Part 1 | Part 2

I’m at the End of the Line on the MBTA, with no transportation. At 1 am.

This is amusing. At every step of this process, I’ve made the most sensible choice—or at least a reasonably good one. But it’s just gotten ridiculouser and ridiculouser all along the way.

There are no hotels within 2 miles. Mine is 6.3 miles away, but I’ve told them to hold my reservation despite my late arrival, and I really don’t want to pay for a second hotel room and still have to walk 2 miles to get to it.

“Hey, Siri. Get me to my hotel. Walking.”

In the rain.

It’s a straight shot north to my hotel through Auburndale—an affluent village in my old hometown of Newton—and Waltham. As I walk, I total up my blessings—

• The land is reasonably flat.
• The temperature is mild.
• The streets are empty and quiet.
• All my luggage is in my backpack; I’m not wheeling a suitcase. Or two.
• I have an umbrella.
• I have a phone with battery life left, and a laptop I can use to charge it if I need to.
• I have healthy legs to walk with, including pain-free joints. At 68, that’s nothing to take for granted.
• I have a healthy back to carry the backpack.
• I’m going to have a lot of fun telling this story.

Along the way I find myself laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I’m a visibly older man walking through an affluent neighborhood—with a backpack—in the rain—at 2 in the morning. Don’t you think some policeman, somewhere, would feel the need to go over and talk to this guy?

Where’s a cop when you need one? A ride in the back seat of a cruiser would actually be pretty nice right now.

Long story short, I arrive at my hotel at 3.30 am. They ask for ID. I explain that I lost my ID on the trip up, but I do have a state-issued photo ID in the form of a SC Concealed Weapons Permit. They’re hesitant—I wonder if it’s because this is Massachusetts, after all, and do we really want this gun nut staying here?—but eventually they decide it’s good enough, and they give me a room key.

I unpack my backpack to let everything dry out, and I fall into bed.

I can’t sleep.

_____

I think about getting back home without a license.

I have several options—

• To fly, I’ll need some kind of ID. Since I’ll be here for 4 days, I could have my wife FedEx my passport.
• I could take the train; they require less ID, and I’ve always wanted to take a train trip in one of those suites with a bed and a shower. I’d have to leave sooner, since the train takes longer, but that would be fun.
• I could take the bus. That’s, um, my last choice.

The next morning I look into the options. Amtrak doesn’t seem to match my schedule. Don’t wanna take the bus. I’ll have the passport sent up.

Oh, and I fire up my Uber app, and it works fine. No idea why it didn’t work last night, when I needed it.

Thanks to my wife’s diligence, my passport arrives Saturday morning, just as I’m about to leave for the daytime reunion activities.

The reunion is great. My Greenville classmate and his wife kindly give me a ride, and all of us have a great time reminiscing. One of my classmates is a cop; I tell him my story, and he tells me that the passport shipment was probably unnecessary; I can probably fly back with the concealed carry permit or the other state-issued ID, which I’m not telling you about.

I take an Uber to and from church on Sunday, and spend Monday morning in downtown Boston, touching old bases. I eat lunch at the Pahkah House, wheah they invented Pahkah House rolls and Boston Creme Pie. I have a lobstah roll. It’s delightful.

I fly back Monday afternoon. The passport gets me through security fine, of course. As I come out the other side, I see a TSA desk and amble over to it. I tell them I have a question, just out of curiosity. I show them  my 2 state-issued photo IDs and ask, “Would either of these have been sufficient ID to get through the checkpoint?”

“Nope. Good thing you had the passport.”

“I have a friend here who’s a cop. He said he thought these would be enough.”

“Enough for your friend, maybe. Not enough for us.”

OK then.

BOS to DCA to GSP. My lovely wife is waiting at the curb. Great to be home.

Yeah, I shoulda just grabbed a cab at the Boston airport.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I was right. It is a lot of fun telling this story.

