26-Mar-99 was going to be “New River path”

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My watchhad fallen off on Wedensday night during choir rehearsal. It wasn't a broken strap, but rather the thing on the watch body that the strap clicks into which had broken. The watch, one of the Casio ones that stores phone numbers and beeps a month from now when you have a meeting, hadn't been letting me keep phone numbers on it since the last time the battery was changed, so I didn't mind admitting it was a goner. At lunch time I biked over to Ames to get a new one.

Ames is in the River City Shopping Center, a development that went up in the 60's, when I was commuting down that street to grad school. That shopping center is so old you don't even call it a strip mall. I found a cheap off-brand watch that claimed to store phone numbers and noticed, as I unlocked my bike, that there was a pedestrian bridge over the Charles just at the corner of the rear of the parking lot. In the last three or four years the Metropolitan District Commission has been on a campaign to reclaim riverfront parkland that belongs to it, which it has neglected for the past 75 years. Homeowners and businesses have encroached on the land; people have used it as their own gardens and parking lots. At one point along the river the electric company set up some utility poles for linemen to practice on. The MDC decided to build a river walk along it. They told the homeowners they would build a fence to keep the public out of the backyards but the homeowners could have a gate if they wanted to use the walk, and told the businesses that they would have to quit parking their backhoes and telephone poles on it, but if they chipped in to fix it up the commission wouldn't need to sue them, and their employees would have a park to eat lunch in. People were pretty cooperative. One of the businesses that was a prime offender now has a deck overlooking a little dam, and there are always people on it enjoying the view. At any rate, I hadn't checked out the section behind Ames up to this point. A Canada goose, one of several on the grass next to the path, hissed at me for coming too close. The new bridge is very low and close to the water, giving you a good feel for the river. I followed the path back along the Newton side.