Monday, August 1, 2011

Boston: the pinnacle of the journey (where she reaches her Aunt and Uncle)

On July 25th, I arrived safely in...

BOSTON
(Skyline shot finally captured from my phone... during a Boston Harbor Whale Watch tour.)
And for the next five days, I lived my motivation for this trip:  a visit to my Aunt and Uncle.

If they were your relatives, you’d probably travel all the way across the country via megabus to visit them too.

In Boston, my Uncle Jim made sure that I caught my first Major League Baseball game.


Where I saw the Red Sox beat Kansas City 13-9.


And the glory of Fenway Park at Sunset.


My Uncle Jim’s holy moment in the 7th inning stretch.
Another person who's shared in my Uncle Jim’s season tickets:

Howard Zinn
My uncle took Howard Zinn to his last major league baseball game.

(See? It's like we're at the same game.)
Howard Zinn is the author of the book I've been reading on my megabus journey across the United States:

A People's History of the United States. Some light summer reading.
(No trolling the comments, please. I get that he’s a controversial historian.)
My aunt made sure that I got beach time. Which is all the the more precious when you’re landlocked in Iowa.
Plum Island, Massachusetts.
Where I had plenty of downtime with these two wonderful people:

My aunt and uncle.
And just in case that wasn't enough-- the next day, they took me out on the ocean on a  four hour whale watching tour  through Boston Harbor Cruises.

We pulled away from Boston Harbor.

Me, finally in a skyline shot.

We passed Fort Warren (constructed around 1833).

And then we saw:
Whales!
Boston Harbor Cruises gurantees you'll see a whale-- or you get your money back.

This does not count the ten foot whale atop their ticket booth.
Some came breathtakingly close to the boat:

The best day to go is when the sky is overcast and the water is a little rough.
My aunt captured this video:

I got this one:

At least six whales leapt entirely out of the water —but of course, all we managed to capture was a lot of:
Splash.
Which made Uncle Jim go a little nuts:


That or my aunt and I stumbled upon the Planter's Tour after our whale watch, when we hung around the historic (now extremely commercial) Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

Nut-Mobile.

Faneuil Hall:

Featuring Samuel Adams.
Times have changed.
My uncle is a rock critic.  Early on in the week, he asked me:: “So what would you rather see Chistina Perri or something that will totally blow your mind?” Resulting in the big shebang that makes him officially the coolest Uncle in the world:

VIP passes to the Flaming Lips!

Where the universe opens up:


Stares back at you:


And part rock-star / part shaman, Wayne Coyne comes out in his space bubble:


CAUTION: video may cause epileptic seizures:



Wayne Coyne promised us our birthday, New Years and Christmas all rolled into one spectacular  psychedelic experience.

And guided the audience in a collective fantasy that the balloons are giant magic orbs; the confetti, pixie dust.
 Maybe it was the contact high, but I was SO with them.
Wayne Coyne and his megaphone.

Wayne Coyne and his massive hands that shoot lasers.
STROBE LIGHTS
The Flaming Lips are 40% music, 60% spectacle. And 100% what Wayne has coyned “exaggerated optimism.”

This includes the aurora borealis / hypnotic green lasers:




Of course, there were other Boston highlights:

*Hanging around Coolidge Corner (the neighborhood in Brookline, where my aunt and uncle live).


*A visit to Mr. Sushi (possibly the best sushi in Brookline).

* Seeing Project Nim













(A documentary about Nim Chimpsky,  an ape that was raised to be human as a psychological experiment.)

*After "Project Nim," watching my uncle correspond via e-mail for the next few hours with Noam Chomsky.

But it'd be pretty hard to upstage the Flaming Lips.

Next stop...

 NYC.

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