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i spent the day waiting for the afternoon to arrive so i could ride into the cityto take photos of the boston costume dash 5K. last year it got rained out, so i only got to attend the monster dash 5K in cambridge central square, and even that was a wet affair. this year not only did they change the course (on the esplanade instead of out copley square and boston common) but the time as well (3pm instead of 9am). instead of a salmon bagel for lunch, i played it safe and ate some more leftover muffins.

i left a bit after 2pm, wanted to get there early enough so i could find a good vantage point to take photos. temperature was in the upper 50's, not warm enough to go just in a shirt, so i wore my hooded sweatshirt. i took the fuji bike because it was faster and easier to park. it was sunny but the sky was a mix of interesting wispy and clumpy clouds.

i crossed the longfellow bridge and biked across the new pedestrian overpass to get onto the esplanade. the stage area was fiedler field, but i rode all the way down to mass ave, figuring i'd get a good view from the pedestrian bridge. but turned out it was much too high, and i'd be seeing the runners head-on, not giving me a lot of time to pick out the interesting ones. instead i went back and found a spot by the middle storrow lagoon bridges: i could take photos while the runners came down, but then go across the bridge and get them again when they came back.

the race started right at 3pm, they didn't even clear the espalanade, not that it was even possible. so the costumed runners had to run through an obstacle course of surprised pedestrians suddenly finding themselves in the middle of a 5K surrounded by people dressed in costumes. your walkers, your joggers, your dogsitters, your baby strollers, your bicyclists, it seemed like a real mess. i don't think the runners minded though, they joined the event more to just hang out than actually trying to achieve some kind of record time.

maybe it was just my imagination, but there seemed to be less people than in years past. the esplanade also wasn't the greatest location, at least not when it came to photo taking. back when it was held in boston common, the race course was almost a maze that crisscrossed throughout the park, so the runners were spaced out and easier to pick out the best costumes. this one started out as a mass of runners, which thinned out by the time they ran back to the staging area. the timing was also unusual, most 5K races started in the early morning, not mid-afternoon.

i left by 3:40pm, riding across the mass ave bridge. after gathering my things at home, i continued to belmont. the craft cabinet had arrived, my parents probably wasn't sure who it was for, but my father had tentatively filled some of the drawers with spare electronic parts. it was bigger than i thought, about the size of a large 80's boombox, if that provides a usable frame of reference.

my parents came home after 5pm while i was in the kitchen trimming the korean red garlics. now that i've planted what i needed, all remaining garlics are edible.

my father and i went downstairs to the grow room to do some work. we reorganized the plants, putting the cactuses and potted pepper plants on the folding table underneath the XECCON led grow light, clearing out enough space between the two metal shelves that we can more easily walk inside to water the plants. my father also trimmed off all the new jasmine vines. he noted that these vining branches were very thick. we removed one of the topiaries, the one with the dead crown. my father wants to throw it out, but i think it could still be salvaged.

after dinner we played around with the ATX breakout board. earlier my father figured out that even though our PC power supply unit only has 20-pins, it could still fit into the 24-pin ATX connector of the breakout board. voltages all check out (3.3V, 5V, 12V) with the exception of -12V, which only shows as -10V for some reason. not a dig deal, since we currently don't have a use for negative voltage. we tested out the 12V with a strip of neon led tube light, it worked without issues.

i finally left for cambridge by 8:15pm. i turned on the wheel lights, both worked fine, especially the front wheel. the back wheel seemed a little sketchy, i saw it wink off a few times, nevertheless the stayed lit throughout the ride.

i watched the celtics-knicks game, kemba walker scored 32 points. the kemba that was promised! tacko fall came into the game in the final minutes, when the celtics were up by nearly 30 points. standing at 7'6", the man is a naturally gifted blocker and offensive rebounder. but he was the problem most extremely tall guys have, which is slow speed. as effective as he is due to his height, all his movements look like slow-motion.