A very big ship - Part II - Stories from the cruise

A cruise chip is actually a large, floating, resort hotel with all the amenities; 1,500 or so guest rooms, multiple restaurants (5 on this ship), art galleries (2), spas (9 of them), swimming pools (4 plus hot tubs), a front desk (where you can go - repeatedly - when your key card quits working), casinos, theaters, bistros, night clubs, video arcades, a gym, a golf course (!), a wedding chapel, numerous bars, a pizzeria, a BBQ grill, a Sundae shop, a library, an Internet Cafe, room service, and a picture puzzle table.

There are also large kitchens on the ship, churning out food 24 hours a day. Barb and I opted for the less formal buffet for our meals. They handed you huge plates and bid you Bon Appetite as you tried a little of this and a little of that, and ohh - that looks good. Pretty soon you needed help carrying your plate! And of course, you could always go back for more.

And you could come back later in the morning/afternoon/evening for cookies/desserts/sundaes.Or you could just order from room service and it would magically show up at your door. We did not, however, find any Tex-Mex on board. No chips and queso.

Waitstaff was omnipresent, bringing drinks, whisking away empty plates, and constantly replenishing your coffee or coke. For every few servers there appeared to be a manager, and for every few managers there appeared to be a supervisor.

The crew members were largely multinational; we met several from Peru, one from the Ukraine, many were Filipinos. The Captain was a Scot, the First Officer was Italian, and we never did place the accent of the person who made the public announcements (or understand him, either).

Each meal began with an obligatory Purell hand sanitizing; they wouldn't let you in the buffet line without one; Princess must buy the stuff in fifty-five gallon barrels - there were dispensers everywhere you turned. Of course, there's good reason for this; cruise ships are floating petri dishes and a boat load of norovirus-stricken passengers is everyone's worst nightmare. I think on average, we washed our hands forty times a day!

Leaving the ship, there was always a photo opportunity, with crew members dressed in costumes representative of the area (bear, moose, lumberjack, etc.) Security scanned your card and large signs informed you when to be back on board. That didn't always work out - we watched a tardy couple get left behind in Ketchikan. Later we learned six passengers missed the ship in that port.

When you returned to the ship, you went through security again, including an ID check and a pass through the metal detector. Some failed that part, and we saw the security staff confiscate some purchased items. For the most part, these seemed to be Ulu knives (I had to look it up) which were considered weapons, so security held them for you until your final disembarkation.

Some resort hotels have ocean views - on one side of the hotel. A cruise ship has ocean views on all sides, and the view is continually changing.

Monday Meanderings - 6.30.2014

A long time ago, I wrote about our on-going battle with the squirrels over the bird feeders. No matter what we did, it seemed, we could not prevent the squirrels from raiding the feeders and chasing off the birds. I posted this video, suggesting that this might be the best weapon in the squirrel wars.


We finally found some feeders that were, at best, squirrel resistant, and for several years we have achieved a stand-off.

No more.

The other morning we came out to find that Mr. Squirrel had pried up a corner of the cap, exposing an edge of the plastic tubing, gnawed a hole big enough for him to crawl into the tube, and standing on his head, calmly ate his way through a half-pound of birdseed!

Do you see the appendage sticking out to the left of the top of the feeder? That's a hind leg - the only part of him that is not stuffed into the interior! Look closely and you can see him inside the upper half of the feeder.

And he can extricate himself quickly, if need be. Say, if someone were rushing outside to punish him for this egregious behavior. I can only hope that he stuffs himself to the point that he can no longer exit gracefully. And do not think that you have won the war, Mr. Squirrel. This battle, maybe. The war, no way!

One of the benefits of retirement is that you get to sleep as late as you want. You do have to be careful making appointments and such; from time to time someone will suggest that I can see Dr. So-and-so at 8:30AM, or even 8:00! That's just crazy talk. For a while there, it was working out nicely, but I think the cruise put a big hickey in my internal clock.

