Riding 400 Miles to a Picnic, Part 2: The Picnic

Charles River Bike Path

I rolled up to the Ig Nobel Prize picnic after a seven-mile ride from the east side of Cambridge.  Part of the ride was on the wide, paved bike path that follows the south bank of the Charles River.  On the short ride, I travelled on Route 28, Beacon Street, a scenic bike path and a quiet residential neighborhood.  Boston beauty.

Maria Ferrante, director of "The Broken Heart Opera," on the Snders Theater stage.

When I arrived, most of the people at the picnic were gathered around the piano in the basement.  Each Ig Nobel Prize ceremony since 1996 includes a comic opera that starts and stops and starts again between the awarding of the prizes.  This year will be the premiere of “The Broken Heart Opera.” Leading the practice for this year’s opera was Maria Ferrante, the director, and an accomplished soprano who has performed in Grand Operas.  Maria had to leave early, so practice was already in progress.

At the piano were two young players, Ivan Gusev from Kazakstan and Yulia Yun from Uzbekistan.  They sat together, one playing, then the other, and sometimes they played four handed.  They were fun to watch, both as brilliant musicians and the way they interacted as they played.  At one point they played “Sheikh of Araby” . Ivan and Yulia played their parts sometimes reaching across each other. At one point Ivan reached too far and Yulia pushed him off the left side of the bench. Ivan rolled onto the floor, and quickly got back onto the piano bench.

Ivan Gusev

Yulia Yun

Marc Abrahams, the emcee of the Ig Nobel Ceremony, stepped to the side of the piano as Ivan resumed his seat. Marc said, “If that should happen during the performance, just keeping playing.”

Marc Abrahams, Emcee, Impresario of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, with an actual Ig Nobel Prize

Practice continued another 15 minutes, then Maria was off to her next event. After the practice Marc suggested that Ivan and Yulia watch the video of Stephanie Trick and her husband Paolo Alderighi playing “Sheikh of Araby.” It’s really good. The four-handed playing begins at 3:30. 

Next we moved to the patio, where I met John Barrett. He has been the referee of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony for more than twenty years.  John keeps time, making sure the 24/7 Lectures, 24-second talk followed by a 7-second summary, do not go over time.  John is a veteran. He enlisted in the Army Reserve in the 1950s at age 17, then went to Harvard after he came home from Basic and Advanced training.  He told funny stories about being in the band during his brief time in the Army.

John Barrett, referee, action shot

After talking Army with John Barrett, I talked about Gilbert and Sullivan, serious and comic operas, and life in Massachusetts with John Jarcho and Jean Cummings. They are both singers in the opera. John went to medical school at the University of Utah around the same time I was stationed in Utah on Hill Air Force Base. John and Jean and I were joined by others in a discussion of whether Utah street addresses were the best or the worst addresses in the country. If you have never lived there, I once lived at 2321 West 5900 South.  There are no street names, just numbers on a grid. In Salt Lake City, the addresses run into the ten thousands radiating out from the Mormon Temple. John likes Utah addresses, Jean and I like streets with names. Then Jean and I talked about how crazy it is that people can misspell four-letter names like Neil and Jean. 

I have been a volunteer at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony since 2010, but this is the first year I was able to attend one of the picnics. On the day of the event, there are so many things going on that I see people but never get a chance to talk with them, especially about important matters like Utah addresses, or misspelling names. I will definitely try to get back next year.

Volunteering at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony

In the middle of every Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony the audience 

launches hundreds of paper airplanes toward the stage.

The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is held every year in Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University.  This year’s ceremony will be held at 6 p.m.  September 13, and webcast live. Since the first ceremony in 1991, the event always occurs before the awarding of the Nobel Prizes. The ceremony gets press coverage in countries around the world, especially those that are home to Ig Nobel (and Nobel) Prize winners.

Channel 1, Russian Federation

Every year one or more US-based TV crews from Japanese TV stations show up.  Crews from France and Russia are also annual attendees.  One of my volunteer jobs for the past seven years has been to keep the Russian crew from Первый Канал (Channel One) within the limits for press people. The names of the prize winners are embargoed, and the rules of Sanders Тheater mean the crews have to share the platform where cameras are allowed, so they can only film during specific parts of the ceremony.

The Russian crew is not very good at obeying the rules.  Since I am the only press volunteer who is also ex-military, I volunteered to escort the Russians.  It will be fun to meet up with Channel One cameraman Boris again (that really is his name).

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Riding 400 Miles to a Picnic

In the second week in July, I took a bike trip to Boston.  Actually, it was a trip with a bike more than a bicycle trip, sort of like the trip I took last year across Eastern Europe. I rode the bike, rode trains, took a ferry from Orient Point, Long Island, to New London, Connecticut, and in between met friends and rode in some of my favorite places. 

