Allston, Quincy, Dorchester, Roslindale

I'd planned to assistant lead a mellow sea kayak trip in the Rowley River down thru Ipswich and the backside of Plum Island today. I was hoping for a calm reintroduction to my gear, which sat uncharacteristically unused a good part of the last year, a chance to spy on some willets and egrets and a good time with some new people. But there was a chance of lightening and no good bail out spots so we cancelled it. Instead, today glenn and I explored where we live.

We drove to Allston in the morning and had a Columbian breakfast. Then we found just how fast we can drive over to the beach in Qunicy. (10 minutes) Then we explored Squantum in Quincy and we walked along the beach along the road out to Long Island that you aren't allowed to drive down. It was warm and we spent a couple of hours there. Glenn taught me the finer points of skipping stones. I taught him about horseshoe crabs and razor clams. It was nice, and looked like we were somewhere a lot less populated, except for the cigarette I saw extinguished on the back of a beached skate, and a good deal of washed up debris. And as we left we passed a guy who had decided to drive an SUV onto the wet sand with a canoe on top and buried his car up to the wheel wells.

Then we took a look at what was a big blank spot there on glenn's road atlas. It's Marina Bay, a peninsula full of condos and a park and fish restaurants and docks and docks full of boats and a beach side club/restaurant called Water Works where band play and you can hang out and eat or dance on the sands and they have real palm trees. Someone once described going on a date here to me and I had no idea where they were talking about and assumed it was on the Cape.

Then we drove around the edges of the water the best we could toward the city. We sampled fudge from a local chocolate shop. We took a look at UMass Boston and the JFK Library and Carson Beach. We won ugly shirts and hats and drank free Snapple at a radio station promotion on the boardwalk.

We drove the length of Dot Ave. noting where all the great Vietnamese places are in the city these days. Then we drove over to Rozzie Village. It's so cute – it has some cute little boutiques and some restaurants with a brick courtyard full of tables. It is next to a commuter rail stop. It made me want to open a store, but places are still sitting empty there. Before leaving we of course sampled the local bakeries and sushi.

Then back home to pack a picnic for a little hike tomorrow. I'll be 37 tomorrow. Last year on my birthday I was passing the final "Scenarios Day" of my kayak trip leader training out in the Marblehead area. I landed and launched in little crevices in the rocks and surf, rescued variously "injured" people, lead people on various legs of the trip, stabilized a "hurt" paddler while being towed through surf to a rocky beach. It was hard playing along with pretend scenarios. You couldn't prevent anything from happening, only deal with it after it did. (Of course today I prevented a trip with planned routing and timing in order to be careful and replaced it with a haphazard journey through unfamiliar places! But 't'weren't the ocean.)