OK, that’s actually downtown Boston, but it perfectly captures what we love about New England — new and old
We also got to catch up with the incredible Boston-based team of our company, NGP VAN. For me, this was cut a bit short for especially weird reasons. During the past 16 months we’ve traveled to some out of the way places and enjoyed lots of unusual foods and experiences. No matter what we eat, I’m the one who seems to have a stomach of steel and just never gets sick. But somehow, inexplicably, just as or NGP VAN Happy Hour was getting under way, I had a weird attack of something in my stomach and felt a desperate need of visiting the bathroom. After awkwardly excusing myself a couple times I discovered it was easier to just come right out and tell people what was going on: Now that I was here in Boston, my stomach just couldn’t take it any more, and sorry, but I need to spend lots of time in the bathroom. Eventually I had to excuse myself and head back to the hotel for my first dose of Cipro since starting this journey. Here of all the places. Weird, but thankfully Cipro is a miracle drug and wiped it away fast.
It was also a week for getting practical stuff done — visits to doctors and dentists, errands, shopping for necessities. And then it all ended on Sunday with one really special event. We rented a car and headed out to Concord for the wedding of our longtime friends Mark and Marcony. It was a really nice ceremony, a fun time with lots of friends, and a great way to end a really nice visit to a wonderful place where we lived for nearly 20 years.
We didn’t even manage to get pictures of everyone we visited with, but here is a sample.
Instead of just visiting old familiar places, we spent one fun evening at in a hip corner of Somerville. Here is Mark, Jim, Amanda, and Mark
Jim made a visit to the NGP VAN office in Somerville and ran into a very familiar scene: Chris and Terry hunched over the computer dealing with a crisis. Wow, some things just do not change!
A big highlight of our visit was dinner with Bart and Ann (and Wil) on their gorgeous deck right next to our old place. It was fun to be so close to home!
Ann and Wil were recently in the midst of building this cool big map of their 8-month journey around the world earlier this year. Here Ann and Jim point to where we all got together in Bali, and Bart points to, well, something else. And Jim is inexplicably holding a banana.
Best surprise of our visit to Caambridge: Unexpectedly running into Jane and Paul walking down the street. I didn’t even realize they had moved back to Cambridge until Jane came running up to me on the street!
As we checked in for our rental car to get to the wedding in Concord, the Avis lady punched all our info into the computer and was excited to announce that she and Jim were born on the very same day!
Jim and the very newly married Marcony
Mark and the grooms, Marcony and Mark
Great fun with some of the NGP VAN contingent at the wedding — Lou, Amanda, Jennifer, Jim, and Esha