t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i invited cristina to come see the red bull flugtag with me on the charles. we were in no hurry to leave because the event lasted until 3pm, so we left close to noontime, when the flugtag had already begun around 11am. i had a feeling it was going to be crowded, and even in the website it warned people to arrive early. my plan was to see the event from the opposite side of the charles river, riding past by MIT along the way (which cristina hadn't seen yet). i wasn't the only one with that idea, and as we got closer to the longfellow bridge, we began to encounter ever increasing amount of people.

from across the river, the flugtag was actually hard to see. the only way i could see it was using the 30x zoom of my lumix digital camera. it wasn't all that exciting anyway, and after i saw one vehicle launch and then drop into the river, i figured i'd pretty much seen it all already. we tried making it into boston across the longfellow, by the further we got, the more crowded it became, until it was impossible to push the bikes through. in the end i threw the bikes over the barricade so we were back out onto the roadside bike lane, where there was no pedestrian traffic.

from there we made our way to chinatown, another place cristina hadn't visited yet. we parked our bikes outside the chinatown gate.

we wandered around a bit before getting lunch at pho hoa. afterwards we went to c-mart on lincoln street where i got some longans on sale ($10/4lbs.) and some guava.

the easier way to return was by charles river bike path over the hatch shell bridge, but that was were the flugtag was still ongoing, and i didn't want to run into the sea of people again. instead we returned via longfellow, on the other side, where was only a pedestrian walkway, but far fewer people. we made it over by going over beacon hill, which was quite the uphill slog, but cristina managed to keep up.

once we crossed longfellow, i decided to take a detour to the galleria mall, just to show cristina where it was. i had no intention of visiting, but since we were already there, cristina decided she'd stay and do some shopping, while i returned home instead. i helped bring back her leftover vietnamese vermicelli. the route back was fine until i hit the stretch of beacon street closest to my house, now reduced to a dusty dirt road. i ended up riding on the sidewalk, fortunately there weren't many people.

i took the motorcycle to belmont. earlier my parents had gone to the burlington market basket and brought home a bag of fried chicken. the longans turned out to be a good purchase, as my mother kept saying how sweet and delicious they were.

i asked my father if mary ever showed up yesterday. he said eventually she did. i asked him if he knew where she was living. he said in some harvard housing. he told me that he told her to get psychological help when she returned to shanghai. not sure what her response was.

later when i went home, cristina had already left. i didn't see her the rest of the night when i finally went to bed.