The Challenges of Getting Around Town

We have been here for 2 months now, and are still going through the learning curve about the best ways to get around Cambridge and the greater Boston area. The good news is that there are a number of options; the bad news is that they all seem to include their own challenges.

Walking

Walking is the transportation mode (if you can call it that) that is embraced with greatest enthusiasm here in Cambridge. Low cost, great exercise, low carbon footprint, and pretty much the hallmark of a very locally oriented lifestyle. The downside, of course, is that it is slow, although not always slower than by automobile...that depends on traffic! It can also be tiring, especially if you have a lot to carry. and you are vulnerable to bad weather. Dan commutes on foot to his office, his classes and meetings, and the gym.Typically he sets out about 8:00 AM and returns 10-14 hours later, and he takes everything with him that he might have a need for during the day.

We walk to the Y, the Post Office, and to church. We do most shopping and errands on foot. I confess to using the car about half the time  for grocery shopping.....shh...don't tell my neighbors...I am supposed to hike to Whole Foods 6 blocks away with my re-usable bags. Yes, I have re-usable bags. However, I brought them from Ohio so they are not your typical Cambridge re-usable bags with preachy "green" slogans. Here is one of mine with a patriotic theme:

A re-usable bag imported from Ohio

Our neighborhood has an extremely high "Walk Score". I will admit that I had never even heard of a Walk Score until last summer when I started apartment hunting in Cambridge. Some apartment ads actually include the walk score of the neighborhood. I am not exactly sure how it is computed, or by whom, but it is supposed to indicate how many desirable or convenient establishments are within walking distance. Again, not sure what is considered walking distanc, or which categories of establishments are considered desirable. A liquor store? A tatoo parlor? Depands on your perspective.  Guess I need to look this up. 100 is perfect, and implies that everywhere worth going is within a few blocks. Our neighborhood has a walk score in the high 90s or even 100 according to one ad.

Within about a mile of our apartment we can find at least a hundred retail shops of various sorts, at least a hundred restaurants, a number of choices for dentists, dry cleaners, and other service providers, not to mention several world class institutions of higher education. Quite a change from our farm in Lebanon where the only things you can find plenty of within a mile or so are trees, deer, racoons, and geese. Not a single shop or restaurant or service provider. But our horse barn is only about 500 feet away from the house, so there are tradeoffs. I guess the instigators of the Walk Score don't consider the company of horses or the proximity of trees and wildlife particularly important..

Nemo

Thursday Evening

Nemo? Really?? Who comes up with these names? If they want us to be intimidated they should really come up with something fiercer. But then "Sandy" sounds pretty bland too, so I guess I shouldn't underestimate this one. No sign of foul weather yet, sunny and cold today, but not bitterly cold and very little wind.  However, the horses were all a little "on their toes" today as they often are when a storm is coming. The theory is that they have a sort of built in barometer and feel the air pressure changing. Below is a picture of the neighborhood pre-Nemo, at sunset Thursday.

Cambridge Waiting for Nemo

If we really do have a blizzard it could be interesting living on the 9th floor. We are prepared to just stay in from tomorrow afternoon through Sunday morning, especially if the power goes off since the elevators won't be working. We have plenty of food and I have run some extra water through the Britta filter and filled our largest cooking pot as well as the big pitcher for drinking water. We should have brought a Flashpan with us to Cambridge for cooking during power outages, but I didn't think of it. We have enough ready-to-eat food to last 3-4 days, and I can't imagine that things will be shut down that long. Computers and phones charged, flashlights and candles ready. Probably all for nothing.

Friday 8:00 AM

Still waiting. So far not a single snowflake.

Friday Afternoon

It is snowing now. Moving from light to moderate with some gusts of wind more apparent from up on the 9th floor than they were at street level. Still not too much accumulation yet, and not much below the freezing mark so roads and sidewalks mostly wet rather than snow covered.



Last Bus #1 down Mass Ave seen from our window.

