Sore Feet!! (Day 13) 9/21/09

Now, I may have complained a bit in the latest posts about not getting decent sleep. But last night's was beyond 'shabby'. Our room was hot, the couch mattress was hard and I kept rolling off of it, my sleeping bag was never less than a foot away from me, and just as I amazingly *did* fall asleep, I had to pee. Uggh.

Thank God for coffee.

I blundered over to the hotel lobby for my caffeine fix, and then set to my task of eating a far oversized hotel breakfast. I ended up having 3 pancakes with strawberries, scrambled eggs, potatoes, OJ, Coffee, a donut and a bad stomach-ache.

On the bright side, Dad gave me the fun assignment of looking up a Ferrari model that could seat 3+ people (for part of his new book, sorry no hints.) I looked through their website with little to no luck until I at last found the 612 Scaglietti. With a top speed of 199 MPH (C'mon, Ferrari, couldn't you just give us 200? Pretty please?) and an acceleration of 0-60 in under 4 seconds, this is a pretty fantastic car.

In a better mood with some of my food digested, Greta and I went out to play some tennis. Of course, we still stank, I can hardly hit the ball, but at least I can hit it =P.

We then left out for the first destination of our day. This was Lowell, Massachusetts. We went to the visitor center to do a basic tour and then watched the 20-minute orientation movie. We then walked along the 0.5-mile canal (for powering the factories) and went to the Boott Mills. This place was unique because there was actually a room full of the period's mechanical looms. And what's more, they were running them!

At first, we walked into the room after seeing the noise hazard sign to hear a cacophonous roar of the machines. We put in our earplugs, and then realized that out of the several dozen machines in the room, only 3 were running, and on the other side of the room. This was very revealing to the dangerous level of noise. What's more than that, when the attendees decided to turn on the three looms next to us, the noise at least doubled (Almost to Green Day concert levels!). It really made you realize how unsafe the working environment the millworkers had.

I then took a closer look at the loom. Essentially, it was a massive piece of metal powered by an over head belt, that moved every other piece of string in the cloth up and down as it shot the bobbin through. Imagine two baseball bats, both hitting a piece of wood back and forth. This was the source of all that noise!

After we visited this level of the mills, we went upstairs. Here, the full process of making cloth in one of these factories was explained to us. The process starts out with 'ginned' cotton (seeds and misc. crud removed) which then goes through a massive machine that straightens out the fibers at the bottom floor of the mill. This level was considered to be the most dangerous, as cotton dust flew everywhere (danger to the lungs) and you probably would have lost a finger or two, perhaps half an arm in this incredibly unsafe machine. Ouch.
The other machines on this level turned the straightened cotton into a loose form of string. It is long and straight, but is fluffy and falls apart easily.

At the next level, this loose form of string is turned into real string by, guess how? They twist it! After this process, the string suddenly becomes quite hard to pull apart and is tight. After this process, the small spools of string are turned into one, massive bolt on the next level. This bolt is fed into the looms on the top level.

Once we finished Lowell, we drove out to Concord for our second destination for the day. We were quite hungry at that point, so the visitor's center pointed us towards Helen's. Helen's is essentially a homey all-around american food restaurant that serves sandwiches, burgers, milkshakes, salads, soup and stuff. I had a sandwich with slaw and as we were lucky enough to get Helen herself as our waiter, she gave us little samples of frozen yogurt as our dessert.

With some food down our gullets, we were happy enough to set forth and see more old stuff. The next destination was the North Bridge. We stopped by and read the monument to the minutement and the graves of the 3 redcoats who died there in the first battle of the Revolutionary War.
Right next to the North Bridge was the old Manse, which is the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ancestors. The man there proceeded to give us a massive 2-hour (felt like 2 years) tour that went incredibly in-depth into every room (we spent around 15 minutes in each room of this 8 room house. Do the math. A lot of time.) Feeling over-knowledged, we set off with the full history of this home, to go see another one.

We had originally planned to see Lowell, Concord and Salem all in one day. You should've seen the expression on the face of the local I told this to. It was getting on 4:00 and we still had most of Concord and all of Salem to see! Dad finally decided to ditch Salem and we would see what we could of Concord.

Our next tour was of Louisa May Alcott's house. Ring a bell? She's the Author of Little Women, one of the most famous books of the time, and I'd say all time. As our tour guide heard our dilemma, she decided to give us a fast-paced walkthrough of this house so we'd have time to see Walden with daylight. We did this. She walked us through the abode of this family, which was covered in the original paintings of 'Amy' Alcott (This is her book name, I don't remember her real name) Dad was surprised as to how much talent Amy had. The paintings were quite detailed, even in watercolor.
The highlight of this house was seeing Louisa May's room. She apparently wrote Little Women on a tiny little desk between two windows, and we were privelidged to see it as it was back in the time. This was pretty amazing.

After seeing the last of the old stuff for our day, we set out for Walden. Walden is just down the road from Concord but has been preserved so that there are no Mega-Mart's near it. We walked around the 1.7 mile trail to the site of Walden's house. His house was no bigger than a garden shed with a bed and a desk in it. Right next to it is a cairn (collection of stones) that was formed in his memory. All the passersby drop a stone there, and by the time we got there in 2009, it was quite large. It was about 15 feet in diameter and was taller than my dad, although not solid (People make little piles of the stones that go up to 7 feet or so) There were also a bunch of swimmers there, who were stroking the approximately half mile from one side of the pond to the other.

We left Concord with some good memories and really sore feet. Greta made dinner, and then we fell fast asleep for our next day of more walking.