A seven nation army couldn't hold me back.
They're gonna rip it off
Taking their time right behind my back.
And I'm talkin' to myself at night, because I can't forget.
Back and forth through my mind, behind a cigarette

The White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army"
---
Chapter Two - Blue Ginger

My cross-country layover included a stop in Kansas City, Missouri, for about forty-five minutes. That gave me enough time to head down to an airport bar and relax in front of tall glass bong filled with Bud Light. Hey, I was in Busch country, so I figured what the hell.

Upon arriving in Manchester, I discover in horror that I don't have the confirmation number of my car rental reservations. Worse than that, I've forgotten which rental agency I used. After 5 embarassing stops at Hertz, Dollar, and Budget, the process of elimination led me to Alamo where a Mitsubishi Galant awaited. In the time it took me to finally secure a car, Heather's plane landed and the two of us were on our way to Boston, including a ten mile stretch along the Massachusetts turnpike that involved me not getting a ticket upon entry, and the ticket lady being very kind at the end. I guess we just reeked of tourists who had no idea what was going on.

Let me eliminate a little bit of the story by using a technique known as a "summary." Because of my codependence on Betty to tell me where things are in the absense of a Thomas Guide, I immediately have no idea how to get to my hotel. The directions are vague at best and multiple direction sites contradict each other. Despite my best efforts, Heather and I eventually made it to Natick (pronounced NAY-tick) and we nestled in for a long and restful evening in a bed much too large for just the two of us. It felt like we should have been able to build a fort with a small township on the perimeter.

I fulfilled my two goals in Boston, and even managed to score a bonus in the meantime. I always wanted to see Fenway, and I wanted to pay my respects to Sam Adams. The bonus involved Heather and I having lunch at Ye Olde Oyster House, which is the oldest continuously running restaurant in America. Boston was a lot of fun, I got a lot of culture in, as well as a lot of relaxation. I hate Boston pedestrians, though. They clearly have no fear of automobiles like a proper Los Angeles pedestrian would have. Also, double parking appears to be a way of life, as are streets with no discernable lanes. This must be what driving in Bangladesh is like, except there are no bicycles and I'm not starving.

For dinner, Heather and I went to Blue Ginger, Ming Tsai's restaurant in the middle of the suburbs. It's like having a world-class restaurant nestled somewhere in the mini-mall next to my neighborhood here in Thousand Oaks between a pet store and the DMV. Very odd. The food was amazing, of course, including a soft-shelled crab appetizer stuffed with tempura avocado served with a garlic aioli. Arrrrrrrr... The medium rare lamb tenderloin didn't have the gamey taste that lamb tends to have when it's cooked rare (how'd they do that?) and of course, it was still firm enough where it had the structure of something cooked medium to medium well, but was clearly bloody as fuck. Tastes great. Less filling. From my table, I was about ten feet away from the kitchen, where they follow the lead of Spago and you can see the chefs in action. Ming Tsai was not there that night, but I did have a full view of Jonathan Taylor, one of his sous chefs. I, in my suit, was the best dressed person in the room by far, which was surprisingly more casual than expected, but then again, we are in the middle of a mini-mall in a Boston suburb. Then again, the suit was almost all for naught, since I actually forgot to pack shoes. Fortunately, Bobby's feet is only a half-size larger than mine, so a little tight lacing solved everything.

Oh by the way, I got a ticket while I was in Cambridge visiting the MIT museum. I sit here and hope that the minor $15 parking meter violation disappears into the ether and we can all laugh about this one day over a bottle of white port.

Epilogue - White Castle Pizza

Liz's family is amazing. One of my favorite moments involved sitting on the deck just chatting over dinner. Somehow the topic of Barbara Walters comes up. Mrs. Kelley, Liz's grandmother and I, simultaneously begin doing our best impersonations. "Bahbawah Wahltahs." You can't make this stuff up. Here was how my day and a half on Silver Lake went: drink beer, nap, read, get hot, swim, dry off, repeat until darkness or mosquitoes force you inside.

Over the vacation, I managed to finish reading three books. One, Maxims by La Rochefoucauld, is a book of aphorisms written by a French philosopher in the 16th century. Another, How To Be Good by Nick Hornby, was a really fun and easy read, subtly funny; he was the guy who wrote High Fidelity, inspiring a movie of the same name. The final book was Moneyball by Michael Lewis. I devoured this book, but that's because I love the Billy Beane story, no matter how much coverage Rob Neyer gives him. It read like a really long Neyer article on ESPN, and so I finished it in a few hours.

Heather and I also took a little day trip to Maine. While eating lobster (obviously), we discovered two great things. One was the second best appetizer of the trip, an English muffin topped with crab meat and melted brie. Surprisingly good, and the subtlety of both the crab meat and the brie did not outdo each other. The other was a fantastic beer called Sea Dog Blueberry. The Portland Sea Dogs are a minor league baseball team, and so the brewery was named after them, I guess. This beer tasted exactly how a muffin would taste. You could not get sick off of this beer, it was just way too easy to drink. After a nice drive back from Maine (The Pine Tree State) to New Hampshire (The No Cell Phone Reception State), Heather and I decided to spend the evening watching VH1's Top 100 Most Shocking Events in Rock History. Number one was the day John Lennon was killed. Heavy stuff, man. We were so glued to the TV that we didn't want to go out for dinner, and hoped that White Castle Pizza, two blocks away from the inn, would deliver. They wouldn't, and so we had to wait until the very end of the countdown before we could leave. I've always thought that the true measure of a relationship is not the amazing stuff you do together, but the boring stuff you do together. In that regard, lying there with her, being able to gaze up at those eyes, blue as a lagoon in the South Pacific, and having VH1 rattle off another countdown, was one of the most memorable moments of my life. Honestly. You see, it's not the big splashy things that matter most; it's the little subtle things. I really shouldn't be getting this way; she's in North Carolina, and, well, I'm not.

Let's skip forward to the plane ride from Kansas City into LAX. (Notice I'm not arriving in Burbank. Carroll happened to be in South Bay area anyway.) In the seats in front of me were a young couple and a baby boy on their laps. In the middle of the flight, the baby boy peeked his head over the seat to stare and me and the two girls sitting next to me. I said to the baby overlooking the back of the seat, "Hi, Ben." There was no name tags and neither the baby nor the parents have ever told us his name. Of course, it was, in fact, his name, so he politely just sat there and kept being pacified. "How'd you know his name?" Lizzie asked. Lizzie is the name of the girl next to me. She never told me her name, either.