Well, I had a fun time on my Massachusetts trip. Myself and Rory went up to Cambridge for MIT’s monthly “Swap Fest” - aka flea market for geeks. Because we thought the weather was going to be hot, I told Rory I would drive up because his Volvo did not have AC. This was somewhat of a good idea, somewhat of a bad idea, and somewhat of a waste - this will be explained later. The swapfest took place on the 21st, but we were in MA from the 20th to the 24th. Here’s what we did:

On the 20th, Rory had just come back from the Adirondack mountains in upstate NY. So basically he came back, got changed, and onto the road again. Packing for the trip wasn’t too bad except it definately ate into the amount of room we had in the car - I had one suitcase, my latop, GPS unit (navigation), a piece of telephone equipment, a battery backup unit for said equipment, and then we also had Rory’s suitcase. Needless to say this took up more room then I had thought it was going to. There was still enough room for some stuff though.

The trip up there actually went pretty well, unlike previously. We made it up there in a little over 3 hours (about 6:20 - 6:30 until about 9:30ish), where in the past it has taken up to 5 - 6 hours to get up there before. The people in New England drive VERY fast on the highway. I averaged 80 MPH just keeping up with traffic there. I was very happy to see that the Cobra managed about 22 MPG as well. We were greeted by the porter who helped us grab everything we needed out of the car, and bring it inside, where we checked in, and expressed our intention to stay until Wednesday (we only had a reservation for that night). Thankfully, they had TWO rooms left. Apparently, at the Hotel@MIT, there are a lot of guests who come into town for conferences and stuff, so they’re busier more duing the week then the weekend. So it was a good thing we said something then. So, they give us our room key, and we go upstairs. The porter follows.

When we get into the room, first thing you could tell was someone in there had been smoking. An unfortunate side effect of a bunch of relatives smoking is you become sensative to the smell. So, I wasn’t happy about that, but could live with it. Then Rory tries to open the safe, and it’s locked. Needless to say, it shouldn’t have been. So the porter comes up, and we express our concerns about the safe, and I said something about the smell. He immediately asks if we’d like a new room, and we said sure.

We go downstairs to our new room, and discover…This room has it’s safe locked as well. So the porter calls someone to come up and fix it. I go with him downstairs to park my car in the lot next door. I park the car, and when I come back, Rory tell me, the TV wasn’t working either…The cable was unplugged. I walk over to the cordless phone, and that’s dead too. We figured it was an MIT intelligence test lol. (Eventually everything in the room worked as described) We get settled, make some calls letting others know we had made it up there, and then we started looking for food. We were about to learn our first lesson about Cambridge. Cambridge shuts down VERY early. Most Starbucks were only open until 7 or 8 PM. Radioshack closed at 7 PM. So finding food was not very easy. We found a pizzeria that had all sorts of stuff…I ordered chicken fingers, Rory had pizza. He had the better end of the deal. But it was good enough. At this point, we called it a night.


More soon.