Our son had called and invited us to Boston for the Valentine’s day weekend, and we thought that would be a great break. So Sarah checked Expedia on the Internet and found us a really good rate for Friday and Saturday in a swanky Marriott just outside of town. She even made the reservations for us. We weren’t sure we would be able to squeeze in a Volksmarch on the way up or back, but just in case we took along the Starting Point book that lists over 1,000 year-round Volksmarches.

In getting to Boston the drive is the thing as it is about 9 hours and has some reasonably congested roads. So we anxiously watched the weather forecasts while packed up our clothes, boots, maps, cameras, and other impediments, but the weather looked good at least thru Sunday. We left 6:10 a.m. Friday, which let us slide around Washington’s beltway before the rush hour traffic. We avoided Baltimore’s rush hour by taking the harbor tunnel and skirted Philadelphia’s rush hour by taking the New Jersey turnpike rather than I-95. We stayed in New Jersey to go North to the Tappan Zee bridge in order to avoid as much of New York city’s traffic as possible. Taking that bridge across the Hudson also gave us a straight shot across New York state and Connecticut to the Massachusetts Turnpike, with fairly decent traffic at midday. We arrived at our hotel on the outskirts about 3:00 p.m., which was early enough to miss Boston’s evening rush hour traffic. Whew!!

The hotel was beautiful. It had an indoor pool, spa, exercise room, and weight room. The hallways had unusually very thick carpets and padding. The furnishings were solid, good-looking, and comfortable—not a combination you get everyplace. The service personnel were so eager to help it was almost a shame to say, “No thank you” to them all. We drove around to the back and used the side entrance to carry our things up to the room.

We called Judson and Sarah to let them know we had arrived alive, and then took a good nap to recover from the drive. They drove out so that we could all have dinner together, and we settled on the Outback Steak House. We had to wait a bit, but we filled in the time shopping and I found a nice fresh box of Valentine’s Day candy hearts for an apertif. The wait was worth it as the food was cooked to perfection. I demolished a good serving of Mahi-Mahi (cooked Cajun style) and most of Monika’s filet mignon as well as the salad, baked potato, and usual appetizers. It’s a good thing I’m on a diet, or I would have started to feel guilty about eating all that food!

After dinner Judson drove us to Sarah’s place for a hot game of Trivial Pursuit. Monika and I are pretty good with the original version because we were paying attention to the mass media during the 60s and 70s, and have memorized the answers to all of the answers we don’t know. But Sarah and Judson had the newest edition which emphasized the 80s and 90s, so we were in a pickle. I mean, all we did during the 80s and 90s was raise 2 kids and pay off debts, so we didn’t get out much. For example, who is this Brad Pit character anyway and why was he named after a fruit core? But we weren’t skunked and gave them a pretty good fight which made us feel better. We chatted for a while and consolidated our plans for the next day, and then they drove us back to the Marriott.

After a great night’s sleep on a very firm, king-sized bed (with 4 pillows!), we decided to try out the pool and spa. So we donned out swimsuits and terrycloth robes and headed down to the lowest floor. I also wanted to use a treadmill to get some exercise before the spa, so I nipped into the exercise room that was right next door, doffed the robe, and leaped onto the Trotter treadmill. I was so engrossed in getting it running (2 simultaneous presses of different keys were required) and set to my speed that I really wasn’t aware of my surroundings for the first 5 minutes or so.

When I suddenly came to, here I was wearing just my Speedo swimsuit running on this treadmill in a room full of men and women all wearing one or more layers of baggy sweatpants, T shirts or sweatshirts, and so forth. I stood out like a nudist at a wedding party, and boy was I embarrassed. To make it worse, the treadmill faced the glass wall of the exercise room that opened into the pool area, so everybody who came to inspect the pool got an up-close-and-personal view of moi.

But I already had put on five minutes by that time, and didn’t want to waste the time already invested in the workout. So I just went right on trucking for 35 minutes, sweating, breathing heavily, and studiously avoiding eye contact with everyone. It was a good workout, but I was relieved at the end to grab my robe and escape to the pool area where I could relax in the spa and work out the kinks. In the meanwhile, Monika had her exercise by a half hour of swimming and joined me in the spa.

We drove down to Sarah’s place as that was on the way to our ultimate goal, the Science Museum, where Judson had reserved IMAX movie tickets for us. Judson drove all of us into town in Sarah’s car, and we parked at the Galleria. First, parking there was marginally cheaper than at the museum (my son, I’m so proud of him!!), and second it had a food court. We snagged some rolls and bagels at an Au Bon Pain (?) before walking over to the museum. I found some low-fat muffins, so I had three. Self-control when I find low-fat food is one of my problems.

We always enjoy the Science Museum, and on this trip we were seeing the new IMAX movie on Alaska for the first time. We sat right above the projector box, which is our favorite position, and watched an impressive close-up version of many breathtaking scenes from Alaska. As Judson pointed out, there was no coherent thematic development of the segments and segues were abrupt, so it really was more of “scenes from Alaska” than a story of Alaska or a travelogue. The scenes, however, I felt were very impressive. Many of the scenes we had never seen (like Denali) and even some of the things we had seen like whales and glaciers had so much more impact when projected on this huge screen right before your very eyes. The reactions among our little group varied, but it made me want to go back and see more of Alaska.

