Over my 48 years, I’ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States. I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn’t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning. Working in alphabetical order, we continue today with the 6th state to be added to the Union: Massachusetts
State: Massachusetts
Joined the Union: 1788
Visits: 6
The Bay State has been a more recent travel destination, with all six visits coming within the past five years. In what I’m sure is completely unrelated news, Angelina has been attending Boston University since 2018. This visit total would have been at least one trip larger, as I had plans to bring Michael in April of 2020, but the whole pandemic thing kind of put the kibosh on that.
My first visit to Massachusetts came in August of 2017, when I took a weekend trip to Boston to see the White Sox take on the Red Sox with Danny and Michael. We arrived in Boston on Saturday morning, heading straight from the airport to the Museum of Science, where we spent most of the morning. After a quick breakfast, we headed to our hotel, which was located in the medical district. We checked in and relaxed for a bit, before deciding on going for ice cream prior to heading to Fenway Park.
The game went about as you would expect. With James Shields on the mound, the White Sox did not put up much of a fight. We were sitting down the left field line, with a good view of the Green Monster. The seats, which may or may not date back to the stadium’s opening in 1912, were not really designed for people well over 6 feet tall, so there was a lot of uncomfortable shifting as our knees were smooshed into the seats in front of us.
The next morning, we went out in search of breakfast once again before gathering up our belongings and checking out of the hotel. Our first stop was just down the street, at Harvard Medical School, where we posed for pictures. From there, we headed to Skywalk Boston, their version of the observation deck at Sears Tower. It was only on the 50th floor, so the effect was a little different, but we did get to see the majority of the area. From there, over to the harbor to see the Boston Tea Party museum. The two-hour experience took us through the town meeting where the “attack” was planned, on to the boat to throw the tea in to the harbor, and then through a movie and other artifacts from one of the most famous events in American history. From there, it was off to the airport for the flight back home.
My next trip came the following year, when I returned to Boston in late October to celebrate birthdays with Angelina. I arrived on the Tuesday before our birthday, enjoying a brief tour of BU and a nice dinner at Fogo de Chao with Angelina before heading over to the House of Blues to see Garbage. The next day I took a tour of Fenway Park prior to Game Two of the World Series, before heading out to Cambridge to look around Harvard before heading home.
Just over a month later, I returned to Boston with my mom to see Angelina’s first synchro competition on Cape Cod and an ice show by the BU Figure Skating Club, seeing many of the same BU sites as my last visit.
In October of 2019, I once again travelled to Boston to see Angelina for our birthday dinner. Unbeknownst to me, she had suffered a concussion the day before, so she was busy for most of the day. After chilling in the hotel for a bit, I headed over to campus for a late lunch before waiting for her at a protest I happened across, trying to stop hate monger Ben Shapiro from coming to campus for a speech. After dinner, she headed back to her dorm to rest, and I left early the next morning to return home.
After a two-year hiatus thanks to COVID, my next trip to Boston came this past May for Angelina’s graduation. Danny, Michael, and I flew out on Friday and spent Saturday sightseeing around Boston with the family. Graduation was Sunday morning, which we topped off with a dinner out on Sunday night before heading home on Monday.
My most recent visit came earlier this month, as birthday celebrations were finally allowed to restart. I arrived late on Friday night, and then spent Saturday with Angelina and Emily, including a trip to the Museum of Science and a return visit to Fogo de Chao. Sunday morning. they picked me up from the hotel and drove me to the airport, bringing my latest visit to an end.
Will I return? I have to say yes.
It will be just less than four months until baseball returns to Chicago, so I thought it would be a good time to revisit, for the first time in six years, the all-time rankings in both offensive and defensive categories for all iterations of the current 30 teams for the 1040 games I’ve identified that I have attended. We continue today on the offensive side of the ball with triples.
Yesterday, the BBWAA released their ballot for the Hall of Fame class of 2023. The results of the vote are due to be revealed on January 24th, with induction taking place July 23rd. David Ortiz was elected in last year’s voting and notable PED suspects Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa fell off the ballot after reaching their ten-year limit, the new ballot contains fourteen holdovers along with another fourteen newcomers. For the first time in a decade, the logjam caused by a combination of BBWAA rules limiting the number of votes on one ballot to ten and the ongoing refusal by some writers to vote for players tainted by PEDs has come to an end.
