Hello rain....

this was taken on saturday, when the weather was still pleasant.... all bridges in amsterdam (or any other dutch city) have bikes on them (at least the bridges that cannot open to let boats through, haha), as it is the perfect place to lock your bike to. one rule i at least never try to break is to always attach my bike to something that cannot move... if not, thieves can just pick up your bike, with as many locks as you like, put it in their van and use all tools they have at home to cut the locks... the other day i heard a couple explaining to a cop that "they were locked together... and now gone". i presume they were talking about their bikes. i had just parked mine and thus made my trip to the store as short as possible, as i dont want to have my new bike stolen as well... :( even with additional locks i am not comfortable parking my bike at the moment. i guess that feeling will take a while before going away....

anyways... all bridges in amsterdam are decorated with flowers, its so pretty! in the city center, as above, they are even on this metal hanging poles. i really like it! weatherwise today was awful. its cold suddenly, and it has been raining the entire day. hardly a moment it was dry, and at times the rain was coming down with such force i wonder whether those flowers will survive... on top of that the wind is howling around... byebye summer, i guess....

Neglected bridge

this is the longfellow bridge, connecting boston and cambridge. its for cars, the subway, bikes, or you can walk.because of the shape of the 4 towers in the center, as you can see here, the bridge is also called the salt and pepper bridge. hmmm. well, would never have thought of that, but ever since i read it, i guess i can sort of see it... unfortunately you cannot climb those towers. there was a time you could walk around them, they sort of stick out of the bridge, but as long as we live here the entrance has been blocked by fences.

this year they will start some major repairs on the bridge. the subway will not run during several weekends and the lanes for other traffic will be significantly reduced as well. according to wikipedia, the bridge has been neglected for a long time. the bridge has been there since 1906, but some  major repairs were only done way back in 1959 and lesser ones in 2002. they expect to spend almost 270 million dollars for repair. had repair been done regularly, it would have been "only" 81 million.... 

$12 bridge!

it cost us 12 dollars to cross this bridge. and i guess we paid that amount 2 or 3 times when we were in new york 2 weeks ago. grrr... we usually go by bus, but this time we went by car, and i think all in all we spent well over 50 or even 60 dollars, just on toll! 8 dollars for a bridge here, 12 for another, then 6.50 for a tunnel.... it just didnt stop!! by the time we left new york i had no money in my wallet anymore... :( (and in NY i didnt buy anything!)

at least this was a nice bridge. i think it went from staten island to brooklyn. i dont even remember the name, how bad! i do remember there were several signs warning you that it was absolutely forbidden to photograph/videotape the bridge, and that this would be "stricly enforced"..... so i was a little afraid taking so many pictures... luckily nothing happened, they only took our money...

Charles MGH

charles/mgh, thats the name of the subway stop where i took this picture. thinking of it, it might well be the only stop that looks kind of modern in entire boston. at least of the ones that i have seen. actually, its only the glass cage that leads you to the platform thats modern... 

charles is for the charles river that you will cross when taking the outbound train to cambridge. mgh is for massachusetts general hospital that you will see on your left when taking the inbound train into boston. ofcourse, there is a wikipedia page for this red line stop. however much i love wikipedia, i never felt the urge to contribute to it myself, and often wonder how/when and whom decides its time to make an entry about certain things. but... it did tell me that the bridge that you are on when crossing the charles with the red line is named the longfellow bridge. i kind of knew that, reading it. what i didnt know, is that this bridge is also called the salt-and-pepper-(shaker)-bridge (shaker is apparently optional). this is because of the shape of the central towers on the bridge. hmm... we crossed this bridge several times by foot, yet i never thought, hey, those look like salt and pepper shakers! so... one day i have to go back and picture them, so that you can tell me what you think... :)

Speeding elephants

the circus arrived in boston. and therefore their elephants, 6 of them, walked from cambridge to the TD garden, where the circus will be. i had read this on universal hub, so me and tim where present to witness it all, in front of the museum of science. we were wondering how it would all happen, as traffic was just buzzing by. but at some point, big policemen on motors stopped all the traffic, and there they were, 6 elephants, one little one, holding each other's tails while they were walking by. ehmm... actually they were racing! they went so fast!!! universal hub did not warn me about that! i was so surprised by their speed, but then realized i never "walked with elephants" (another great title for a movie?!), so what do i know?

before i knew they had passed us, and this first shot was actually the best. we had to run but never really caught up with them (i cannot take pictures and jog at the same time!). well, that was funny.... although i had expected an entire parade... it was just those speeding elephants and their guards, and many, many fat policemen on motors...

i realize i once wrote about elephants and testing bridges, you can read that here. well, this bridge surely passed the test!

here some more pics that i took.

Boston bridge

flags are half-staff because of 9/11, now 10 years ago. above one on the bridge leading you into boston. i actually had never seen a flag there before.