This time of year, the sun sets in that part of Alaska about 10PM and rises about 4AM. Problem is, it doesn't actually get dark until midnight or so, and it is already getting light at 4AM, and if it is light outside, there are things to see. Additionally, they are on Alaskan Daylight Savings Time, which is 4 hours earlier than real time here in Texas. So now I'm messed up time-wise and keep waking up early. Much too early. Maybe I need to go spend some time where the sunrise is at a decent hour. Say, 10AM. Yeah, that's the ticket.

A very big ship - Stories from the cruise

 The size of modern-day cruise ships is staggering. Standing on the dock, looking up at these behemoths leaves one speechless. We sailed the Inner Passage on the Golden Princess, a modest-sized vessel of 109,000 gross tons that carries 2,600 passengers plus 1,100 crew members. I say modest because there are 48 active ships larger than the Golden Princess. The largest ships are the Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas, and her sister ship, Oasis of the Seas, weighing in at 225,282 gross tons. Each carries 6,296 passengers and crew!

The Golden Princess is 951 feet long, beam of 159 feet. From waterline, this boat is 18 stories (decks) tall, with 4 floors in the "basement." One would think that this massive superstructure would result in a significant draft below the waterline. I was surprised to find it was only 29 feet. The aircraft carrier USS Lexington, by comparison, is only 833 feet long and weighs 36,380 tons

Embarking on a cruise is much like embarking on a plane trip; arrive at a jam-packed terminal building, check your luggage, present your documents (one of which swears that you are not at the present time, nor have you recently been ill), proceed through security on your way to the boarding gate. About the only difference is that you are photographed and your photo is tied to your key card (door key, ID and on-board charge card)..

We opted for a room with a private balcony, but privacy is a relative term. If you sneeze, neighbors from two rooms on either side of you and from above and below you say, "Bless You." And from our vantage point on the 12th deck, we could look over the rail and see into about 100 other balconies.We had a group of Japanese on one side of us, and two couples of Mid-Westerners on the other.  Not sure about their sleeping arrangements; those rooms were the same size as ours. Maybe they just had a lot of friends visiting.All of the time.

We sailed from Seattle on a beautiful afternoon, and enjoyed being "top side" for a long time. Finally returned to our room to find all our luggage had been faithfully delivered and met our wonderful room steward Mac. Got unpacked, went to the buffet for a meal and settled in for the evening.

During the night, the winds picked up, we moved out into the open waters of the Pacific, and the ship began a little rocking and rolling. It felt like being in an airplane in a really bumpy stretch, and you kept expecting the captain to turn on the seat belt sign. If we had been wearing those new motion sensing bracelets, we would have racked up the miles while seated!

Lying in bed, it felt like someone had their foot on the bed, jostling it repeatedly - a feeling similar to an earthquake we experienced in Mexico City once. From time to time, it felt like the ship was going over a speed bump!

The next morning was even worse. For folks that already stagger a bit, making our way to breakfast was an adventure. There are rails almost everywhere, thankfully, so we clung tightly and pulled ourselves along.

On deck, all the water in the swimming pools was sloshing over their sides. In the inner part of the ship, the creaking and groaning of the walls and bulkheads sounded like the soundtrack of a movie about wooden sailing ships on the high seas. We met a lot of green-faced individuals along the way.

 We had motion sickness medicine with us, both the Scopolamine patches and the meclazine tablets, but neither of us felt sea-sick, and I'm pretty sure we can say after that day's sailing we never will be. The TV said we were experiencing "mild" seas, winds at 33 knots (38 mph). Later the Captain talked about the 50 knot winds (58 mph) that delayed our arrival into Juneau. We heard a crew member say "that was the worst he had ever experienced!" Here's a little video from that experience:

Fortunately, by evening, things were much calmer, and from that point we had nothing but calm seas.

Next: living the good life, in Part II

Monday Meanderings - 6.23.2014

Had a meeting with our financial adviser last week. He said we were in great financial shape, but hoped we didn't have any long term plans. Like, say, in July.

One of our favorite churches for sign board strangeness, Skyview Baptist, is promoting a VBS this summer with the theme "Weird Animals." It would almost be worth attending just to see what that's about.