Not much traffic, and our car is safely inside the basement garage. Mass transit shutting down at 3:30 and the governor has declared a state of emergency starting at noon and banned cars from the roads starting at 4:00.  There has been the usual run on the markets. I picked up a few things at the little market in Dover where everyone is less frantic. The Y closed early, so I took a walk around the neighborhood for exercise and took a few pictures.

Mass Ave in front of Harvard Yard

Harvard Square
 

Most of the shops and restaurants were closed, but guess who was still open? Baskin Robbins! Did I indulge? Sadly, no and I regret it now. Walking down the street eating an ice cream cone as a blizzard develops is an experience not everyone can claim but somehow at the time it didn't seem appealing.

I could have had an ice cream cone!
 

Below are a few more pictures from Dan's walk home through Harvard Yard just after dusk.

Memorial Church

Widener Library 

Friday Night

Since Friday night is usually our night to eat out, we had dinner at The Cellar, a terrific local place just a block and a half walk from our building and one of the few that was open as usual. I would recommend it any time, and especially during a blizzard......makes it easier to get a table on Friday night! Then we went home and watched the blizzard out of our window. Here are a few pictures and a short video clip from our window throughout the evening.



Snowing Hard

The snow is beginning to pile up.

A little later in the evening

 

The liquor store across the street had a steady stream of customers all evening

Getting harder to see out the window

Watch the wind howl below!

Saturday Morning

Still snowing, but not quite as hard. Mass Ave is completely empty of vehicles with the exception of the occasional snowplow or emergency vehicle. A little later it will be filled with pedestrians who find it easier to walk in the street than on the sidewalks, which have not all been cleared yet.

Early Saturday morning

Saturday Afternoon

We joined the rest of Cambridge and most of the rest of the east coast outdoors playing in the snow.

The drifts in front of our building are impressive!

The parking meter is nearly buried

And so is the Zip car

 

The bicycle option is pretty much shut down too



Its strange to see Mass Ave. in front of campus completely without traffic.
 

Entering campus, we find students engaged in some innovative forms of winter fun.

 

Sledding down the steps of Widener Library on dining hall trays.
 Below watch Marge take a turn. Dan is taking the video.

We get a passing student to take a few pictures of us together. We were having trouble getting pictures because our fingers are a bit frozen by now, and also Dan's phone keeps shutting down due to the cold. Our new friend George takes the pictures below on his phone, and emails them to Dan. We take a picture for him too.

 

 

In front of Memorial Church

 

Last stop is a visit to John Harvard, who appears to have been in a snowball fight.

 

 

Then we head home through the winter wonderland, grateful for the warm hats, gloves, and socks we got as Christmas gifts from family. We are putting them to good use!

 

 

 



 

Welcome to Apartment 6B

Welcome to Apartment 6B! Just a quick tour of our apartment for those friends and family who haven't seen it yet (Emily and Brett are actually the only ones who have). Below is the living/dining area before furniture. We "camped" here for a long weekend in December when we came for orienttion with just an airbed, 2 lamps, and a few kitchen essentials. As you can see, the basic decorating scheme is very neutral, off-white walls, parquet floors (another nice extra) and basic blinds throughout, so very versatile in terms of potential color schemes and style of furnishings.

 

We decided not to move big peices of furniture (one way U-Haul is prohibitively expensive), so I went to Cort Furniture just a few blocks away in Central Square and picked out a basic set of gently used furniture for the living room, dining room, and bedroom. I HIGHLY recommend Cort for anyone entering into a temporary living situation. Decent quality in a variety of styles at a reasonable price, and top notch service. You can either rent new or buy gently used, which is actually a bit less than rental if you need it for at least a full year. We added more lamps (more about lighting challenges later in another post), shelving (also more later), a small desk for me and a work table for Dan for the study. Also some dishes, silverware, etc., our clothing, books, and computers, and a few pictures and memorabilia from home. Here is the result, still a work in progress but pretty much the way it will be for the year. First the living room. The "view" pictures facing downtown were taken out these windows.


The Living Room

A comfortable sofa and love seat.

