Day 14 – July 5th, 2019 – Boston, Massachusetts to Brooklyn, New York?: ~250 miles
BRAAAAAAAINS.
Missed Days 12 and 13? – July 3rd and 4th, 2019 – Boston, Massachusetts to Boston, Massachusetts: 0 miles
Before Vy and I bid adieu to my sister, the three of us I walked to a local sandwich shop called Mike & Patty’s for breakfast. En route we were treated to an unexpected sight – a gorgeous street-parked Bugeye.
I let the girls go ahead so I could stare at this for a while. What a beauty!
We got back on the road, but our first stop was close by. Welcome to “The Tiny Museum,” which claims to be the world’s smallest of its kind. Unfortunately, it had been tagged and was temporarily closed. If you look closely, you’ll see that it actually says “Μμseum”, as in the greek letter Mu for micro.
In Newton, Massachusetts you can find “Echo Bridge,” named because the arch does an impressive job of repeating sounds. There are platforms built underneath the bridge just for people to goof around on, and Vy took advantage of that. It’s said that this bridge will repeat the human voice up to 15 times, while something loud and abrupt like a clap can be heard over and over again up to 25 times.
In Lincoln, there’s a circle of plastic rocking horses that has become known as “Ponyhenge” (you can even search for that on Google Maps, if you wish). It apparently started in 2010, but very few people know what the official story is. The formation changes over time – sometimes it’s rows, sometimes it’s scattershot. When we visited, it was a well-formed circle.
You can’t visit a place like this and not try it out, right?
Vy saw some baby goats on the other side of the road, and she wanted to say hi. As we were crossing the street, a local pulled up in her SUV and her adorable dog hopped out to say hi. His owner said that if you follow this walking trail it takes you to a lake that her dog loves jumping in to. Seems like a good day to me..
We let the dog continue on, because Vy just wanted to hang with these guys.
There’s plenty to explore in Rhode Island, but Vy and I wouldn’t have enough time to do it justice on this trip.
Hasbro installed 37 six-foot-tall Mr. Potato Heads all across their home state in 2000. Few remain today, but they’re all individualized based on the local community. This is the original, right outside of Hasbro’s headquarters. Baby Jack had to get a photo with the local icon, but the security guard wasn’t very happy with us loitering around for a photo. This old site seems to have pictures of all of them (you’ll have to click through multiple pages), but the images are small.
A Yamaha SR400 – basically the only modern street bike with a kick starter at the time. It was last sold in the US in 2017, so now the kickstart preservation medal goes to the Honda Trail 125.
This is “Blueno”, officially titled as “Untitled (Lamp/Bear)”, a statue on the campus of Brown University. It was installed in June 2016 and was removed for preservation just a couple of months ago. Before it was removed, Brown’s President gave it an honorary bachelor’s degree in a video with a very weird ending. My favorite college campus art on this trip is still “Walking to the Sky” at Carnegie Mellon from Day 5, but this earns an amusing second place.
I’m a sucker for drawbridges, and there’s an interesting one crossing the Seekonk River in Providence, Rhode Island. This is the Crook Point Bascule Bridge – it opened in 1908 and was closed (by being left open) in 1976. Locals call it the “Stuck-Up Bridge.”
Access to the bridge is blocked off by a fence, and I would never trespass through the gate that’s been cut open to get a better view…
Ahem. I hope they end up doing something cool with this. I love the engineering behind bridges, especially those that move in one way or another.
Vy wanted to check out the Providence Athenaeum, an independent library that’s open to the public. She explored the collection while I tried to learn about the history. One random claim to fame is that Sarah Whitman (fiancee of Edgar Allen Poe) called off the relationship in this building after learning that he broke his promise to remain sober during their engagement.
Last new state of the trip!
Yale University is home to the Cushing Brain Lab. You don’t have to be a student to check it out, just go to the School of Medicine and temporarily trade your ID for an entry pass. It’s worth checking out, because it’s a collection of the brains studied by neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing in the early 1900s.
The urban legend behind the collection is fun – Cushing preserved over 500 brains that he had studied, but they were mostly forgotten over the years. Students who heard about the brains would break into the basement of the medical school dorm to get a peek until a couple of students took it upon themselves to find a proper area where this collection could be appreciated. Eventually space was found in the basement of the Medical School’s library.
The collection opened to the public in June of 2010, and it includes 2,200 case studies, 15,000 photographic negatives, 400+ brains in one-gallon jars, and a whole bunch of memorabilia about Cushing.
Obviously, after you stare at brains for an hour, you’re going to want to eat a hamburger. Louis’ Lunch in New Haven claims to be the first restaurant to ever serve a “hamburger sandwich”, supposedly created upon request by a customer who was in a rush for a to-go lunch in 1900.
The meat is cooked in the original vertical gas broilers from 1898!
This is what they look like when open.
Several other restaurants claim to have originated the hamburger, though the Library of Congress officially recognized Louis’ Lunch as the creator in 2000.As you can imagine, it’s a kitschy place.
I was a fan. #20 is probably a topic you want to avoid discussing with anyone, not just J.Y.
Vy and I posted up in a corner booth.
The meat (ground steak made from a blend of five cuts of beef) was good, but I wasn’t a fan of the use of toast.
And with that, we hopped back on the road for a 2+ hour slog to New York. We got back to Vy’s friend’s place (where we stayed the first night of the trip), and the pets were excited to see her again.
The cat likes Vy’s helmet design, too.
Tomorrow we’ll close out the trip and return the bike to BMW…but I’ll get some more motorcycling goodness in before that happens!
On to Day 15!