Crazy Barbie Rides With The Quackers
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2005
1
16
52
Trip End
Jan 01, 2006
Seattle,
Washington,
United States
Sunday, August 28, 2005
It was the last Saturday of August, but it wasn't hot. We stood in the rope-line marked #2, licking our ice cream, waiting for our Duck to arrive. Scott had driven Brett and Jake from the south end, about 30 miles away; I'd picked up Matt and Andrew, who live near me, and we'd come 10 miles from the north.
Our get-together is an annual event; I call it G-Mom's Special Adventure & Fabulous Outing Day
533 Quack Quack
. Once we spent the night at the zoo, flashlights for midnight lion-hunting required. Last year we went to Wild Waves for the day; I picked them up in a chauffeured limo and we rode home on the bus. Every kid needs to know: whatever your circumstance in life, you can have a great time! Today, we were riding the DUCKS, WWII amphibious vehicles that went straight from the street to the lake with wheels dangling down. Now, that surely would be a day of fun. But, I hadn't counted on the noise-makers the other passengers-in-waiting had foolishly purchased and were tooting with abandon. Quack quack quack quack quack! Ee-yikes, what an unnatural sound. Lord love a duck.
The boys were chatting, joking, laughing, re-aquainting their cousin-ness and figuring out what they wanted to talk about. Just then a Duck pulled beside our waiting line and a frenzy of quacking began. Our Duck was here! Quack quack quack quack quack! They moved us forward a group at a time for boarding, stopping us just long enough for a snapshot pose with the Ship's Ducky Ring (photos later @ $20 each).
We grabbed the last window-seats in this open-air clanker and prepared for takeoff. Our pilot stood and waved, her mike on hi-verb and her hand pointing to the overhead rows of life-jacket stack. What was that in her hand? A skinny thing with long blond hair? She shook it and flipped it and turned it upside down. "I'm the only female pilot in the crew!" she shouted gleefully. "And this is my co-pilot Crazy Barbie!" She gave Barbie another hair-flinging shake, then hung her upside-down over the dash and plopped into the driver's seat.
Ten honks on the horn and a violent storm of quacking later, we were on Fifth Avenue, traveling south under the line of the monorail, Crazy Barbie keeping watch for the next Starbucks and a caffeine fix.
