i was hoping to leave early, but i didn't get out of my house until 11:10, with the pride march starting at noontime. it took me about half an hour to get to backbay station, but fortunately there still weren't too many people lined up on the sidewalks yet. a photographer had already staked out the best stop, on top of the hill by a mailbox. i was about 10 yards further down. the weather was pleasant but sunny enough that i sprayed on some sunblock before i left the house.

pride march typically starts on time and this year was no exception, beginning with a cavalcade of motorcycles.

my camera malfunctioned a few times, flashing error messages on the small LCD top screen. i'd take some photos, then it wouldn't shot anymore, flash errors. the only way to fix it is to remove the battery, but that has the unfortunate effect of erasing the last photos i took from the memory. i couldn't figure out what it was: the battery? the card? the camera? but after some stressful minutes, i think it was because the card was partially in write protected mode. after i put it back in write mode, i didn't experience anymore errors. of course i could've been more fearful of taking too much photos after that, and even more, i can't be quite sure if the error won't happen again in the future.

i was actually a little bored this year. i was expecting to see more spectacle, but instead it was groups after groups of mainstream. i'm still debating as to whether or not i should go to the mermaid parade in coney island next saturday. it's kind of a haul, but there's always plenty of photo ops.

the march seems really long this year. unwilling to sit and wait, i walked from backbay station down to copley square to see if there was anything worth waiting around for. since it seemed sort of boring, i returned to backbay to retrieve my bicycle.

is the pride march the largest parade event in boston? at the very least it seems to shut down the most streets (apart from the boston marathon, which wins in total street closures for its entire 26 miles stretch). this is great when i'm on a bike, because there are stretches of the city that's completely cut off from car traffic, and i basically have entire streets to myself to ride however i want. so from backway i moseyed my way to the outskirts of china, to the supermarket formerly known as super 88 to get some glutinous rice for my mother to make zongzi. she wanted 2 kinds: long grain glutinous rice for meat zongzi, short grain glutinous rice for sweet zongzi.

afterwards i made my way to the arthur fiedler footbridge, riding alongside the parade route from boston common as it made its way up charles street then onwards to the state house. approaching the footbridge, i felt the bike chain suddenly shifting gears and found myself unable to pedal anymore. i pulled up on the curb and tried to loosen the chain but it was jammed between the chainwheel and the bike frame. the only way to release the chain was to break it; fortunately the chain has a missing link component that i could use to unlink the chain. i think every bike chain should have one of these because it can be a real life saver. i managed to take off the chain and look it back onto the sprockets. of course by that point my hands were completely black from chain grease. i poured some tumbler water onto my hands and try to clean it as best as i could with some tissue.

i rode the charles river bike path until the mass ave bridge, then crossed it into cambridge through MIT. from there it was another 20 minute ride before i got home.

exhausted, slightly dehydrated, i downed a can of seltzer water while i took a quick shower to clean off the grease, the sweat, and sunblock. still slightly out of breath, i got dressed and took the motorcycle to belmont. there was no way i could've biked anymore.

when i got to belmont, i learned that one of the new hot pepper plants we planted on wednesday had been decapitated by a rabbit. this makes it the 3rd pepper plant to get killed. how was that possible? we put up new fencing, there was no gaps...unless the rabbit was small enough to get through the wire mesh fencing, that's the only way i could think of. so we decided up cutting plastic cup collars for all the plants: eggplants, tomatoes, hot peppers, basically anything we don't want to get chewed by rabbits. this seems to be the only solution we have this season; maybe next season we'll invest in some smaller fencing to keep out the rabbits.

i was eager to get back home after dinner just so can finally rest. besides, i needed another shower since i could still smell sunblock on my body. this was my second consecutive day of biking to boston and back in hot weather and i was so tired that i almost didn't have enough energy to finish dinner. the surprisingly thing was once i got home i seemed to have gotten my energy back and didn't go straight to bed like i thought i would. later in the evening i was feeling hungry again and had a cup of maruchan instant noodles, chicken flavor.