E Is For Eating

We arrived in Boston on Wednesday afternoon. We slept a lot on the plane, and went to bed early to gather our strength for the Big E, The Eastern States Exposition. One of the main topics of exposition was the various regional foods such as Vermont's Ben and Jerry ice cream, and poutine from the nearby state of Canada.

They also had pork in various formats, from on the hoof,

to the conceptual,

Although, eating them is a strange way to say, "Thank you."

There also was a judging of llamas and alpacas. I can never remember which is which, but I think the alpacas are the ones that never got over the disco craze,

I wore a pith helmet. Here's an interesting side note, different cultures express  meanings in different ways. So, in Iraq many people were killed at checkpoints because in the West, a raised hand means stop, and in the East, it can mean, approach. In the same way, I saw foreigners look at me, and then shake their heads at each other in a common expression of admiration.

Today, Rich and I went for a Segway tour of Boston. I was wearing my Skecher workout shoes that are designed to keep you off balance in order to strengthen leg and core muscles by constantly forcing tiny adjustments in balance. Which the Segway interpreted as commands. I had to get off during the first moments of practice due to nausea. The trainer commented that he'd never had a student get seasick on a Segway before, so I was the first! Barefoot, I eventually got enough control of the machine to go on the tour, even though they made me put my shoes back on.

 Because of the Skecher heel, I was constantly standing on tiptoe, so by the end of the tour my feet were quite sore. Other than that, it went pretty well, except for one little debacle going up a steep hill against a headwind. The machine and I could not achieve the speed necessary to keep going up, so we started to drift back down. Backwards.  I clutched at a bush and then held onto it until the guide came and towed me to the top. He kept calling me sir, in order to show that he was showing respect which emphasized how hard it was to show me any respect. Good thing that bush was there, though. By the way, props to the guide, who took this picture. Remember, that like an electron, well, an electron wearing Skechers on a Segway, I could never remain in one place, but was constantly drifting forward and backwards.