CHI being a new weather-related abbreviation I learned after arriving in Boston - Cumulative Heat Index. This is the forecast air temperature added to the humidity to produce the effective temperature to the average joe walking the street, and of course it's usually bad news (although I guess in winter the windchill makes the CHI go the other way). I always knew the East coast of the USA in August would be hot - but it's far different to the pounding dry heat I acclimatised to in Sydney. Coming in to land at Logan, the info page on the onboard map screen thing gave the folowing details - 'TIME 11:05pm; TEMP 32C'. When I left the air-conned terminal, the sticky air hit me like a wave.
After a day of trying to find indoor things - during which I took the above photo I like to call 'Self portrait at 29.99', the heatwave plaguing the Eastern Seaboard had subsided slightly on my second day, although it was still way over 100F. It was my birthday though, so after a well-deserved lie-in and a bit of the NFL Network (an entire TV channel devoted to American Football 24hrs a day), I had to get out of the house and do something. So I went to look at some Japanese art in the Peabody Museum in Salem. Famous for it's witch-related past, the coastal Massachusetts town is home to one of the great American art museums.
I spent most of the afternoon there, wandering around looking at all the Asian bits and pieces, before catching the MBTA Commuter train back to the city. Almost every time I get on a train in America, someone starts talking to me - it obviously brings out the social people (or the wacky ones). On this occasion a man sat next to me on the platform and started telling me about the time he was in Puerto Rico and saw someone fall asleep standing up, but not fall over. He even demonstrated the necessary stance, before wandering off to chat to a woman he saw with one of those folding bicycles.
That night, we went out to Harvard (my friends and I, not me and the Puerto Rican) - to Charlie's Kitchen, a diner type restaurant which serves some seriously good cheeseburgers. The Red Sox were on the TV - losing to the Cleveland Indians in a game I had tried to get tickets for - and they even had what they call over there 'Boddington's Pub Ale', which is basically Boddington's but in a slightly different sized glass. Travels well, though. The night was fairly warm, so we walked around Harvard Square looking into various shop windows, before stumbling across a large crowd of people standing intently before a shopfront. Turns out they were all watching the baseball through the window - they were five deep, blocking the pavement. In the road was a Cambridge Fire Engine, parked (or 'pahked') in front, with the firemen sitting in a row on the ladder, to get a better view of the telly. I wished I'd brought my camera out with me - it looked like something out of an Edward Hopper painting...
