Hello from Logan Airport!

I spent the weekend visiting my fiancee in Boston, where a good two feet or so of snow fell this weekend.

Between the tons of snow and high winds, Logan Airport was shut down

for a full 29 hours. Only one runway was open this morning, resulting

in the cancellation of my 6:10 a.m. flight back to Accordion City.

I’m currently entering this article near the Continental Presidents’ Club located in the walkway joining Logan’s Terminals B and C. While Logan’s official wi-fi is something in the neighbourhood fo $10/day, the Presidents’ Club wi-fi is wide open and free of charge. I’m stickin’ it to The Man!

A quick summary of this weekend:

• Got a quick chance to say hello to Joel “Joel on Software” Spolsky during his lunch at Movenpick Marche before my flight to Boston.
• Experienced a last-minute pull-up on final approach into Logan. A plane was being a little slow in taking off from the runway on which we were about to land.
• Grilled mahi-mahi with mango at the Summer Shack with Wendy
• Meeting face-to-face with internet friends Suw “Chocolate and Vodka” Charman (who came over from the UK) and Chris “crw” Whipple
• Lunch with a Nobel Prize winner! Betsy Devine invited Suw, Chris, Wendy and me to lunch at her place, where we met her husband, Frank Wilczek, winner of a real Nobel Prize (the 2004 Prize for Physics, not that fakety-fake economics prize). Frank, it turns out, is also an accordion player (as most staggeringly intelligent people are). I played a couple of accordion numbers for them — Suw shot video and posted them on her blog.
• My Boston Ritual: a meal at Legal Seafood with Wendy.
• Hung out at Clery’s with local friends, who came in spite of the coming blizzard.
• Headed home from Clery’s during the start of said blizzard. It was fun watching Suw’s reactions to it all as Wendy drove through the storm — Brits don’t see snow like this! I volunteered my honed-in-Canada blizzard driving skills, but Wendy, tough New Englander that she is, didn’t need it.
• Walked Suw and Chris to the bus stop the next afternoon through the aftermath of the storm. The storm seemed to have brought out the friendliness in everyone; everyone we passed said “hello” with a smile, in spite of all the shovelling or trudging they were doing.
• A quiet Sunday night with Wendy, in which we made dinner and I finally watched Better Off Dead, a movie I’ve been meaning to see for decades.
• Lunch at the Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, a “Canadian-themed” restaurant that’s about as Canadian as the Outback Steakhouse is Australian. Still, the decor does remind me of my friend Liz’ parents’ lodge up north, or the Drake Hotel restaurant in Canmore, Alberta. The audio-animatronic bison could use a couple of lessons to sound a more like a rural Canadian. Not once did it say “give ‘er!”