day in my life except it’s a live blog by Victor D. '27
4:53 PM: after the vgo exec meeting, i went to the mariachi rehearsal room but there’s people in there rn i should’ve just gotten boba at teado instead of coming early 😞. just sitting on a bench in building 4.
stopping to write; stopping to think and perceive. spending so much time here i find myself blocking out what has become quotidian. a tour group passed by and the guide gestured at the tunnels that connect main group. now 2 and a half years here–i’ve assimilated the novel as normal. can i learn to see the regular again as if im seeing it for the first time?
4:04 PM: ellie is mad that i haven’t locked in on this. i just finished vgo rehearsal. i tried scraping a new reed for my oboe but i ende up pressing too hard with the knife and i chipped the tip :( i always feel really guilty when i miss up my reeds since it feels like im wasting cane. i have neglected to make reeds for a while so i’ve lost the touch one could say. also throwback to my mit essays cause i wrote one about making oboe reeds 😹 anyways ill need to make some more. speaking of which yall should tune into the mit vgo concert on saturday at 7:00 pm EST by searching MIT VGO on youtube and joining the live stream then!
i should probably pack my instruments (i also have my alto w me)
12:50 PM: back on putz (my hall) in east campus (my dorm), trying to figure out how to organize my thoughts around the airport transit link for the article. unfortunately this pondering will soon be truncated, as i have rehearsals from 2-4 and 5-7 for vgo (video game orchestra) and mariachi respectively, and vgo setup is at 1 so i should probably get going rn.
12:16 PM: caught the red line! it’s satisfying seeing the trains run at their intended speeds; during you freshman year, you could easily out-speedwalk the train on the longfellow bridge because it was so slow. i’m always enchanted crossing the longfellow bridge on the red line since it’s above ground, and you get to see the boston skyline towering over the charles river pass by. during the autumn the entire esplanade (the park along the charles river on the boston side) blossoms with color but it’s already that time of year where the trees have mostly shed their leaves.
12:10 PM: park street is one of the oldest subway stations in the us (opened in 1897 i think look up tremont subway). it’s also very confusing because there’s 4 separate green line lines that run through the station. now waiting for red line train
12:08 PM: green line comes into the station screeching lethargically. made my transfer from blue to red, and it’s only for one station so i can transfer back to the red line (gov center to park street).
somebody is blasting joe tex on a speaker on this train
11:59 AM: blue line train arrived. i don’t think i’ve been on the blue line this semester, since i primarily use it to get to east boston but havent had much time to do little trips this semester unfortunately. or just haven’t been super motivated to i guess.
11:53 AM: I forgot that Airport station on the blue line is outside; it’s so cold. my fingers are struggling to type this. why doesn’t the T give us those nice heated shelters on the platform like in Toronto.
11:45 AM: i feel like this airport shuttle bus has too many stops. like im still on this bus i haven’t even made my transfer to the train yet. there should be a people mover here so we don’t have t wait outside in the below freezing temperatures for the bus.
11:39 AM: let’s document more thoughts about this. i am trying to imagine myself coming to boston for the first time by myself during sin limite (actually maybe it was the first time traveling by myself too). when i got to logan it was honestly really confusing, and i was struggling to figure out where the busses they chartered to bring us to mit were (i guess admissions might have had issues with people trying to use the T to get to MIT, or since the route isn’t super intuitive maybe it’s just nice to provide a direct route). this is actually how i met my roommate and really good friend (juarez) of two yrs (we roomed together 2 years in burton conner) bc they sent a message in the sin limite groupme saying something like “i just got on a random bus 💀” and i thought it was really funny so i reacted and responded, then we met up lol.
also throwback to them trying to blue bike to the airport that one time during freshman year
11:36 AM:
11:29 AM: i probably should have done this in reverse bc taking the T from the airport is actually free (you can get on the bus for free and transfer to the red line in south station to get to Kendall/MIT). using the airport shuttle is free but then you have to pay for the transfer to the blue line at airport station. but i’ve actually never taken the airport shuttle cause it’s slower and also requires an extra transfer (as we’ve discussed below) and also now that i’m trying to do it it’s honestly kind of confusing and really cold waiting out here for the bus 😿.
11:22 AM i made it to airport. what terminal should i get off at? i haven’t fully decided. since it’s sunday there was no traffic getting here so it only took 25 minutes! pretty good. normally the bus gets stuck in the tunnel under the boston harbor and this ride takes upwards of 40 minutes (including the red line segment to the airport)
11:16 AM: overall this bus ride is fine but not smooth at all and reminds me trying to balance my suitcases and not falling over myself. silver line lore is interesting since it came about during the big dig (one of the biggest infrastructure projects in american history) as part of an environmental impacts mitigation plan. the silver line was actually originally conceived as a train but it got watered down to an articulated bus (slinky bus).
11:07 AM: reminding myself why this station is so unintuitive. there are a group of people w/ suitcases waiting at the wrong part of the platform. definitely not their fault cause there’s a cacophony of (very uninformative) signage here.
11:02 AM: i just perceived that im actually in one of the old red line cars (vs the new ones that they’re rolling out [pun intended]). so much of this system feels really antiquated but i kind of vibe with the liminal 70s-90s atheistic so characteristic of this metro system.
10:57 AM: i just caught an Ashmont bound red line train (the line forks into two branches later on). in the meantime i will explain the lore. basically, there’s two metro lines that do not connect (the red and blue) despite being about ~2400 feet from each other, which means you have to make another transfer at park street station from the green then take the green one station (a couple thousand feet) to the blue line which then takes u to airport station. the route im currently taking isn’t that one but rather the one that transfers to the silver line, which tricks u into thinking it’s an actual train because it has a color and everything. but it’s a farce bc it’s actually just a bus.
10:50 AM: when i actually post this post. i got distracted eating my breakfast. it’s T time.
10:35 AM: im currently sitting in a dunkin with an ice matcha latte and croissant sandwich in kendall square, in preparation for my trip to the airport. i actually don’t have a flight lol but rather this is for one of my classes (transportation planning and policy 11.540)–we have to write an article about how to improve transit connections b/w kendall/mit station (on boston’s red line) and boston logan international airport (which has no train going to it).
9:40 AM: i woke up and decided i probably shouldn’t sleep to 11, even though i went to sleep at 4 ish (whoops, i promise my sleep schedule isn’t normally this bad), took a satisfying morning shower, and was on my way out of east campus by 10:15.