Boston, a Bridge-Tunnel, Ballin', and a Bonus

This is the problem with waiting a month to post about two trips — by the time you’re actually writing, you feel like you should have something profound to say, and I really don’t. Ah well.

As for Boston:

• As I did in Paris last spring, we stayed with a friend of mine living in the suburbs (in this case, Brookline) and caught rail service into town. It’s a neat way to see a different part of the city than you’d get sticking to the usual tourist track… including oddities such as a kosher Chinese restaurant (no joke).
• Boston is one part of the country that has resisted the normalizing effect of national media on its distinctive local accent — which made it disappointing to jump on a Green Line train and find that the station announcements had been recorded and automated by someone with a neutral mid-American accent. No more “Ahhh-lington” and “Paaahhk” stops anymore — they found someone who has Rs and isn’t afraid to use them.
• One thing the city does really well is to blend franchised or chain businesses into the local architecture. You’ll find a Starbucks every three blocks and a Dunkin Donuts every two, but odds are you’ll have to look inside the window to catch the brand name, because the facade looks the same as that of the law firm on one side and the condo on the other.
• But one thing they don’t do well is the massive public works/civil engineering project. The Big Dig, a project to replace I-93’s above-ground section through downtown Boston with a tunnel, has been going on for nearly twenty years, with grotesque cost overruns, major contractor screwups, political chicanery by the environmental lobby, and just about every brand of fun you could think of. They claim it’s almost over, with merely surface street reconstruction to be completed by mid-2005, but don’t bet on it.

As for civil engineering projects that did go through well, I crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel twice two weeks ago, going to and from Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Four man-made islands, two separate one-mile tunnels, two high bridges and 12 miles of low-level trestle form this connector across the Chesapeake Bay’s southern inlet to the Atlantic Ocean — quite a feat.

The curious thing is that it doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the insularity of the Eastern Shore. It’s better-connected now than it was in the days of waiting on a ferry to Virginia Beach, but the high tolls ($12 each way, or $17 for a 24-hour round trip) have (quite intentionally) kept the southern end of Northampton County from participating in the sprawl of South Hampton Roads. What it has done is to create a faster route between the Northeast and the vacation areas of Virginia Beach and the North Carolina Outer Banks — and $12 each way isn’t that much if you’re used to the New Jersey Turnpike or New York’s various bridge crossings. End result: the Shore still isn’t psychologically tied to the rest of its own state, but there are a lot more “furriners” (including those of us from mainland Virginia) driving at high speed up and down U.S. 13 on our way to and from somewhere else.

And if any of you abandoned us post-Insight Bowl and are just now finding your way back to BTN, we are indeed about to shift from our off-season hobbies of talking politics and travel back to the really important thing in life:

FOOTBALL!

Kickoff vs. USC is in 16 days, and BTN will be there with a preview and post-game wrap-up. To get the lowdown on VT’s ‘04 team, TechSideline.com is the place to be.

And your bonus: Toronto trip pictures!