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash

Part 1

Can’t rent a car without a driver’s license.

OK. What are my options?

It’s after 10 pm.

• I could grab a cab here—they still have cabs at airports, don’t they? But my hotel is in Waltham, way out by the beltway (I-95 / 128), and that would cost—well, I can afford it, especially with all the money I’m saving by not renting a car for 4 days, but it’s still more than I’d like to pay.
• I could Uber, but that would be pretty expensive too.
• I have two sisters in the area, but they’re each 2 hours away. I’m not going to ask them for a ride this time of night.
• One of the people coming to the reunion is from Greenville. I text him—“Are you in Boston yet?” “Nope. Flying up in the morning.”
• Could I get there on the T? (That’s the MBTA, or public transit system. I used to ride it all the time, but that was, well, 45+ years ago … .) I call my hotel and ask if I can get there on the T. “Oh, sure. Take the Purple Line and get off at the Waltham stop. It’s a bit of a walk, but not far.”

OK then. I don’t recall a Purple Line, but I’ll give it a try.

Catch the shuttle bus to the T station—Blue Line—buy a Charlie Card, and consult the map.

Oh—Charlie Card, you ask? There’s an old song—I think it was by the Kingston Trio—about a guy named Charlie who gets on the T and doesn’t have enough money to get off, so allegendly (yes, I meant to spell it that way) he’s still down there riding around.

Well, the map shows all the colors of lines I’m familiar with, plus, I’m glad to see, a Purple Line. I need to take the Blue Line down to State Street—that’s where D.L. Moody got saved in a shoe store—transfer to the Orange Line up to North Station, and then catch the Purple Fitchburg Line out to Waltham. No sweat.

At North Station—that’s wheah Bahston Gahden is—I hit a kiosk to add more rides to my Charlie Card. Oddly, I don’t see any way to get tickets for the Purple Line, so I find a T employee nearby. She tells me to go down that tunnel ovah theah, which leads to the Purple Line; I can get tickets theah.

OK. Down the tunnel, which opens out into a nice big terminal. The Purple Line, it turns out, is the commuter rail system. The terminal is deserted, the ticket offices closed. The board shows the next train out at 5.35 am.

Commuter rails don’t run at 11.30 pm.

So why did she tell me I could … oh, never mind.

OK. Maybe I can get pretty close on the subway. I find another T employee—this one’s sitting inside an official-looking cage, so he must know what he’s doing—and ask, what’s the nearest T station to this address in Waltham?

Riverside, he says.

That’s music to my ears. I used to ride the Riverside Line (Green Line D) to my house. I’m in familiar territory.

“Now, the line’s getting worked on, but you can get to Rivahside by taking the subway to Kenmoah and then catching a shuttle bus to Rivahside.”

“Any chance there will be cabs at Riverside after midnight?”

“Probably. But if not, you can just Ubah.”

Sure, that’ll work. Take the Green Line—either the Boston College route (B) or Cleveland Circle (C), whichever shows up first—to Kenmore and catch the shuttle bus.

OK.

Which I do. Off at Kenmore—that’s the Fenway Pahk stop—and look for a sign to the shuttle bus. There it is. Upstairs, and there’s the bus, waiting at the curb.

There’s one other guy on the bus. Not a lot of cash flow for this route this time of night.

It sits for half an hour before setting out. Reminds me of the intercity bus lines in Africa that just wait until they have enough passengers to make a profit before they leave. Schedules are fiction.

Well after midnight we leave the curb.

Now, this is a shuttle bus replacing a non-running subway line. So it travels the surface streets, with stoplights and all, and stops at all the subway stops along the way. Which makes it, um, slower than the subway. Which is why they built subways in the first place.

I mentioned there was one other guy on the bus. He’s going all the way to Riverside too. So we stop at all the stops, and nobody gets off, and nobody gets on. We pass Eliot, my old stop (BTW, it’s named for John Eliot, the colonial-era missionary to the Wampanoag tribe), and we arrive at Riverside just after 1.

