Driving Boston

Entering Ted Williams' Tunnel

 One of my most vivid memories of my first visit to Boston was the crazy traffic.

 On this trip we relied on the hotel shuttle to take us from the airport to the Doubletree Bayside Thursday evening then to the airport Sunday morning.

 We walked to the JFK Library and Museum but the other three times we left the hotel we traveled by Uber.

 The first ride picked us up in a bright blue Tesla.  The driver was friendly, the car was incredible.  The first thing you notice about a Tesla is that because it is electric it can take off like a shot - going from zero to full speed in mere seconds.

 That took getting used to; I never got used to seeing brake lights shining at us as we shot up the street to where cars were stopped.  My foot was looking for a brake pedal and my hand reached for a place to hold.  We made it safely although our FitBit registered an elevated heart rate.

The second ride was from Fenway to the Cheers Bar on Beacon Street across from the Boston Common.  The woman driver barely spoke to us for the short trip along streets that were made for horses pulling wagons in the 18th century.

After lunch a man driving an older model Lincoln Continental picked us up then tried to cross three lanes of traffic so we could turn left at the next corner.

Most of the streets in downtown Boston are one-way.  It probably makes sense because the few streets with two-way traffic were very difficult to maneuver.

As the man tried to ease into the lane nearest the curb on the left side, a horn blared, our driver hit the brakes, I saw a vehicle pass my door with less than a foot to spare.  

It was our closest call of the weekend.  It would have been a minor accident, but could have delayed from getting to the game on time later on.

It's always 'rush hour' in Boston. 7/28/2022

Safely back at the hotel, my son arranged for the next Uber to take us back to Fenway.  The woman driving this car didn't live in Boston, she lived 45 minutes outside the metropolis so she relied on the Global Positioning System to point her to the ballpark.  Each driver took a slightly different route to the stadium.

After Friday's game we met our Uber driver six blocks away on Commonwealth Avenue in a Tesla that was a carbon copy of our first ride that morning.  His computer screen showed pedestrians and bikes on all sides of the car as we sped from one intersection to the next.  The Tesla's ability to get past the speed limit in a flash was so frightening and I was unsure the driver saw two bikes in our lane, I told him about them.

That was a bad move, but we didn't hit the two bikers, who should have known better than ride on a city street that time of night.

Our last two Uber trips were back to Fenway for the game then back to the hotel afterwards.  These two rides were the most comfortable in the back seat.  

Overall, Boston traffic lived up to its reputation.  I get that drivers need to be aggressive or they won't get anywhere.  While some of our rides were unsettling to the point of fright, they were still better than driving ourselves.