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“Knowledge is
an unending adventure
on the edge of uncertainty.”
-Jacob Bronowski

After a fairly uneventful night wandering through downtown Gloucester, and passing the Gorton’s Fish Headquarters (Woohoo! Fishsticks!) I checked out of the Crow’s Nest and spent the morning in the Laundromat doing 2 weeks worth of dirty boat laundry and decided what I still needed to keep with me.

One of the first things I did when I arrived in Gloucester, within a mobile signal range, was to text message Sheylyn. The ensuing conversation was not encouraging after the footing we had gotten back right before I left Culebra, but that is a story for another post.

Here I was, in a small town in northern Massachusetts with no obligations, no place to be, and all the time I wanted.

The next logical choice, for every reason imaginable to me, was to go to Boston, the city that I had idolized since I last left there at 13.

Ah, one of the less glamourous chores of travel.

So, after finishing my laundry and throwing away a couple items that were simply beyond a thorough washing, I packed up my backpack with a new lightened traveling load, and the rest into a bag to ship home. Since I had initially packed for a planned 4 months living aboard the Wanderbird well into the Arctic, this process lightened my pack significantly.

After a $20 postal bill to ship it back to Michigan, I continued to the Gloucester Train Station, a ramp and bench next to the tracks. While waiting for the train, I went across the street to a sandwich shop and got on of the barbeque roast beef sandwiches which were advertised all over the town.

The Gloucester city hall, on the way to the post office.

I finished it just a couple minutes before the southbound train pulled into the station, though missed my initial shot to get the wrapper into the garbage can below the train ramp.

View from my seat on the train.

Once aboard the train, the ticket was $11 she came around and asked where I was going.

I got into a conversation with another passenger who immediately recognized me as not having a northern Massachusetts accent, pursuing a conversation to ask me where I was from.

I told him Michigan.

Oh, he asked, What brings you here?

I just crewed a boat up the Atlantic from Puerto Rico. Now just traveling.

The conversation still makes me smile. I may not have clicked with the experience aboard the Wanderbird the way I was hoping to, but I’m still glad I tried it out. And it makes for a hell of a conversation piece for how I ended up in New England.

On my way to Boston.

Now the real question is where to go from here?

Benjamin Williams

Hi all, my name is Ben. I’m a native Michigander with a passion for human culture and new places, and more than that, new experiences. I have degrees in archaeology and writing, pursuing a career in the latter. However, I never quite lost that fascination for archaeological theory. For the past 11 years, I’ve been living and travelling between Asia, Europe, and North America, documenting ancient sites and the peoples who built them, and then adapting them into practical archaeological travel information at PathsUnwritten.com. https://pathsunwritten.com/about-me/

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