I am two days into my first visit home in over a year. Needless to say, this is a great time to be in Boston. Driving around the city yesterday, there was a constant hum of energy: ‘Go Sox!’ plastered bedsheets hanging from rickety duplexes over the Mass Pike, helicopters, blimps, low flying planes streaming various ads circled above downtown. The only downside to being on the right coast for the series is the fact that I can’t watch end of the game and get to bed by 9 or 10. So basically I am justifying staying up through the 9th by reasoning that since my visit here is so short, I might as well just stay on left coast time…except for the small problem that I still wake up notoriously early.

Other than that, training is going as well as could be had in eastern MA. I am glad that I planned ahead for a relatively low volume block this week, though. It seems all my old rollerski routes got shorter and I no longer have the focus to ski the same 1/2 mile loops repeatedly. Also, drivers apparently don’t consider the bike lane off-limits. I knew it was a bad sign when, during my midnight drive home from the airport, one of my parents (I’ll leave the exact specifics out of this) managed to cut off 3 cars in heavy traffic (the Williams tunnel was closed – maybe chunks of tile were falling off again?- so it was bumper to bumper in the Sumner) and used the turn signal a total of ZERO times on the way home. There was also the burst fire hydrant in the middle of the city that was helping the situation out a lot. And rain. Arghh. But I saw the giant Citgo sign looming over Storrow Drive so it was all worth it.

I have been reminded since I’ve been home that in this region, it is not only my parents who drive like this. Although, the ratio of SUVs to small cars is down here compared to Bend which is probably due more to necessity (Hummers would probably take out oncoming traffic, telephone poles and not to mention rollerskiers in one fell swoop on most of the backroads here) than to environmental consciousness.

I discovered that I have to work on my airporting skills. This trip was a good tune-up for the season. Arriving to the airport, even the tiny RDM one, 29 minutes before take-off was cutting it a little too close. Check-in had closed so I had to put on my best help-me-please puppy eyes for the Delta lady to get me on the flight. This was karma biting me in the butt because the night before I had been making fun of my mom who insists on checking in at the airport exactly two hours before a flight. And then I ended up burning my tongue chugging my assam tea in the security line and taking another 7 minutes digging my laptop out of my backpack, from underneath my lunch, extra jacket and empty tea mug. But all things considered, this was the most benign flying experience I have had in a while. No canceled flights, no getting singled out for thorough searching, no confiscated items. I arrived the same day I took off and there was no sprint from one end of the O’Hare airport to the other. In fact, I didn’t even have to go through O’Hare.

My biggest concern now is that Youkilis might not be in Game 3 and Big Papi will be covering first. That scares me more than dodging rush hour traffic on rollerskis.