No cabs.

I’m not surprised.

OK, let’s see if any Uber drivers are taking passengers this time of night.

I haven’t used my Uber app for a couple of years. First thing it tells me is that my credit card is expired. Oh, yeah, had to replace it after a possible security breach. I enter the data for the new card and see it listed in the app. The green checkmark is still on the old, deactivated card. I press the newly added card. No response. I press it again. Still no response.

I mash it several times, hard.

No response.

The app won’t let me select the useable card.

I open its info and make sure the data are correct. Try it again.

No response.

Well. Can’t use Uber.

It’s after 1 am, and it’s 6.3 miles to my hotel, and it’s raining.

To be continued, yet again.

Part 3

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash

Every so often on this blog I tell a story about an experience. I do that because I like to tell stories, and because some things just ought to be written down. This one has the advantage of being fresh in my mind, since it occurred just a couple weeks ago.

I graduated from high school in 1971. The 50^th year was last year, but we didn’t have a reunion because of COVID. This year the class of ’72, which was the class I was originally supposed to graduate with, kindly invited ’71 to attend, and I realized that I could hang out with both classes at once. Can’t miss that opportunity.

I have siblings in the area, so I booked the flight up to Boston for Thursday, before the reunion on Saturday. BJU’s fall break was the next Monday and Tuesday—perfect. Scheduled the flight back for Monday. Scheduled both flights to avoid leaving early in the morning or arriving late at night.

So well thought out.

Checked in at GSP in plenty of time. Showed my driver’s license for ID and tried to keep from slowing up the line by throwing everything into the gray plastic tray as quickly as possible. No objections from the guy at the scanner screen. Again tried to keep from impeding the flow by gathering up my things quickly and getting out of the way.

In the process the lady next to me asked, “Is this yours?” It was a folded piece of paper that I’d put into my shirt pocket—with my driver’s license—while passing the ID check. “It was under my tray.”

“Yep, it’s mine. Many thanks!”

Remember that exchange.

Put my clothes back on—you know, belt and shoes—and grabbed a bite to eat before heading to the gate.

Flight left on time. Connecting at DCA (Washington) for BOS, with plenty of time to make the connection.

Half an hour from DC the pilot said there was heavy rain there and that we were going to circle for a while to see if it would clear up.

An hour later he said we were being diverted to Richmond.

Landed there and waited on a taxiway for an hour for a gate to open up so we could take on a little fuel. Understandable, since we weren’t even supposed to be there.

Got a gate and waited for a fuel truck. Refueled and waited for the little truck that pushes us back.

We were originally scheduled to land at DC about noon. Now it’s 3 pm.

Short flight to DC, where my connection had taken off 30 minutes before.

OK, that’s fine. There have to be more flights from DC to Boston today, and worst case, if there aren’t any seats, I can fly tomorrow—or rent a car and drive, if I have to.

Providence. It’s all good.

The line for the airline service desk is an hour long. OK, the storm has caused a lot of missed connections, and the folks are working as fast as they can. It’s still all good.

I see a flight at 10, getting into Boston at 11.30. That’s wicked late, as they would say, and I’m not crazy about driving an unfamiliar rental car all the way across town after dark, in the rain, but God’s on the throne, right?

To my surprise, the lady at the service desk gets me on an earlier flight, leaving in just a few minutes. Great!

The flight is delayed taking off, and it has to circle over Boston Hahbah for a while because of weather and general congestion, and it’s after 9 by the time we land and taxi to the terminal.

OK.

I don’t have any checked baggage—just a well-stuffed backpack—so I follow the “Ground Transportation” signs and grab the shuttle bus to the Cah Rental Centah.

The line there moves along well, and soon I’m showing my reservation and getting ready to go.

“All right, all I need now is to see your driver’s license.”

OK. Pull out the wallet.

No driver’s license.

