Today: Get ship-faced.

UPDATE: Visiting the Tall Ships at Charlestown’s Navy Yard was a  great deal of fun.  Added some photos from the excursion.  Enjoy!

I do love a pun. This is embarrassing, but once I watched the E! True Hollywood Story about rappers’ wives (or was it True Life: I married a rapper?).  That’s why I know so much about Big Pun (mostly, how he was terrible and then he died).

Regardless, ahoy, mateys!  Despite the economy’s best efforts to sink the Ships’ visit to Boston, the Tall Ships have arrived.  Though there was no sea parade this time around, I am hoping it will be as awesome as I remember.  Actually, I hope it will be more awesome than I remember.  Because… this is what I remember:

It was 1992 and the Cape Cod Canal was full of ships.

My mom is driving one of a series of Chrysler minivans during this era. I actually think our family was involved in every phase of the minivans evolution.  We had the prototype with very few bells and whistles.  Then they added the faux bois siding, which was very cool.  Then came various compartments in the “way back” (that’s what we called the third row of seating).  Eventually a second sliding door and window tinting appeared.  And, praise Jesus, windows in the way back that actually opened.  I digress.  Again.

My mom packed up all four of us (I believe our ships came in mid-week while dad was at work.  Lucky.) and we headed north.

We (more accurately, she) parked the minivan along the Cape side of the canal and we disembarked, Goldfish crackers in hand, just as the first of several Tall Ships sailed slowly through the canal.  To clarify, a Tall Ship is exactly that.  It’s a tall ship.  Capitalized.  They were incredible—majestic, even—and they reminded me of pirate movies and The Swiss Family Robinson.  And then I started vomiting for a very long time.

Don’t worry, it gets better.

I presume, though I did not witness, all of the Ships made it safely through the canal, signaling that it was time to leave.  Out of respect for the rest of my family, I stopped throwing up.  Once we got back on the highway, we noticed people waving to us from passing cars.  Some of them pointed.  Others beeped and waved and pointed.  We smiled and waved, and quite possibly my mom even beeped, back.

It wasn’t until we were back at the cottage and my mom opened her car door that we realized that we were not traveling on route 6 with legions of adoring fans.  Instead, when my mother closed her car door and pulled out from the side of the road, she succeeded in uprooting a rather large shrub, which traveled with us from the forty miles from canal to cottage, presumably touching other cars as they passed us.  Did I mention that I threw up?

So here’s to hoping Tall Ships: The Later Years is free of environmental damage and stomach illness.  And totally, totally awesome.

Pictures from the adventure (added July 13th):

Also On Tap for Today:

• Buy Christopher a birthday pressie.  He turns 21 tomorrow!

What childhood experiences are you revisiting this weekend?  Did your mom ever single-handedly erode a micro-eco-system?