Day 0: Leaving Boston

Alex's mom backed us a cake on Sunday as part of our going away get together with my family, Alex's mom and my grandmother. But this was no ordinary cake--it was a collaborative decorating adventure. Here's what it looked like:

On the left, we have California--with an emphasis on San Francisco. Notice the golden gate bridge in red licorice with alcatraz next to it? Below that, the stack of Triscuit wafers with an Intel logo (get it? Intel makes chip wafers?) represents Silicon Valley. Below that, the panda lives in the San Diego zoo.

Across the middle of the cake, we have a long road crossing the continental divide. To the top of the road, we've got yellowstone park with geyers, bears and a few mountains.

Below that, we have the southwest--with snakes and buried silver.

On the other side of the continental divide the road passes the corn fields of Iowa; the money in the corn represents the corn subsidies bestowed on these red states by the blue states on either half of the cake.

Beneath the corn fields is the rust belt, home of broken factories and dreams--or in this cake, broken coins and broken toothpicks.

Finally on the right is Boston, home of the prudential center (the big cucumber) the green monster (the little cucumber slice), Harvard, MIT, and snow.

The cake was pretty tasty, too!  Except for the part where I got some of America's broken dreams in my slice.