Exploring Massachusetts: July 1st 2012: Whale Watching and F-1 Racing with Friends

We had to get up really early this morning to pick up my friend from Malden to head to the New England Aquarium area. Thankfully, I managed to find parking nearby, but as my friend was hungry, we decided to stop by in the North End to have breakfast at Cafe Pompeii at 280 Hanover Street. Unfortunately, I realized after calling the whale watch people that we needed to be there half an hour before the start to board, and we were about to be late, so I decided to leave and asked for takeout instead and rushed there while my friends waited to collect the food. The tall ships were in town for the Harborfest 2012, so I took a picture of the Formidable, a replica pirate ship in dock, while waiting for my friends.

Thankfully, my friends were able to make it on board in the end with minutes to spare. We finally had time to eat our takeout brunch on the ship, and even though we had no utensils and had to make feeble attempts at using straws as chopsticks to pick up our food, I have to say that I was disappointed with the quality of food we had, with the Spaghetti Frittata I had being just average.

We soon left the harbor, and the picture taking started, of the tall ships docked at the Boston Fish Pier, the USS Wasp, and of the city we were leaving behind.

Tall Ships at Boston Fist Pier

USS Wasp

Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Facility

Heading out to sea

Lovell's Island

Boston Lighthouse

Nixes Mate

Hilton Boston Logan Airport

Boston Logan Airport

The first whale we came upon was a solo humpback whale, and this time I managed to capture a picture of its tail.

The tail

Whale "footprint"

After this, the boat captain spotted spouts of water in the distance, so we sped toward it, and realized it was actually a finback whale, with a few white sided dolphins swimming along it.

Seagull

Finback whale letting off steam

White Sided Dolphins

It was really cool to see the dolphins jumping high out of the water, and even swimming close to the boat, curious to see what we were all about.

Unfortunately, the time to turn back came too soon, but on the way back, we were able to see some tall ships out sailing in the harbor with their sails unfurled.

Tall ships in the harbor

With that, we arrived back at the harbor, where our friend was waiting to take us to F-1 racing in East Bridgewater. Along the way there, I managed to take a picture of the Holy Family Church in Rockland while passing through the town.

Holy Family Church

When we reached the racing area, we still had a little time before our race, and as we had to wait for another friend of ours to arrive anyway, we decided to head to a nearby Wendy's for some quick food. On coming back, we had to sign some waivers and there was also a briefing session to teach us about some of the rules of the race, like not bumping into people while racing, not using both brake and acceleration at the same time, and the penalty rules. I had already done F-1 racing indoorsFinally, it was time to suit up, with jumpsuits, neck braces, balaclavas, and racing helmets. Before the race started, I managed to take some pictures of the race course, and they follow.

I'll have to say, the experience racing outdoors was way better than what I experienced at the indoor track in Braintree, although I still did not race as well as I had hoped to, even hitting one of my racers from behind and being almost penalized for it. We were really lucky though, because right after our race, it started to rain and thunder, so the next race, the last race for the day, was actually cancelled.

After the race, we headed back to Boston, where my friend who had come to visit for the weekend decided that it was time to go home. I'm just glad that I was able to give him a good time skydiving in Chatham, whale watching in Boston and F-1 racing in East Bridgewater.

After dropping him off at South Station, my friends and I decided to go watch the movie "Prometheus" at Showcase Cinemas in Revere, close to where my friends lived. A lot of my friends said that the movie was good, but seriously, I felt that it was just another typical "go to a foreign planet, realize that the aliens there are bad and want to kill us, run, and get killed in the process" kind of movie, and nothing more.

After the movie, it was already pretty late, but my good friends still wanted to have some dinner and conversation with me, so we decided to go to the Square One Mall in Saugus, where we headed to Tokyo Japanese Steakhouse for dinner. This restaurant apparently opened only a few months ago, and was pretty nice for a Hibachi and Shabu-shabu place.

My friend is actually a sushi chef at Oishii in Boston, so he refused to have any maki, although I got the Tuna Amazing Maki, which came with white tuna tempura, avocado, spicy tuna, topped with pepper tuna, mango sauce, eel sauce and tobiko, and was pretty good in my opinion.

One appetizer he did have was the Agedashi Tofu, which was pretty large for an appetizer, and was really delicious, considering I rarely eat tofu.

The rest of our meal consisted of ordering all sorts of meat like beef tongue and tripe and vegetables for shabu-shabu, which I had not had in a long time as well, and experimenting with how raw I could go with the meat. Final conclusion, the rawer, the better. Pictures of the food we had follow.