Brooklyn bridge

yup, we had quite some rain while in new york. just like in boston; the weather has not been that good yet, this year... :( here we were at the brooklyn bridge, and taking pictures with a big fancy camera and an umbrella turned out to be challenging! just like the couple above.... :)

this bridge is just so beautiful! we walked to brooklyn, which is named after the dutch city breukelen (just pronounced american). just read on wikipedia that brooklyn has the following motto "Een Draght Mackt Maght", which is old dutch for "in unity there is strength". haha, whats also interesting is how the name breukelen evolved into brooklyn: from Breuckelen, to Brockland, to Brocklin, to Brookline, to Brookland and eventually, to Brooklyn....

and thats it for today! good night! :)

Harvard bridge

on sunday we went to the "MIT lightshow". if i remember correctly, it was because MIT exists 150 years, and they celebrated it with some inventive MIT inventions.. :)

for example, they had put lights all along the harvard bridge above, colors were changing every now and then, and sometimes the lights would follow the movement of people walking on the bridge, as they had placed sensors everywhere as well!

it was cool to see and for me impossible to photograph. above a picture tim took...

more info and photos here!

Walking home..

or rather.. walking from charlestown to north station. i normally take the shuttle, but tonight i was shown the scenic route... so pretty!! i was disappointed that the times i walked instead of taking the shuttle (perhaps 3 times, haha) i always took the route alongside the road; not much fun. too bad  i didnt have my fancy camera just now. but isnt it pretty? the zakim bridge by night, and behind it the TD garden. and as a bonus their reflection... :)

How about.....

... just a picture of the ....bridge that leads you into boston? i might have written this already; but every time we drive on this bridge, i am enjoying its beauty and the view  on boston you get and almost each time im trying to take pictures... here i actually only just now noticed the shadows of the cables.... so i cropped the pic a little to let that stand out more.. on the right you see the TD garden, where lady gaga had her concert. on the sides you still see some snow; but that must be gone by now; the past two days it was so mild almost all snow has melted away.

ooh, i was supposed to goto sleep now, but i just read something funny; in 2002, 14 elephants crossed this bridge to symbolically demonstrate its sturdiness (i.e., the bridge can support 112,000 pounds). in the 1800s, such "elephant-tests" were used to show that the engineering of newly built bridges was decent, since that was not always the case in that time. for example, the NY brooklyn bridge was tested in this manner in 1884. why elephants? "According to folklore, elephants are used for such shows of strength because they are widely believed to have uncanny instincts and will not cross unsafe structures". well, thank you, once again, wikipedia, for stuffing my brain.. :) and good night!

Road repair

many roads around boston are pretty bad, and winter is making them even worse. snow, salt, melting freezing, melting and freezing again... it creates small, large and enormous potholes. we bumped into a few already... by far the worst road is the road to my work, of course... 

tim sometimes picks me up in the evening (when once again i missed the shuttle; after 7.15 they go only twice per hour and at some point im just sooo tired and dont want to take the shuttle/wait for orange line/walk the 5 mins home; the laziness!!). in weekends we always go by car , when the shuttle is even more infrequent; this was last saturday when they were repairing the road. some 2 hours later, when we drove by again, they were all gone and that part of the road looked like new again.

in the background, to the right, you see downtown boston and a part of the zakim-blabla-bla-memorial bridge (cant remember the exact name; but i wrote it down in this post), to the left you see  a bit of charlestown's bunker hill monument (that we still have to climb....).

Another Tobin...

here yet again a little more of the tobin bridge than last time.... i would say this is most of the bridge, although you dont see the part that crosses charlestown. ah, maybe for yet another time... but this is the most interesting part!

sooo cold today!! else, nothing new.....

ah, that gives me some space to thank you all for visiting here! and to all of those who comment: another thank you! i really enjoy reading them..! but not always do i have time to write back again. and then i forget  and then days later i think.. ah, yes... 

now its time for dinner... tim is cooking, have to go!!

Tobin again!

above yet another view of the tobin bridge. as mentioned, i see this bridge every day, since it is right next to the lab where i work (unfortunately i cannot see it from my window). to me this scene is very american; desolate, the electricity (or whatever) wires above ground, the huge bridge... to the left you see the toll booth; just before that i took this picture. i think it is amazing that while on top of the bridge you are about to drive into the center of boston, while down below you are in deserted charlestown almost at the end of the world... :) (i was recently at the main campus and a nurse said to me; charlestown, ugh, nothing is there.. the perfect place for you scientists...)

as you can see, the snow is getting ugly. it has melted a bit, then it froze again, so its now a dirty, icy mass. although this part of the road looks rather good, many roads are even worse than they were before the snow. small and larger potholes are popping up everywhere; a result of the freezing and thawing, when water gets into small cracks in the road. if you dont have a big american car your rides becomes rather bumpy... (or... even more bumpy....) 

i still didnt manage to photograph the entire bridge... maybe next time... :)

in the meantime, i spent the entire behind my laptop.. trying to write a grant... yugghhh...

