Atypical Wednesday

4:55pm on Wednesday and the sun is threatening to duck out of sight. Just one more quick stop at the Alaska Airlines ticket counter and I can get suited up and ready to roll. 5:05pm and I race to the bowels of terminal B to dress in what I'm hoping is a couple of dry layers that I hung hours earlier...no such luck. Still wet, bummer. Hope no one gets close enough to detect that I have a slight aroma kick'in.
Now time to escape. I stand my road bike on it's rear wheel and manipulate the bike around office furniture and out into the hall. Now feeling exposed in the hall wearing my nija kit. I try to make a quick get-away down to the first of two security doors. My rear hub clicking gives me away. The five people in the inflight office see me roll by and come into the hall to check out freak boy in his spandex suit. I hate that, but love it at the same time...but mostly hate it.
We say a quick goodbye and I turn to swipe my card and lay my fingerprint down on the sensor. The door clicks, green light, I roll. Under the bag belts and snake through the bag room trying not to get run over by a rampy in a tug. I punch the keys at the final door and I'm thru to the public side. Just one more encounter with two girls in the baggage office as I take a sec to secure my ID in my jersey pocket and glide to the lobby and out the double doors to the cool autumn air.
5:15pm, I'm free. In a low gear, I give a couple of kicks past Terminal C. Feeling good, ready to race the available sunlight for an hour to the north shore. Oh wait...my helmet! is back in my office!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I took the long way to work yesterday morning, poking around the cobblestone streets and brownstone neighborhoods of East Boston near the Mystic river. The gravity of Boston's cityscape sprouting from the ocean pulled me here so I took it's picture with my low quality camera phone. Under the Tobin Bridge, looking up to the massive structure as rusty flakes floated down like snow as traffic buzzed on two decks and six lanes within. And then the oddest sight.. looking to my right, upriver at a park I didn't know existed under the Tobin Bridge. A cobblestone way lined with Federalist granite and brick structures dotting the Charles river from the age of George Washington and Sam Adams.


And this tree, absolutely the oldest I've ever seen. Like a monstrous three armed serpent muscling it's way through the earth has got to be older than the bridge that stands above it. Oh well, enough history. Got to get to work.