The reason for the trip was to attend one of the pre-event Ig Nobel Prize picnics for volunteers.  I have been a volunteer for the Igs since I returned form Iraq in 2010. As it turns out, I was not the only person to ride to the picnic, but the other guy rode from across town. I will say more on the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and the picnic in the next post.

When I got back from the trip to Europe last year, I continued to ride long distances. I rode to Philadelphia and New York, but I did not meet people the way I did in Europe. I wondered why.

The reason became clear when I looked at how I rode: in America I ride with a goal. When I stop to eat I eat fast then get back on the bike and ride.

So this trip, I stopped to see friends and I talked to people when I stopped. On the first day, rode as far as Paoli and got on a regional train to Philadelphia.  I met a Marine and his grandson and had a real conversation, written here.

On the first day, I left the bike in Philadelphia, went home for the night and started from Philadelphia the next day.  Late in the day, I got on New Jersey Transit so I could meet up with my racer buddy Jim and ride from Times Square to Fort Lee, NJ.  We rode part of the way on the west side bike path which has new barriers every place that a vehicle could get on the path. Pairs or parallel concrete barriers make sure the path is closed to cars since the terrorist attack in the Spring. 

The next day I rode with Jim in the morning from NJ to Times Square, then met a political activist friend for lunch in Manhattan. After lunch, I went to the Holocaust Museum in BatteryPark, then rode through Brooklyn and started the ride across Long Island.  I was almost halfway up the island when I stopped. 

The next day, I rode to Orient Point.  When I stopped to eat, I talked to a couple who wondered what it was like to ride across Long Island.  I could tell them that the east and west sides were completely different.  The east end in Brooklyn up to 30 miles from NYC is traffic and busy, though not narrow, roads. Then just about half way, the island becomes rural. Farms, trees, and fields are the landscape from mid-island to the east extreme at Orient Point. 

When I rolled up to the ferry terminal I saw lines of cars waiting to board. From my experience with customs in Eastern Europe, I rode past all the cars right up to the boarding ramp.  The guy at the dock told me where to get a ticket.  I rolled onto the boat and went straight to the other end with the first cars off.  When I stopped, a guy with a Battenkill t-shirt walked up and introduced himself. He had done last year’s Battenkill race, a classic race in upstate New York. I raced in 2016. We shared stories about 68 miles of pavement, dirt and steep hills up and down. 

After the ferry, I rode northeast out of New London. It was almost 5 p.m. when I rolled off the big ferry. I planned to ride till dark and see if I could get close enough to Providence, Rhode Island to take a train to Boston that night—or ride the next day.

I made it Wickford Junction, the southernmost train station on the MBTA Providence line. It was a long ride in sweaty clothes to Boston.  But taking the train tonight meant I could stay in Cambridge and ride to my home in Stoneham the next day and still get to the picnic. I got up late, rode to Stoneham and visited my parents’ grave.

After the visit, I rode through the cemetery to the upper entrance for pedestrians.  Lindenwood Cemetery is on the side of a hill.  Narrow steep roads curve up and down in serpentine paths from the bottom to the top of the cemetery.  When I was in the 4^th and 5^th grade at Robin Hood Elementary School in Stoneham, one of my friends was Bobby Sweeney. He was fearless on a bicycle.  We would race down those hills skidding, sliding and occasionally crashing into headstones. Bobby almost always won the races and he crashed more than any of us.

After I left the cemetery, I rode to City Cycle on Main Street near the corner of Montvale Avenue. The bike shop is in the same location it was in 1959 when it opened. I talked to the owner, Eric Barras. I bought the last bike I owned as a kid at City Cycle. It was a green Schwinn Varsity ten-speed.  I bought when I was 12 years old in 1965.  I worked full time in the summer since I was 12, but I had Monday off and would take long rides on this bike. On summer day in 1966, I rode to New Hampshire and back. The 112-mile round trip was the longest one-day ride until almost 30 years later, when I got addicted to cycling again.  That Schwinn got stolen not long after my ride to New Hampshire. I gave up cycling for almost 25 years after losing that bike.

Eric is 79 and still fixing and selling bikes at City Cycle. He grew up in Lynnefield, but has worked at City Cycle for nearly six decades. 

After City Cycle, I rode through Stoneham Square and back to Cambridge, then to the Ig Nobel picnic in Brookline.  This picnic was my reason for the 400-mile bike, train, boat ride to Boston.  I was one of two people who ride to the picnic, but the other guy did not ride quite as far. 

Continued in the next post