#7 Boston - Bursting with Filth, July 23, 2006

The Swan River Restaurant in Chadham at Cape Cod is a nice place, mind you, but their menu is literally unreadable. They picked a bit of an unusual type font, slanted to the right, and the result is that you cannot read a darn thing, and what they, in a very creative attempt, metaphorically described as “bustling with fish” was read by yours truly as “bursting with filth”, which is not a confidence-building statement, if you catch my drift.

The swordfish was good though, and restored some of that confidence and filled that little tummy of mine, so all was good.

Yes, this past Friday a whole horde of us congregated at New England’s prime vacation land, the Cape – known to outsiders as Cape Cod. (To us it is the Cape, just as San Francisco is “the city” and not Frisco, God No, or even San Fran….. grrrrhhh).

The lovely Miss Denise Schubert and I hightailed it out there a bit early on Friday, Rick’s family was kind enough to offer us lodging at the Chuck House (his grandfather built the place in the 1970s), located very picturesquely at John Joseph’s Pond. Lovely place, I have to say – of course the minute I left Boston craziness set in, and my confused little mind, renamed everything associated with John Joseph (we still don’t know who he was) John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, and at some point the whole gang of us was driving in a van singing the Jingleheimer song. It definitely was a moment to remember!!!



Friday night I did my long run for the week and accompanied by Rick on his bike, I crept along 13 miles of the Cape Cod Rail Trail. It was quite a nice jog; we saw at least three little rabbits and one of my favorite botanical stars, the Indian Pipe. Quite a cool plant, no chlorophyll, looks like little white lanterns coming out of the ground….

Most of the guests arrived Friday night – Joanne and Marc, accompanied by their dog Hailey, Chris Gibbs from my running group, Will, aka Guillermo the “Grill Master” and his friend Roman. After stuffing ourselves with homemade burgers and potato salad, a pretty spirited game of Taboo required a good dose of fantasy and craziness – if you would guess “toilet” after hearing - “It has a hole, you can get quite comfy on it” or if you would get to straightjacket from “It’s really tight, you can’t breathe” – there are pillows on the walls” – you might just be our kind of guy/gal….



Saturday after a breakfast deliciously arranged by the charming Miss Denise Schubert featuring Challah French Toast, the sun-hungry bunch hoofed it to the beach, Coast Guard Beach to be exact – gotta dip your toes in the Atlantic Ocean, right?? It was very beachy, sandy, and actually pretty enjoyable – but some of us headed home soon, to do some canoeing on the newly christened John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Pond (guess who got really sick on the calmest water ever?? I am such a lost cause…), dogs were jumping off the dock, everyone was relaxing - it was a lot of fun. After a game of horseshoes during which Marc showed off his skill of throwing stuff up in trees, and the aforementioned dinner at the Swan River Restaurant, it was time to go to school - to Sundae School to be exact for some yummy tummy ice cream (not that there was any room left in my stomach). This is quite the place, and I feel bad for the poor neighbors, who have to tolerate cars on their lawns and ice-cream-hungry beach revelers by the droves until the wee hours of the night…. With that much food in my body and the ensuing diabetic coma, the following game of Guesstures (sort of a high-speed game of Charades) was of particular note. I had to act out the word “jockstrap” and kept pointing at Chris and Rick’s private parts, which I am sure they appreciated. Rick, in his attempt to portray a phone book started off on a crazy sprint to the kitchen and kicked poor Phoebe’s water bowl all over the place. There were just the four of us, and I wondered how any of the other people in the house were able to sleep even a wink, but at least we were entertaining.



Sunday morning - chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, and then Denise and I sped back to Boston to see the Oakland A’s, Petra’s old home team, beat the crap out of the Sox. It was not pretty, but a game at Fenway Park is always lovely, no matter what (even though a pint of beer made me want to take a little nap, right then and there…)



The week was a little gaga - even I have to admit that. First we had a heat wave in Boston – it was awful – every season this year has been majorly screwed up – lousy winter, sorry excuse for a spring, and a soggy excuse for a summer (just returned from a rain-soaked hike and am still bitter about it; if I wanted to move to Seattle, I would have done so, right???!!!) Tuesday was the highlight with about 100 degrees by mid-afternoon. Coupled with the usual tropical humidity, how much more fun can this summer be? I had to do a little training that night, and at 7PM the thermometer still showed 90 degrees, but there was no choice – thunderstorms were announced for later, so I just headed out and moved like molasses in January, snails were passing me, I swear. The weather during the Toronto Marathon is supposed to be much cooler, an average of 55-60 degrees, so with all this hot weather training, this maybe a very good strategy….



Wednesday the Running Partners (the hospital’s jogging group) said Goodbye to our most wonderful friend John Young, who is heading to Robert Wood Johnson Medical School next week, and will have to do his running without us for a while. After our 7-mile jaunt, we all headed over to the Esplanade and the Hatch Shell where the Boston Landmark Orchestra was giving a free classical concert – Mozart was on the menu, and one of my favorite classical pieces, the Requiem was superbly performed that night and we had a nice picnic to send off young John to his fate and become the world’s most gifted surgeon.



Thursday was the day from hell – not in a bad way, just busy as can be. Let me demonstrate – Get up at 6:30 AM, be at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for the monthly Phase I meeting at 7:30 AM. Leave at 9 AM, drive Ella home; work from home, preparing the bi-weekly Oncology Newsletter I send out to all our physicians. 11:30 AM lunch break, go for a quick jog of 4 miles (marathon training), then head out to the Dana Farber again for some more meetings in the afternoon. After work head to South Boston to volunteer for the Jim Kane Sugarbowl 5-Miler, an annual road race put on by my other running group, the L-Street Running Club. After volunteering I had to zip to Somerville to the First Congregational Church on College Avenue for a performance of one-acters – my colleague and friend Renee is part of the Theatre@First troupe, who performs there regularly (Congrats to Renee for a wonderful performance!! Love ya!). All this hoopla also included a serious jog in heels from the spot where I parked the car (which was half the distance home to Cambridge, I swear) to the performance site, and made me look slightly deranged as I arrived exactly five minutes prior to the start. Patrick and Ellen I think at this point had given up on me, even though it had been my idea to go there in the first place.



In addition, I have been plagued by a serious backache all week. My motto pretty much has been “suck it up and run through it” – I have been continuing with the marathon trai ning pretty steadily (Week 9 just ended), but once in a while a handful of Tylenol has come in handy to make me look less than I swallowed a 2 x 4.



OK, I am done for now. I am sitting up here in Franconia and it is raining non-stop out there, the sight of rain is driving me mad - just a wee bit- and I will have to go now, a nice cold beer is waiting somewhere - I am sure.



Toodles!



Pet:)