Remember that conversation in security at GSP?

In my hurry I had slipped my license into my shirt pocket where that piece of paper was, and a few seconds later I had emptied my pockets into the plastic tray. The piece of paper had come out of the tray somehow and gotten under the tray behind mine. The lady noticed the paper and gave it to me.

Apparently my driver’s license is still inside the scanner at the Greenville airport.

Bummer.

Can’t rent a car. Got to go to plan B, which doesn’t actually, um, exist.

To be continued.

Part 2 | Part 3

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash

Ten weeks ago I tested positive for COVID, and two weeks later I took a break from blogging. The disease wasn’t overly bad for me—just a noticeable sore throat and some coughing—and I’m glad that I didn’t appear to get the Long variety. (I know a few people who did.)

But I could tell that the brain wasn’t at 100%, and I didn’t want to be posting my thoughts publicly when I was more likely even than usual to say something I’d later regret.

Providentially, right then we entered a point in the semester where I was crazily busy, busier than at any other time during the year. Fortunately, it’s a time I can see coming and get prepared for, but for several days it’s just Katie bar the door.

After that, the papers started to come in.

I’m one of those teachers who believes fervently in the importance of assigning writing, and specifically writing that requires thought (as opposed to those “discussion posts” you see the kids cranking out in their sleep for their online courses). As every teacher knows, the inescapable consequence of assigning thoughtful writing is that at some point you’re going to need to grade, or at least read, the output. Some of it grades pretty easily. But not all, my friend, not all.

My school used to have a policy that all major papers and projects needed to be due a few weeks before the end of the semester. That policy doesn’t exist anymore, but I still hold to the practice, for a couple of reasons. First, I need time to grade the work effectively, and the kids (or their parents) are paying a pretty penny for my due diligence. And second, it gives the students an opportunity to see their post-project grades when there’s still enough time in the semester to do something about them.

So. COVID, then post-COVID, then crazy busy, then paper-grading season. At that point I decided to just let the blog lie until the semester was done.

Commencement was a week ago, and we sent our 650 graduates off to take the next step. I had several faculty responsibilities that occupied the week following Commencement. But this past Friday I completed the last of those, and now it’s Summer Vacation.

When I began teaching full-time in 2000 (at the age of 46), I was delighted to discover that I had options for how I spent the summers. Early on I decided to look for opportunities to teach pro bono (as the lawyers say) in small Bible colleges overseas that could use some help. The first was in the summer of 2000 in the area of Cape Town. It was delightful, and not just because of the rooibos, biltong, and koeksisters.

Other opportunities followed. Saipan. Mexico. China. St Vincent. India. Haiti. And several delightful summers leading BJU student teams to minister in Africa, from Ghana to Kenya to Tanzania to Zambia to South Africa.

For six years I was my father’s caregiver during his dementia, and I was privileged to do that. Having the summers free really helped.

Well, the pandemic put the kibosh on international teaching, and in much of the world the situation’s still iffy. It’s simple enough to go teach overseas, but what if they change the rules in mid-trip? What if we can’t get back? These are not questions to dismiss lightly.

So this summer is a sabbatical. Not working anywhere officially. Teaching a handful of classes at my church, serving there in other ways as well. I have a study plan laid out, with fair amounts of reading and thinking and planning. And best of all, no inflexible deadlines. No reason not to be interrupted. Something needs to be fixed? Well, why not? Need something at the store, and traffic’s pretty heavy right now? No problem. All the time in the world. Smile and wave at the other drivers, and let that guy cut in.

Now, that environment’s just perfect for getting back into the rhythm of writing two blog posts a week. I’m looking forward to it.

Drop by the site in the days ahead if you care to.

I got Covid. It was pretty mild, but since then I’ve had some issues that have led me to decide to set aside the blog for a bit. Publishing things publicly when your brain isn’t at its best just doesn’t seem wise. :-)

So let’s see what happens. I’ll be around.