I’m sitting in Room 204 of the Boston Hostel wondering why the people above us find it necessary to jump around and bang on the floor. It sounds like Riverdance being performed by people with peg legs and no sense of rhythm. I’m just praying the ceiling doesn’t come down with one gigantic thud. Bodies plummeting into our room would be the perfect climax to a very hectic day. It began on that yuppie paradise called Nantucket and ended somewhere in the great city of Boston.

Our day started at the Whaling Museum. Nowadays, when someone claims the neighbor’s dog is telling him to kill young girls, we lock him up in an asylum and inject him with enough morphine to stop a charging rhinoceros. He’s obviously out of his mind! However, back then, men decided (of their own free will) to spend months, maybe years, on the open sea capturing behemoth mammals, stripping them of their entrails, and cheating death on a daily basis, and yet society seemed okay with that—nothing crazy there! Learning about the arduous tasks these men completed every day was eye-opening. I tend to complain when I have a three-page paper to write. Now I’ll think to myself, “Gee, I could be climbing into the head of an adult Sperm Whale and scooping out buckets of oil and brains.” Puts things in perspective, eh?
After the museum and some extra time to wander around Nantucket, we grabbed our bags and embarked on what would be hours of traveling. Was it the kind of traveling in which one says, “Oh, look honey! A deer! Quick, stop the car and grab the cameras!”? No! It was more like: “Gotta go! Gotta go! Gotta go right now!”

First, we had a bumpy two-hour ferry ride back to the mainland. If you think big waves with whitecaps are fun to look at, you should try riding over them in a 50-ton vessel! There were a couple of moments when the boat leaned so far to one side, you couldn’t see sky out the windows anymore—only water. Let me just say…I suddenly remembered prayers from my grade school days at St. Athanasius and I began firing them off one by one. If we were going to do an aquatic cartwheel maneuver in a steel ferryboat, I wanted to be prepared to meet my Maker. Luckily, we lumbered into port, and I was never so happy to see blacktop pavement in my life. Land!
Everyone, out of the boat and into the vans! We still had an hour or so drive to Boston to complete. So we grabbed a quick bite at Wendy’s, gathered up our effects (not to mention PURSES), and took off.

Several hours later, both vans were sitting in a parking garage and we were piling onto a transit headed to Boston. If you ever thought, “Wow, a trip to Boston via transit sounds like a nice, relaxing time,” you should take this computer screen and beat yourself with it. The Boston transit system is like a stress test gone insane. When you have fourteen people and luggage, it’s nothing less than a miracle that you make it alive. Yet we all hopped off at the right stop for the Boston Hostel and nobody was missing any limbs (maybe just a bump on the head). Kudos!

So here I am…writing in my journal and hoping someone upstairs will land on his or her head soon, so we can all get some sleep tonight. From the Boston Hostel in some shadowy corner of the city…goodnight!