This trip gave me an opportunity to fly standby (thankyouverymuch, Mandi) on AirTran, now owned by SW. AirTran had better connections and more seats available than SW. I flew Vegas to Milwaukee to Boston. I gotta say AirTran treats their standby (nonrevenue) customers quite well. On the first flight I got assigned to a Business class window seat; on the second they put me in the emergency exit row (more legroom). Been so long since I had an assigned seat I wasn't quite sure what to do. You're telling me where to sit? There's a seat that has my name? What next? Baggage fees?
In Cambridge I stayed in the Irving House B and B (Blogger doesn't do ampersands, for some reason), the cheapest lodging listed by the conference. Here 'tis.
My room is behind that narrow window just over the door.
Bathroom down the hall. Sent this picture to Susie. She asked, Are you in a prison? But, shoot. Good breakfast in the morning, cookies and lemonade in the afternoon. A bargain at $150/night.
Here are some campus pictures. It was cloudy Tuesday, rainy Wednesday, and sunny on Thursday when a Harvard undergrad took a large group of us on a tour.
This is Widener Hall, the main library. The donor who built this, if I recall right, dedicated it to her son who died on the Titanic. The story is that one requirement was that all Harvard students had to take swimming lessons. This is the country's largest academic library. I wanted to visit, but a sign said Harvard ID required.
Here's Harvard Yard. This quad is surrounded by freshman dorms. There are about 1600 freshmen and they are all required to stay in these dorms.
And, here's a dorm.
This is the administration building, the oldest building on campus and the second oldest campus building in continuous use in the US. The oldest is at William and Mary. (Harvard was founded in 1636.)
Here's Memorial Hall, built to honor the Harvard students from the Union who died in the Civil War.
Here's an interior shot. Some kind of campus fair was in progress. They weren't serving snacks.
This is a Bill Gates donation to Harvard, a computer science building.
The campus spreads in all directions from Harvard Yard. Harvard has about 15,000 graduate students, plus the 6000 plus undergrads, enrolled here.
And, lastly, a couple of neighborhood pictures.
Charming.
Flight home was a little more complicated. I listed myself on AirTran, Boston-Atlanta-Vegas, as all the SW flights were pretty full. In Boston I had to check my suitcase and I checked it through to Las Vegas. In Atlanta, just walking through the terminal I decided to check and see if SW had a flight to Vegas. They did, leaving two hours before the AirTran connecting flight, so I switched to SW and got to Vegas in time for dinner at Heidi and Joey's (and Julian and Landon's). My original AirTran flight was two hours delayed, so about midnight we went to the airport and got my bag. Wasn't that interesting.
On Saturday we had some quality time with the twins. Here they are fussing in sync. This was not posed. Note. Landon is always placed on the Left, just to keep them straight, for a while.
Joey cooked a great pre-Father's Day dinner and packed up the leftovers for our trip home. Here's a family shot. What a future to consider!
Do you think horned-rim glasses are in the future for the boys?
We left Las Vegas Sunday morning, got to Gallup for the night, home by Monday noon. Had one problem. At one stop in AZ, I noticed oil spots on the Cruiser. Looked at Tuzigoot and saw oil running down the back, outside of the engine compartment. I found that the cap to the oil fill spout was loose, it wouldn't latch on to the spout. Seems a strange thing to fail, maybe heat-caused. We found, fortunately, that we hadn't lost much oil - dip stick still at Full. At any rate, I duct-taped the cap on, stopped frequently to check it, and made it home OK.
We'll be back.
Love to All,
Susie and Rob
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