-- Fishing Dream Team and The Chahles Rivah --
We're in the last few weeks of the summer here at STH, and we finally arrived at what I consider to have been one of the highlights of the program, which is the revered fishing derby, an annual tradition in which the JPAs are divided into teams, and we compete to see who can bring in the largest striper from the Boston Harbor. We set out stupid early on Tuesday morning (I had to wake up at 5:30, and I was one of the lucky ones), and we quickly were divided up and assigned to a bunch of boats of varying size, which were generously provided by some local charters. I ended up on the Belle with a supergroup of about 10-15 other JPAs and team leaders.
As far as fishing ability goes, we weren't exactly the dream team (I think I could count the number of us that had actually caught a fish before on one hand) but what we lacked in skill we more than made up for in dance moves and unyielding perseverance. We triumphantly sailed out into the harbor, heads held high, ready to prove ourselves ...and sailed right back empty-handed four hours later because at the end of the day no amount of mental fortitude will make a fish bite your hook, apparently.
Still, I can say for sure that we were the most fun group. When we weren't fishing or getting our hands bathed in bloodworm guts, we were blasting music through the AUX and dancing, which was super hype. Well, everybody else was dancing, and I was kind of stumbling around the boat like the one-footed seagull I saw on Revere Beach a few weeks back. Maybe that and a smile is all dancing really takes.
This week, Team Jason was assigned to work along the Charles River Esplanade. The focus of our deliverable was not very specific, so we had a lot of flexibility in choosing what we wanted to do for the week. We settled on the idea of making an "infomercial" type video about the Esplanade and talked about the different activities available, the accessibility of the park, the importance of having green space in a city, and the recent efforts to clean the river and prevent algal blooms.
Team Jason at the breathtaking Charles River Floating Wetland, featured on left
It was a really hot week because of a recent heatwave we've been having in Boston, and on several days this week temperatures hit the high nineties, which meant that we were sweating our butts off walking around the waterfront. To keep cool, we also spent a lot of our time in the Boston Public Library (bless the AC), and we made sure to keep super hydrated. Some of the spots we stopped at along the Charles River to collect footage for our video included the Calisthenics Park, the zipline playground, and some of the docks. Despite the intense heat, I like walking around downtown, and I do it a lot, so I thought it was a pretty good week.
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| A gargoyle on the Longfellow Bridge overlooks the river |
That's about all I have to share with you guys for this week! I look forwards to writing my final blog of this summer next week. On an unrelated note, I am sorry for talking so much about the fishing derby without including any photos from it, during the event I was having a lot of fun, and I wasn't really thinking ahead to my blog, so I didn't bother to take many. I guess you'll have to take my word for it when I say it was really awesome, and do check out a few other blogs, too, in case someone else got some good pics!
Thanks for reading!
- Alex
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| New star team member Julian spotted alongside some other nerds |
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