Boston Babies

Steve in the White Mountains






We are now in Boston with the babies. When I saw Daniel last, he was struggling to breathe and put on weight. Now he is huge and can look around, smile and chortle.

As soon as I saw the sun start to rise, I took off running while we were in Longueuil, on the south side of the river facing Montreal. After about 7 minutes of crossing over expressway entrances and busy streets, I was on the rail to trail that gives right aways to the bikes (and runners). It was cold. A few puddles were frozen solid. It was nice to run after taking a few days off. The downtown has cute stone houses that are probably quite old. We stopped at a patisserie for breakfast. In Montreal, they serve cafe au lait in huge bowls (bols).We had really good amande croissants. I brought back some for the Boston folks.We went to visit the ladies one more time before leaving. Jeannette is 90 but her skin has very few wrinkles as she always avoided the sun. Her main bane is congestive heart failure which has swollen her ankles quite a bit. When she was my age, she had ovarian cancer but survived despite the lack of treatment in those days other than surgery.

We went down to Boston mainly through New Hampshire. There were several ways to go: with Naomi I went via Burlington and Waterbury so she could see the Ben and Jerry factory but it involved a no expressway route through numerous small Quebec villages and was slow.This time we went through the White Mountains after stopping at a Thai restauratnt in the bit of Vermont we were in. We had camped there years ago in the Franconia Notch State Park. I wanted to walk through the Flume again-a narrow canyon that you walk on a boardwalk with water rushing below your feet but they took out the boardwalk for the seeason. The Old Man in the Mountain's nose had fallen off so it is no longer recognizible. It still is on their license plates along with their bizarre "live Free or Die' slogan. There was a sign on the border exhorting us to 'drive the New Hampshire way, with courtesy'. In rural Quebec there were numerous moose crossing signs (none seen) and signs saying we should have snow tires on by December 15 to be safe.

We scheduled our arrival at rush hour. Good planning (not!)but we only suffered halfway through the tunnel to her exit-about 4 miles of stop and go.

It is good to be with the precious sweeties again.