and very uncomfortable.  We went to Paul Reveres house, as well as the “one if by land, two if by sea” church and sat there for a while.  Then the trail took us over the Boston harbor and to the other side where the USS Constitution is.  When we got there- through cold and windy rain, did I mention??- we were told it was closed! So we looked around the museum a little, then headed towards Bunker Hill where we looked at the monument, then started trekking back to the car.  Our walk back was an hour long at a quick pace, so we obviously had quite a ways to cover.  We then found Scott (our host) and he drove us around the city, pointing some cool things out.

Today I did a little complaining, but mostly just joking around and having fun.  It was kinda miserable (between my feet and the weather) and I think my view of Boston was affected by it.  Hopefully it will be better weather tomorrow.  The forecast says it will still be a little rainy in the afternoon, but not too bad.  We are hoping they won’t cancel the game!  But I hope one day I get a chance to see Boston on a sunny day so I can get a better view of one of America’s most historic cities.  If nothing else, today was very memorable!

We headed home and Sister Runyon had prepared dinner for us.  We ate a delicious casserole and sat around the table with Scott and talked a bit. We watched Jim Thome hit his 600^th home run, so that was cool, and now we are wrapping up and getting into bed!  Here’s to better weather tomorrow, but overall, I can’t complain- it has been a great trip so far and today honestly wasn’t that unbearable.

Game prediction standings:

Mitch      4-1 *

Eric         3-2

Taylor     3-2

Garrett    1-4

*asterisks denotes a correct score prediction.

Scoreboard:

Jumbotron appearances: 4

Balls from the game: 2 (Mitch-NYM; Taylor- Balt)

Promotion items: 2 (Garrett- Hat in Cle; Mitch- backpack in Cle)

Stadium hours: 21

Rainouts/ hours: 3.5

Extra innings: 6

Car hours: 22

Miles: 1160

States:  11