You Change All the Lead Sleeping in My Head to Gold

I always forget the joy of public transportation. Boston is no exception to this rule. Being a large city, Boston has a fairly reliable bus and subway. The subway is aptly named, "The T." I love the buses. Now, while they typically run 5 minutes late, I have learned to find it in my heart to forgive them.

 "It's ok, Bus," I begin to say, "I understand that there is traffic and that it can be hard for you to reach your destination. Plus, being a man of my times, I understand the need to being fashionably late."

And somehow the bus understands me, and is never worried about being late. Taxis (while not public transportation) are also incredibly convenient. My main qualm with the taxis is when they do not think I live in Boston. You see, they would like to think that a couple of miles is equivalent to $20 or more. This is false. When coming home from a party my friends are hosting just shy over a mile away, the fare is roughly $8 ($10 if you include a tip). This is incredible. Not only do I have roughly a couple hundred designated drivers that will happily pull over for me (I am a white non-threatening male in Boston, what's not to love?) but they drop me off right at my door. All for $8 ($10 if you include a tip). And to top it all off, they run 24/7. Should I happen to be too inebriated to return home safely via public transportation, which stops running at 12:30 am, no less, a taxi will happily save me the trouble of walking home.

But what about the T? Didn't you mention that Boston has a subway system, aptly named, "The T?" 

I pity the fool that believes I am a subway.

Bearing no relation to Mr. T, the T is alright. It works roughly like the Metro in D.C. or the subway in New York. It's color coded lines have helped me traverse the city that is Boston. The red line has brought me to Harvard and South Station, The blue line to the beach and airport, the orange line to Chinatown. And the green line, the green line has brought me to hell. If there could be a rhyme or reason to the green line, the rhyme would go like this:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I'm not good at poetry

Show me your tits

And the reason would be this:

Because I said so.

If we were to modernize the Greek stories of old, the ferry that brings one over the river Styx would be replaced with the green line. The green line is split into 4 separate lines named B,C,D, and E. E is never important. D is hardly important. C? C isn't important either. And what the hell ever happened to A? The B line is the one with which I travel and it is an abomination. This is an actual customer review from Yelp!:

"Dare I say it? I like the Green Line (specifically, the supposed spawn of the devil, B line). Sure, there are a lot of stops, and riding it through the 219810928412409 stops near BU is the equivalent of watching 6 layers of paint dry, but it guarantees that I can always find a stop super close to my destination." - Karina L.

Now I'm not going to say that it hasn't saved my ass from having to run to class, or walk in blizzards. The chances of catching one in the morning are in the students favor, but you'll have to stop every 5 feet for the next stop. But what if you want to go to a party late at night? This is where the green line falls short of its public transportation brethren. For every 3 trains coming inbound (towards Boston, away from parties) there is one train going outbound (towards Hades or BC. Semantics). But this one train going outbound can be either a B,C,D or E line. So not only do you have to wait and count the inbound trains, but your chances of landing a B line are theoretically 1:4. In reality the odds are some where near 1:239529583. There are shirts for the way I feel.

Everyone hates the green line, sweetie

To sum everything up, it's not difficult to travel around Boston. Just don't use the outbound green line and you should be fine. Oh, did I mention that you can track the T online so that you can figure out if you are just going to miss it or not? Did I also mention that the green line is the ONLY line that doesn't have a live feed? This lovely gem, http://howfuckedisthet.com/, keeps travelers up to date with information regarding the location of the T.

Just use discretion when travelling in Boston.

Michael Phelps is Half a Bear

A grizzly bear eats roughly 23,000 calories a day (or so I am told) and Michael Phelps consumes roughly 12,000 calories a day. This has nothing to do with my my post, but it is something I learned in my History of Western Ethics class.
I have friends in high places. Although the 5th floor does not offer the vantage points of a 9th window, this view of the Charles and downtown Boston is nearly impossible to beat. The weather is starting to finally cool off. One of the many downsides to the South was the heat. I have never really been able to stand the heat. At least in cooler weather, a man can always change into something warmer. You are very limited by how much you can take off, however, should it get too hot. The low tonight is supposed to be 37, and for the first week of October, I'm a bit appalled. Where the hell did fall go? The leaves have barely started to change!
It's nice though. Other parts of New England have already started the gradual change into fall. Just the other week I was in Northampton for a Fleet Foxes concert and it was gorgeous. The leaves on the mountain sides and surrounding lakes were beautiful. Fall might be the only thing I miss about the South. Honestly, October in the South is just pretty hard to beat.
The year is going by pretty quickly. Tomorrow I have my first Business midterm. The midterm is supposed to be difficult. My TA (teacher's assistant) said that last year his raw score was a 74, but the curved score was a 93. It does worry me a bit, I'm not sure I'll ever consider myself ready. Other than that, I'm doing fairly well in my other classes. Nothing is too difficult yet, but it has only been the first month.