Thursday, April 23, 2009

Revolutionary Monday


Mike and I took Patriot's Day off from work. Call us crazy, but we were on our bikes at 5 am with our friend Scott to head in to Lexington to view the re-enactment. Scott had never seen the event, and Mike and I hadn't been in years. So, in the dark and the cold, with a promise of breakfast when it was over, we made our way in to join 1000s of people lining the Lexington Green.





I love going to this event. I joke that despite the number of times I have seen it, the ending never changes. But this is history and the re-enactors make it come alive. I usually pick up something new every year, and this year was no exception - I learned that for some reason, Paul Revere and another man brought John Hancock's trunk full of papers out onto the battle ground for fear of the British discovering them. Seemed odd to me, but apparently the British missed the large trunk sitting on the Green...

After the smoke cleared, we headed back to Bedford for some much anticipated breakfast! Then Scott went off to work, leaving Mike and I to some bike maintenance...

One thing I have never done in the 15 years I have been in this area is to go to the marathon. This year, our friend Michele was running, so we decided to do a "recovery" ride over to Wellesley to see if we could catch Michele running past. What a scene! I have never seen so many people working so hard. We were lucky enough to see the Hoyts go by, as well as Bill Rogers. Unfortunately, despite staring intently at the sea of runners (which, by the way, can result in motion sickness), we missed Michele even though she ran right past us on her was to a personal best time that qualified her again for next year. Way to go, Michele!



We rode a circuitous route back to Bedford, seemingly into a headwind the entire way. So much for our recovery ride ;-). We did recover later though, by taking a well-deserved nap! If you're in the area next year for "Revolutionary Monday" I would highly recommend taking in as much of the festivities as you can!

1 comment:

claudia said...

That indeed was a BRUTAL headwind. I so love Patriots' Day!