Going airborne

going airborne... sounds funny to me... but not if it is the car you are in..... my blog comes up if you search in google for "car crash tobin bridge mlk day", but i never wrote about a car crash! in fact, i wasnt aware of one, but i did notice visitors landing here because they searched for that. surely that made me curious too... after searching a bit (and ignoring the first hit, haha), this is what i found: during the night before mlk day, a car went airborne off a Chelsea highway (ie the tobin bridge), crashing onto a street 34 feet (!!) below. according to the police the Cadillac CTS (sounds fancy) failed to negotiate a curve, went airborne over a barrier and landed below on 6th street in chelsea.... one passenger was dead (22 yrs old), but the driver (24) and another passenger were not hurt, somehow.. the driver has been arrested for driving with a suspended license, and an initial investigation indicates speed and alcohol were factors in the crash. yuk.....

according to a commentor on the article, the driver had to be going very fast to manage going through (or over) the side of the road, landing 34 feet (~10 metres) below..., while above you can clearly see you are alowed to drive only 15 miles per hour... (or does that only count for the upper level? this driver was coming from boston, thus on the lower level, and perhaps there you can go faster, as there is no toll booth)

Tobin bridge (2)

yesterday we drove around boston a bit. we wanted to go to some forest/park/whatever to walk, but it  was so cold and tim didnt wear suitable snow shoes and we were lazy and and and... (we ended up going to 2 malls and bought heavily discounted clothes; it was so cheap, we couldnt let that pass! :))

but we went on the tobin bridge upper level!! this is from chelsea into boston, whereas its lower level gets you out of boston. we had done the lower level before, but not the upper level. it was beautiful! yes, it costs you 3 dollars to drive on the bridge (1 dollar per km? since the bridge is 3 kms long), but for that you have a beautiful view on boston, and, i decided now; this bridge is pretty! here you see the toll booth, on the middle of the bridge, and behind that you see the hancock tower on the left, and prudential center on the right. now im still wondering whether its also 3 dollars when driving in the other direction; i think not, but im not sure... in new york its like that; leaving new york is free, but driving into new york through either the washington bridge or the holland tunnel costs you 8 (!!) dollars... (we know that because when coming, we went to new jersey on the washington bridge; that was free. we slept close to the holland tunnel, and saw that it would cost 8 dollars! we then drove especially to the washington bridge (oh, dutch)... but, eehh, going into new york is always 8 dollars! (also the holland tunnel is free the other direction))

Tobin bridge

above you see in the back a part of the tobin bridge. i still do not know whether i find this bridge pretty or ugly, but surely i find it fascinating. it leads you from chelsea (where the photo was taken) to charlestown. this is only a small part of the bridge, it is 3 km long! and has 2 levels. we drove a few times on the lower level, and i find it a little scary, it all seems so narrow and low. on top of that, there is always a digital traffic sign saying "please drive safely", indicating to me that on this bridge you really have to be careful, thereby making me feel even less safe.. it crosses the mystic river, and therefore this bridge is sometimes called the mystic river bridge (but i never heard that). it was built between 1948 and 1950. so that explains why it looks sooo old! it is old! i have tried now already from many angles and at several locations to take a nice picture.. but never managed. luckily there is the internet; here is a beautiful picture of it! ah, and the internet also tells me that Tobin was a former mayor of boston and Mass governor. a less nice detail; someone once jumped from that bridge to commit suicide. and somewhere else i see someone calling it the "green river killer"... ah, maybe! depends at what picture you look!

Boston Nantasket

when driving from boston to nantasket (or hull, still dont get where one starts and the other ends..) you cross this bridge! it is in quincy and you will pass underneath it when taking the ferry from boston to quincy....
its pretty, i think.. (pic was taken through the front window of the car, while driving.. well, while being driven as i dont have a driver's license.... )

Cant decide

how to turn this picture....! but it was the only way to get the text and the bridge. i posted a pic of it earlier, and everytime we are driving on it is a pleasure, so pretty! after that you enter a tunnel going into boston (or goto somerville and so on, the other direction), the thomas o'neill tunnel, part of the Big Dig, about which i will write some other time! (im every now and then reading in a book about the Big Dig, but you have to put it away after a few pages, as it rambles on and on about how great the tunnel constructions are for the highways leading into boston. each page has something about the "best this, the greatest that, the most enormousblablabla...". but thats for another time.
and this is a very recent pic, i took it this morning!!

Boston city

this is Boston. doesnt it look nice?
what more can i say?
:)