Republic of Texas motorcycle rally brought all the bikes to town this past weekend. For the first time, all of the attendees survived the rally; no deaths due to accidents.

World Cup Brazil is underway. I really regret not ordering that 15' HD TV. Actually, I should have ordered a couple; one for World Cup and one for the College World Series. Fortunately, the Spurs wrapped it up in five, so that frees up the schedule a bit. Still, I'm not ashamed to admit one day we just changed channels every two hours, going from WC to CWS back to WC, then to NBA. I'm going through a lot of Visine!

The shop where I normally get my hair cut has just added hot towels to the process. I may start getting my hair cut more often. Is once a day too often?

I'm thinking it would be helpful to put up one of those write-n-wipe boards like they have at the hospital. You know, where they write today's date and important info every morning. It has been Saturday three times this week. I really need to keep up.

And here's what appears to be a good deal, though the vacuuming part tickles.

Planes, trains, automobiles - and a very big ship

I am a homebody. The comforts of my recliner, my bed, my books, my TV, my routines, overwhelmingly call to me. But even recluses have families, and bucket lists.

So over the past several weeks, Barb and I went traveling. First to California, to celebrate our oldest grandson's graduation from high school. Strange. I'm sure that it was only last Tuesday that his father called from Prague to tell us that we were grandparents.

And since we were so close, it seemed this was the time to check Alaskan Cruise off the list. Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, Ketchikan, Victoria B.C, and Seattle. Check, check, and check.

Close is a relative term. We traveled 4,389 miles on airplanes, 2,328 miles on a very big boat, 269 miles in rental cars, 261 miles on tour buses, 44 miles on a train, 31 miles on airport shuttles, 15 miles in a taxi, and an unknown distance in a smallish boat watching whales feed in Auke Bay. That's a total of more than 7,337 miles. We called this the "broken butt" tour.

The Alaskan Cruise is big business. At each port of call there were three and sometimes four giant cruise ships docked, each capable of carrying about 3,000 passengers. From port to port we seldom cruised alone; there was usually a companion ship just behind, or just ahead, or on one day right alongside. It was a Dutch ship and all day it felt like we were racing - at 20 knots. Go, team! USA! USA! Our ship left Seattle at 4pm on a Saturday and returned at 7am the next Saturday. At 4pm that same day, it set out on the same cruise again, and will do so all summer long.

When we would dock, scores of tour buses would line up on the wharf areas to gather up passengers for the various excursions. In Skagway, the train rails came down to the docks, alongside the boats. In Ketchikan, the restaurants, shops and tourist attractions were built dock-side. Every day boats arrive and 10,000 or more passengers troop off to spend their money and then they troop back on - for the most part - and then we would slip away to the next port, making room for tomorrow's boats. But the tourist season in Alaska, like the growing season, is short and there were tip jars in the vans and buses that read, "Because Winter is coming."

It was interesting to see the towns we stopped at. It was interesting to ride the train up over the pass that so many would-be-miners crested on the way to the Yukon gold fields at the turn of the century.

 It was interesting to venture into Canada for a few miles (my second time to visit Canada without documentation). I enjoyed the parks and flowers of pretty little Ketchikan, which is not entirely dependent on tourists.

 We found Victoria to be a lovely little town. Were it not the capitol of British Columbia you would think time had passed it by, preserving in its passage beautiful old buildings and idyllic parks.

 But I loved Glacier Bay. Snow-capped Mt Fairweather in the background, the massive, noisy, walls of convoluted ice were almost too big to comprehend. Two hundred feet of centuries-old blue ice showing above the water; another hundred feet below and stretching a half-mile wide, the glacier spoke loudly of its daily six feet of movement with cracks like thunder and  booming like cannon fire. We saw a small piece crack off and fall into the sea. Just a little piece. About the size of a house.

But my very most favorite thing of all was sitting on our balcony, cup of coffee in hand, watching Alaska drift by at a placid 20 knots on a calm ocean.