Centennial

Once a long time ago (actually, this summer will be exactly 20 years), we spent a summer, as always, on my grandparents' boat.  We ended up taking a week or so off the boat to spend time on the Queen Charlotte Islands, where my sister and I got to ride Haflingers every day on a ranch.

Later we ended up heading home only to be recalled by the Canadian Coast Guard due to a large storm.  My grandpa told them that he'd rather take his chances on the open sea since having his boat at the marina would potentially mean damage to the boat from banging against the dock.  So we rode out a storm with gale force winds on the open ocean in my grandparents' 40 foot sailboat.  To date, that is the only time in my life I have been seasick (though I have been in other storms on the ocean).

Anyways, my mom and my sister and I were in the forward V berth, rolling around from the storm.  If you have never been seasick, I promise you there is no worse feeling in the world.  It is significantly worse than being normally sick.  You want to die.  In order to try to make us all feel better, my Mom started to tell us the story of a bock she had been reading during the trip: Centennial, by James Michener, a lengthy work of historical fiction about the history of Colorado.  Thus started my life-long obsession with historical fiction and Michener; Centennial is still one of my favorite books.

A mini-series was made of the stories and it is traditional for us to watch it over Thanksgiving or Christmas and several inside family jokes originate from this mini-series.  Just got an email from my mom that it is finally on DVD (I have it on VHS).  Watch it if you like historical fiction - it's one of the best historical sagas out there.