I’ve become much more jaded over the last year.  The reality of navigating Boston usually translates into lots of bitter-cold walking with even more expensive taxi rides, or sitting in gridlock before driving around in circles for 30 minutes searching for parking (followed by more bitter-cold walking).  In the heart of winter, a quick drive down uncongested highway towards guaranteed parking at Panera always seems to edge out that Bohemian coffee shop – no matter how urban or eclectic it might be.  If you have a ton of money, it’s possible you could get a loft right in the middle of one of the more comprehensive squares in Boston – but for the majority of us, you’re going to have to walk or drive to get anywhere interesting.

That said, this weekend we decided to break out of the mold and check out the event calendars at Harvard (College) and MIT.  The MIT museum (for $4/pp) had a really amazing exhibit featuring “artistic machines”.  Absolutely loved it – they were all complex, functional machines with constantly moving parts.   They also had a hologram display (pretty interesting) and a “history of robotics” gallery.  The robotics gallery had the potential to be very interesting, but instead of moving, interactive parts, it simply consists of a bunch of static history stuffed into glass cases with boring descriptive placards.  It could use a bit of work…

Arthur Ganson at MIT

Robotics Exhibit at MIT

There was also a fascinating “history of MIT” room.  We didn’t stop to browse through all of it, but it did mention that MIT and Harvard thought about merging back in the early 1900s.  It ended up failing (thanks to faculty opposition and a court decision re: public land grants), but it’s still interesting to think about…

MIT merges with Harvard!?

After a rousing afternoon at MIT, we headed over to Harvard College’s Agassiz Theatre for a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Sorcerer by the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players.  (The Sorcerer was G&S’ first “true” operetta, written immediately prior to their most famous work, the HMS Pinafore).  It was a fantastic venue – great small theatre, and the cast obviously put a lot of work into it.  G&S is tough to perform – lots of fast singing, broad ranges, and complex lyrics.  I enjoyed the performance a lot (given a general love of G&S and musicals), but I think my date was a bit put-off by the difficult-to-understand lyrics.  Enunciation is key here, and I’m not sure there were any theatre majors in the mix (aside from the excellent performance from the actor playing the lead role of the title character)…

The Sorcerer (G&S) #1

The Sorcerer (G&S) #2

Still, it was really quite funny — fantastic parody.  It combines an over-the-top love story with a paper-thin plot, exaggerated archetypes, and a finale where the entire cast sings about pastries.  I enjoyed it, and I’ll definitely be back for their performance of the Pirates of Penzance in the Spring!

The park was beautiful, but it definitely has that “extremely-crowded extremely-quickly” vibe to it.  While this weekend was still a touch chilly, we ended up running into a bunch of hikers on the trail and met another 40+ people (+ kids and dogs) milling around the watchtower at the top of the mountain.  I can only imagine how crowded it gets here in prime weather!  That’s one of the recurring themes I’ve noticed with our local NE outdoors adventures… there are just so many people everywhere!  (I guess it’s kind of like growing up with beaches on the Jersey shore — if you don’t know differently, you’d never imagine places — like SC and FL and TX — where white sandy beaches stretch lazily on for miles with few people marring the landscape…)

Anyway, here are a few photos from the top:

Tower at Top of Blue Hills

Metro Boston in the Distance

View from the Top

The Wind-Blocking Walls

I can’t really say all that much about the history, but the star-shape offers nice stretches of grassy field that are blocked from the wind!  That’s the essential element for not freezing in Boston.

We lazed around for a while and enjoyed our high-calorie breakfast sandwiches, the sun, and a few cases.  While everyone talks about reading cases on car trips and in parks, as much as I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to do that very effectively.  Regardless, it was a beautiful weekend:

Beautiful Vista of the Harbor

100,000 People Agreed

Oh, and there was one crazy guy trying to swim.  Seriously, the water must be 32.5 degrees F or something.  Weird Northeasterners…

Seriously, Swimming?

• Sell Weekend?  Unexcused.
• Interview?  Unexcused.
• Conference?  Unexcused.
• Wedding Outside Direct Family?  Unexcused.
• Funeral Outside Direct Family?  Unexcused.

And my favorite: “Stuck in an airport?” Unexcused.  I’m trying to head back from the Bain Sell Weekend right now (on Sunday) and the outgoing flight board looks like this:

Outbound Flights

Bleeding red!  I’ve done a lot of travel in my previous job, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something as bad as this.  My flight was supposed to leave at 10am.  We ended up leaving at 1pm.  We sat on the runway until 5pm, then returned to the gate.  It was taking 45mins to deice a single plane!  Incredible:

4 Hrs of Runway Fun

Snowy Runway

Needless to say, there are tens of thousands of people marooned this weekend, with no other availability on flights heading to within 200 miles of Boston tonight or tomorrow.  Looks like it’s time to notify my professors and bite-the-bullet.  As far as I know, this type of strict policy is completely unique among business schools.  The HBS justification is that “because the case method is so highly dependent on class participation, attendance is necessary for value”.  I can understand that, but I wish there was a bit more flexibility built into this system.