Next the dining area. As you can see in the picture of the empty apartment, the living/dining area is really all one largish room. The sliding glass door to the balcony opens off the dining area, The "view" pictures facing Harvard were taken from the balcony. Looking at the dining area from the living room, the door to the balcony is on your left, and the pass-through to the kitchenette is on the right.

Dining Area

 

Next we visit the kitchenette. I refuse to classify it as a full kitchen, even though it is billed as such in the apartment description, and seems to be fairly typical of kitchens in city apartments. More about this adjustment in another post. It is servicable for our needs for mostly just the two of us for a year, and to make a simple meal for a larger group (we can seat and serve up to 8) with some planning.

 

 

Kitchenette
 

Now down the hallway betwee the living and dining areas. The study is on the right, the bathroom on the left, and the bedroom straight ahead. In the study, the rug and Dan's work table (which is really a door on top of a folding table) come from our den/library at home. Marge's desk is from Cort, and the bookcase (just out of the picture on the right) is new from Walmart, and VERY flimsy compared to our built-ins at home. I confess to being a bit spoiled in this department.

Our Study; Dan's work table on the left, Marge's desk on the right
 

The bathroom is small but servicable, and to give our buildinng management and the previous tenant credit, very clean with everything in good repair, as is the whole apartment.




Bathroom - small but clean
 

Finally our bedroom, with furniture from Cort and a new rug from Home Depot but bedskirt and pillowshams from our guestroom at home, a down blanket from the cabin, and the large aerial photograph of our farm on the wall opposite our bed, plus a few family pictures on the dresser. This room also features a walk-in closet that Emily says is big enough to be a small child's bedroom. Not sure about that, but is is bigger than our bedroom closet at home.

Our bedroom, with a few touches from home.

As you leave the apartment, you will notice TWO hall closets and an alcove for a coat rack off the entrance hallway. Outerwear and some misc. storage in one, the vacuum, other cleaning supplies, trash can, and Marge's barn coat and boots in the other. Not quite a mudroom, but it is cold out so I am happy not to have to leave my barn coat and boots in the car or mix them with civilized clothing.

 

 

Good-bye for now. We hope you come to visit so you can see it in person.



The View

View from Living Room Window

One of the best features of our new apartment is the view. It is something that wasn't even on our list of features that we were looking for in an apartment, but it is a wonderful "extra", as is the balcony that we will be able to enjoy our view from in warmer weather. We are on the 9th floor (yes, Apartment 6B is on the 9th floor....there are 3 commercial floors beneath the apartment levels). This is high enough that we can see for miles, more than 180 degrees from various windows, and it also keeps the abundant street noise rather dim, which is a good thing since we are accustomed to NO noise, except birds and the occasional coyote. But it is not so high that it would be impossible to walk up in the event of a power outage (although I certainly would not look forward to the climb). The view is even more awesome at night, but I lack the photography skills to capture it. Wish Lisa Scolastico or Patty Bamber or Debi Peters or Robert Cunningham were here!

Toward Central Square and downtown Boston



Toward downtown Boston at sunset

Toward Harvard and the Charles River



Toward Harvard at sunset



Background

As many of you already know, we have just moved from Lebanon, OH to Cambridge, MA. Dan is serving as a Fellow in the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University for the 2013 year. Marge is on a Faculty Development Sabbitical from Xavier for the Spring 2013 semester so she is able to join Dan in Cambridge. Our son Marvin has taken over as President of Long-Stanton although Dan will remain CEO and plans to return to Long-Stanton with a redefined role in 2014. We have leased an apartment just a few blocks from the Harvard campus. It is on the 9th floor of a mid-rise building on Massachusetts Ave. Quite a change from our log cabin in the woods where we have lived for 30 years! Dan has a short walk to his office, and Marge's commute will be even shorter as she will be working out of the study/guestroom in our apartment (though she does need to drive to see her horse, who is stabled about 15 miles away). This adventure will be made even more exciting by the arrival of our first grandchild. Our daughter Emily and son-in-law Brett, who live only a few miles from our new apartment, are expecting a son in February.