After watching the Archimedean ball-rolling contraption do its thing for a while, we zipped back thru the gift shop (which also has a really interesting variety of books, models, and general science stuff) and over to the Galleria to retrieve the car. Judson drove us out to Costco to look for a Nintendo 64, which he and Sarah had chosen as their most-desired house-warming gift. Knowing that my son has been hooked on video games since around second grade, I was worried that this was not a true bilateral house-warming gift, but Sarah reassured me that it was also her choice.

Fortunately Costco indeed had one, which even included a transparent purple-plastic second controller (maybe designed for Barney?) and a game called Zelda. After extended feasibility discussions, we went to Sarah’s place so that Judson could attempt installation on their TV system while Sarah prepared a nice meal for all of us. It worked, so Judson started playing Zelda while Monika and I watched.

The way the game was laid out was rather fascinating and the controllers are actually very well designed, but of course Judson has had years of practice. The game emphasized acquisition of skills and resources and at certain critical points analyzing the situation carefully to find clues to a solution of the next step. This was all essentially innocuous or even laudable as prosocial content. I could see being interested enough to play it except for one thing. At certain points in the story you had to enter houses and chat with the occupants to get information. But while there you were supposed to smash their furniture and take the valuable things left in the remains—the usual jewels, nuts, spare lives, whatever. This stuck me as an impolite thing for a guest to do, on a first visit at least. Maybe once you’ve formed a relationship, smashing each other’s furniture could be a negotiated part of the interaction, but it seemed so presumptuous on first acquaintance.

As a parent, if I had young and impressionable children playing this I would have some concern about their getting peculiar ideas about good manners. I mean, when visiting Aunt Matilda for the first time would they try smashing her Ming vases to get hidden jewels? There is potential for misunderstanding, I think, which is why I fought video games in our family for many years. I’ve since given up that battle, but fortunately Judson is old enough to no longer be susceptible to that type of problem. He got right into the game using his marvelously fast reactions and had made considerable progress by the time Sarah called us to dinner. The only mistake I saw was that he was a little over-enthusiastic using a new sword and whacked some of the information signs into pieces while practicing.

Dinner was wonderful. The chicken breasts were done perfectly on a bed of mushrooms which were delicately spiced. The potatoes were the thin-skinned kind which is just so easy to eat skin and all, and the veggies were nice steamed string beans. Everything was low-fat, even desert and that wasn’t easy because she had made chocolate-chip cookies for us! It turns out you can replace some of the butter by using honey to bind the cookie dough, which I didn’t know. Great meal: Oh joy, oh rapture!

After dinner we decided to try out a new board game, “Cranium” (?), which had the brain as its motto and was designed for 2-4 teams. The course around the board was quite simple, but the cards that you had to satisfy for each move were quite intriguing. The game cards were designed to test a variety of skills on the part of each team, some cards emphasizing simple knowledge of facts like Trivial Pursuit cards, but other cards emphasized spelling skills, acting skills, or even drawing and sculpting skills. Lots of variety. Some of the acting cards, for example, were rather like charades but others had you mimic voices or act things out with certain constraints on what you could and could not do. Monika got my Batman imitation as soon as I said “Holy…”, but she couldn’t guess “lips” for the mouth I sculpted out of clay to save her soul. Neither Judson nor Sarah had played it before, so Monika and I had a fighting chance. Again Monika and I tried to defeat the younger generation, and again we failed, but we came a lot closer this time than in that next-generation Trivial Pursuit.

We were all fading out after the game, so Monika and I drove back to the Marriott for the night. We could tell we were getting tired as we got off track twice on the way back and had to circle around and take alternate routes. Traffic was light as this was Saturday night, so making the detours did not present a problem. As we turned into the Marriott parking lot I saw a couple of very determined-looking walkers marching up the driveway to the hotel entrance, and I opined to Monika that they could be Volksmarchers. That set me to thinking about possible Volksmarches in the area and possibly leaving from our hotel, so I took the Starting Point book up to the room with us to check on them.

When we were in our room, Monika tuned in the U.S. figure-skating championships on TV while I checked for Volksmarches. There wasn’t one from our hotel, but there was one that was in a shopping mall one exit down from us, so I decided to investigate it while Monika watched the skating. I drove over to the Burlington Mall and found the shoe store that had the start box before they closed at 9:30 p.m. The walk was 5 circuits around both levels of Burlington Mall, which sounded kind of boring but maybe better than nothing. To play it safe, I went ahead and signed us up for the walk and took two start cards and the directions for the walk. Hotfooting it back to the hotel, I returned in time to see Michelle (?) Kwan win first place. Michael Weiss from our home city of Fairfax had won first place in the men’s division, but that had apparently been televised earlier. I finally fell asleep while Monika watched the other women competitors before she also turned in.

The next morning was Valentine’s Day, so after the usual festivities we opened our Valentines presents for each other. Monika got lots of candy and poetry, and I got lots of good books. We decided it was more fun laying in bed reading than walking 5 circuits around a mall, so we decided not to take the mall Volksmarch and instead just lazed around and read our new book for a couple of hours. Judson called around 10:00 a.m. and we