I was 13 during the bicentennial year of 1976.  One of the 4th of July festivities was a parade of tall ships into New York Harbor called Operation Sail. As I’ve said before, I love ships and sailing vessels are some of the most beautiful crafts ever built. I’m not sure if I watched it on TV that day or if I just read about it and saw the pictures in Time magazine.  I do remember a few years later, playing music in band written by Jay Chattaway that was written for the event. Last week I noted that Boston would be hosting a parade of tall ships in the harbor this weekend. This doesn’t happen very often so I thought it would be cool to go see it. I hadn’t talked about it much with Janet so I started watching the television coverage early that morning. As the first ship entered the outskirts of the harbor, I told her that I thought it would be cool to go see it live. She wasn’t totally on board with the idea, but agreed that if I wanted to go she would go along.

One of the reasons we moved to Tewksbury is because it’s only about 20 minutes to downtown. As usual, we parked at a subway station and took the orange line to the Haymarket station. We made our way to the end of Long Pier and found that the ship we’d seen on television was just making it’s way to the pier. This shouldn’t have been surprising as the pier is almost at the end of the harbor where it becomes the Charles and Mystic rivers.  We stayed for about an hour and saw some beautiful ships. We were lucky to be able to see as there were thousands of people not only on the pier but surrounding the entire harbor. Though she hadn’t been totally convinced of the plan that morning, Janet was thrilled we’d decided to take part in the event.

Afterward, we walked by Faneuil Hall where a pogo stick performer had drawn a crowd. He did all kinds of tricks that normal people would have broken their neck or skull had they attempted it. I was chosen from the crowd to help steady his ten foot pogo stick as he climbed to the top. He was very entertaining and made a great ending to an awesome event.

Many of my friends at work commented how cool it was that Janet and I take advantage of these opportunities as they arise. That’s exactly how I hope to continue this adventure, living in New England.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller