i woke up at 7:30am so i wouldn't run into li as he was getting up for his own trip. i tried going to the boston costume dash last year but missed it because i accidentally ignored my alarm clock. i would not make that mistake again this year. by the time i was finished with the bathroom by 8am, li was already up. he asked me if he could borrow my spare camera. at first i thought he had a change of heart and wanted to take the dSLR after all, but turns out he was more interested in my P&S panasonic lumix.

in my haste to get ready, i almost forgot my memory card (total rookie mistake), having not put it back into the camera when i downloaded some photos last night. i only noticed when i was getting my watch and saw the memory card was still in the reader.

i left for boston before 8:30am via fuji bike. temperature was in the upper 40's, but it felt warmer than it was because the sun was out and there was hardly any wind. i wore my hooded sweatshirt & down vest combination, along with gloves (i also had a hat in my jacket pocket which i didn't use). i didn't have breakfast, but i threw some halloween snickers into my bag just in case, along with a hot tumbler of bengal spice tea. this early in the morning, there was no very little traffic and i made it to boston in good time.

i'd decided to skip the halloween pet parade happening at faneuil hall at noon. i was going to make a whole half day of it, visiting haymarket and chinatown as well, but that would require me to hang out in boston for 2-3 hours between events, and i probably wouldn't be able to get home until 2pm. so i figured it was better just to return home after the run. besides, i'd already seen one dog parade, and photos from past faneuil hall dog parade seemed a little weak, and i still remembered the disappointment of the lackluster faneuil hall cosplay parade that happened a few months ago.

i arrived at boylston street south of the boston public garden 15 minutes before the run started at 9am. that's a great place to get photos because of the cement planters i can stand on to get elevation. somehow i thought it'd be crowded but there was just a handful of spectators and no photographers.

once the run began i was just shooting non-stop for a solid 5 minutes, the amount of time it takes for the bulk of the costumed runners to go by me. because of geography, that area of boylston was in shadows, which was fine, but i ended up adjusting to ISO 1600 to compensate and to gain a faster shutter speed.

once the runners went by, i jumped off the planter and went to my bicycle parked at the intersection of boylston and charles street. i rode a short distance into boston common, to parkman bandstand, where i remembered the runners would run by and i'd have another great high vantage point to take photos. but they must've changed up the route because the runners didn't go by the bandstand. instead, it was a confusing maze of crisscrossing routes, so that at a certain point, i was completely surrounded by costumed runners going in all different directions.

i ended up taking around 1300 photos, but i didn't get any that really stood out. it was tough shooting, with runners either in the shade or dappled sunlight. and of course there were so many costumed runners, it was hard to pick out the most interesting ones, so instead i was just shooting at everything, hoping to sort through them when i got back home. as far as themes, i was a little disappointed i didn't see any trump costumes, but that would've been risky given the political situation. a lot of inflatable t-rexes, and i even saw a pair of skeleton t-rex, never seen that before. popular costumes included wizard of oz ensemble, bananas, sports jerseys, cats (for girls), skeleton bodysuits, foods (pizza, donuts, tacos, hot dogs), and of course superheroes, including numerous supermen, batmen, and wonder women.

after the majority of runners were congregating by the finish line, i retrieved my bike and headed in that direction as well. i was going to wait for them to announce the winners and best costumes, but after several minutes i decided to leave, returning home via the charles river bike path and across the MIT bridge.

li wasn't home when i got back around 10am, off with his coworker to see some fall foliage. i was sweat-soaked from the ride back, and took a hot shower after taking off all my sweaty clothes. i finally ate a yogurt for breakfast while watching a few more episodes of netflix's mindhunter.

in the afternoon i went to belmont via motorcycle. my father had left the kitchen light on. though i didn't have lunch, there was plenty of snacks around the house that i wasn't hungry. i sorted through the photos i took this morning while watching MSNBC. while CNN and MSNBC were talking about the mueller investigation first indictment on monday (somebody could be getting arrested), FOXNEWS was harping on some obama-clinton uranium story. visiting their website, there was hardly any mention of the indictment either, just some story on how ISIS fighters are returning to the US in droves.

when my father finally returned home around 2:30pm, we talked ham radio. i told him about my new vanity call sign, which hopefully will be approved in a few weeks, and suggested some personalized call signs he might consider once he gets his license. around 4pm we ordered some chipotle (online, for a 5pm pickup) then went to the watertown home depot. i was there to pick up the 1/2 in. hose mender i ordered, as well as to get some cement patch for the basement steps. my father bought a long coil of rubber tubing, only needed a few inches, but had to buy 10ft because that was the shortest length. when we went to go pick up order chipotle order, it felt a little cold. next time: don't order ahead of time because they're not smart enough to fill the order later.

my sister was home when we got back. we didn't know, otherwise we would've gotten something for her, but she was going to a party anyway, and wasn't eating. she was just here to drop off hailey. my mother contacted my father via skype tonight. it wasn't to ask us how we were, it was just to tell him to contact my 2nd aunt because my mother didn't have my aunt's skype or line information.

i returned home around 7pm. i couldn't get into the house because li had put the key in the deadbolt the wrong way, so i couldn't turn it from outside. i kept ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door to get his attention, but he was in his room and couldn't hear me. after i forcibly pulled on the door a few times, i finally managed to open the door. it wasn't that big of an emergency because i could always come in from the back door.

after a shower, i washed some grapes and settled in for some more mindhunter. li came out of his room at one point and i asked him about his trip. they ended up not going to new hampshire, but to umass amherst instead. that's a strange choice for foliage watching, as it's a bit south and to the west, when peak foliage is further north. but li seemed impressed. i reminded him about the cambridge superhero 5k tomorrow morning, he said he wanted to go.