Busy weekend

Our friends Larry and Sarah came down from Vermont to visit us this weekend, and our friend Kai was already in town. We had lots to do.

Larry and Sarah came because we invited them to yesterday’s Beantown Jazz Festival, an annual event on a section of street in Boston’s South End. Berklee College of Music organizes the music, which they do extremely well. Berklee is the pre-eminent institution in the world for jazz musicians and students of other modern styles. They assembled a really fine lineup for this weekend, the weather cooperated, and everybody had a great time. In fact, I especially enjoyed watching the smiles on the faces of the many people in the audience at the last performance of the day. I think we all had a good time.

Kai came to Boston for a number of reasons, and we already got to see him earlier in the week. We were happy, then, that he was free to come join us for a while at the jazz fest. I sent him a text message again after lunch today to tell him that we’d be going to a bike race later in the afternoon. Kai replied that he was tied up at the Museum of Fine Arts. What do you know? That’s where we’d just finished lunch, and we were on our way to the very place where he was enjoying the art with another friend.

Before going to the art museum, Larry and I got up early in the morning for a bike ride around Spot Pond and the nearby reservoirs while our wives took a long walk along the Charles River. We got to the art museum right after church, just in time for lunch. Although we enjoyed our time there very much, none of us felt satisfied. We will go back soon to carry on where we left off. I love looking at art.

We “had” to leave, however, to go see the last bike race. There had been a public bike event earlier today, and lots of celebrations leading up to the races. By the time we got there, some of the sponsors realized that they had extra goodies which they had not given away, so we came home with lots of energy bar samples and other fun stuff. We liked the race too. Cyclists raced around City Hall in a short course called a criterium. This meant that the racers shot past us almost once every minute, providing a very energetic and entertaining show. We even got grandstand seats.

We like Boston a lot, but it’s true that we exaggerated when we told Larry and Sarah that every weekend is something like this. Still, it’s pretty special here. 

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