Daniel R.

With that digression aside I come back to today. Today's 90 degree day. Today's crazy idea that blading along the Esplanade would be a neat idea. I used to blade along the Esplanade a lot. I'd first head over to the Christian Science Center to warm up and practice my footwork. Crossovers, skating backwards, and stuff like that. I'd then head down Boylston street and catch one of the footbridges that brings you across Storrow Drive. Once on the Esplanade I'd cruise east or west depending on which way the wind was blowing that day. Always blade into the wind first. The one bad thing about the Esplanade is the wooden section that goes under the BU bridge. That is only two steps removed from cobblestone for horrible surfaces to blade on.

In general blading along the Esplanade is great. Nice paved surface. Plenty of nice views and people to look at. What wasn't wise was trying to blade in 90 degree weather. I was smart and packed my camel back full of water. I drank lots of water. I don't think I drank enough water. I parked at the Boston Common and started my blade at the Fiedler Footbridge. I stayed on the Boston side and went all the way out to the JFK Bridge. I then came back, crossed back over the footbridge and then bladed up Newbury street. Newbury street is fun to blade on. Because of all of the stop lights you can usually keep pace with the cars. The secret though is treat it like a slalom course where each street is a post. The reason to do this is that each street going up Newbury is an alternating one way street. You always want to be on the side away from any cars that are turning. So if the one way street is pointing left you want to be on the right side of the street.

After reaching the top of Newbury street I crossed over Mass Ave and had lunch at The Other Side Cafe. They serve brunch until about 2pm on both Saturday and Sunday which was just what I wanted. A small CAPS and some yogurt, granola, and fruit later I was done with brunch and heading back to my car. This was a straight shot down Boylston back to Boston Common. I then drove home, which is when this blade started to feel like a bad idea. A pounding headache and what seemed like an inability to drink enough cold liquids to feel like I was cooling off. Part of the problem is that while I have an A/C unit, my house has casement windows. Standard A/C units and casement windows don't mix.

While my housemate rigged up a way to mount his A/C unit, I've not done anything similar, so it's very warm in the house. I'm also lame in that I don't have a fan running. We have fans that I could use down in the basement, but I don't. I'm not 100% sure why, but well that's the state of affairs. The headache got worse. Then the feeling of having an upset stomach set in. I took some fast acting Tylenol and laid down for another nap. It was a very fitful nap. I think it lasted about 30 minutes. By that time my laundry was done. I grabbed that folded it, but even doing this simple activity didn't help take my mind of the fact that I felt horrible. I blame the heat.

Then a lame idea hit me. I needed to cool off. My car has A/C! My car has very good A/C. My car doesn't have much room in it so the good A/C makes it cool very fast. I didn't even bother changing out of my moccasins, I just hopped in my car. Now my first that was to just sit outside in my car, but that just felt odd to me. I like driving anyway so I decided to meander. Possibly not the brightest idea since my head was still hurting and my stomach was still upset but I started to drive anyway. I'm not really sure I could retrace the route I took. I'm not really sure where I went. I passed over some streets I recognized the names of but didn't really know the road I was on. After about 30 minutes I somehow managed to end back up somewhere that I knew. After some more less random driving around I finally came back home.

I should state that after driving around in the car for about an hour I was feeling much better. I'm sure some of that was the drugs, but I can only think that lame as it was, sitting in my car helped a lot. Of course now I'm back in the warm house but it is starting to cool off and will be about 10 degrees cooler tomorrow. I'm ignoring the fact that it might reach 100 this coming Wed.