DAY TWO
Thursday was a day at sea as the ship
made its way up to our first port of call,
The day started with Sue immediately turning on the TV. One of the TV channels continuously shows charts of our current position, and Sue promptly settled into a regimen of peering out our balcony, then looking at the TV to see where we were. I think she’s somehow disappointed that the actual topography out our window doesn’t have huge labels laid on the landscape.
We’re early risers, so we hung around the stateroom counting down the minutes until breakfast. There are two venue choices: 1) the formal dining room, where you’re seated, handed menus and your meal is brought to you by waiters. 2) the upper deck dining area, where the food is served “free-for-all” or “buffet” style, and you elbow and kick and scratch and claw your way through a sea of fellow passengers to get the best sausage link, the way nature intended. We picked the upper deck, of course, and after an invigorating breakfast and ceremonial victory dance, we decided to explore the ship.
One of the areas we checked out was the Internet Café. Like the poop deck, its name is a little misleading. It’s just a room set up for passengers to gain internet access. There’s no coffee served here; in fact, there’s no food or beverage of any kind allowed, because the cruise folks know that guys like me will crazy-glue the keyboards into immobility with spilled soda pop. If you’re a passenger who wants to check email, or find out how your stock is doing, or buy another piece of cubic zirconium, you have to come down to this room and arrange access to the ship’s wireless network, which covers a radius of about 18 inches, as long as someone’s hearing aid isn’t turned on. You buy the access in time increments. The cost is minimal--- either an arm or a leg will get you enough time to log on, check your email, and realize you need to buy more time. The bandwith is at least as good as the telegraph wire that ran between Dodge City and Tombstone in 1870, so with a little patience and a lot of money, you can, from the comfort of your very own cruiseship, still get your time-sensitive email about enlarging or reducing various body parts.
We took in a couple of informative talks. One was by
the ship’s very own naturalist, who hosted many throughout the day, and
also made announcements over the PA system as we passed various points
of interest. I found it interesting that the naturalist seemed to be a
ubiquitous presence, but the on-board doctor’s hours were from
We also learned about shore
excursions from Shawn, our cruise director. Cruise Director is an
impressive title, and I’m sure there’s a lot of responsibility attached
to it, but to my untrained eye it seems like a cross between a
cheerleader and a game show host. Shawn is sort of a Kirstie Alley type
who made it very clear that we
would have fun, darn it, or there would be hell to pay.
She gave us the run-down on all the
off-shore excursions available at our ports of call of
The big event of the evening was the big formal cocktail party hosted by the captain and crew and featuring free drinks. We skipped it. The strongest thing we drink is Nyquil, and then only to be sociable. And I wasn’t comfortable attending a party where all the folks in charge of keeping the ship from kissing an iceberg had flipped on the cruise control and come down to hang out at the open bar. It would be like having a wild party in the back of a limousine and realizing that the guy next to you who refilled your drink was the limo driver.
Instead we waited for the formal dinner. “Formal”
meant leaving my cowboy hat in the stateroom and wearing a shirt with
buttons down the front. We sat down with the same four people we first
met the night before. One of the couples was Linda and Don from
By the end of the second course, Linda had noticed the couple at an adjacent table who had no other dinner companions, and felt compelled out of sympathy to insist that they join us at our table. Soon it was dinner for eight, and I could see Linda’s satisfaction at having rescued a couple from the unimaginable fate of an intimate dinner for two.
NOTE: I’m probably being a bit unfair here, but that’s because I’ve never really considered dinner a social experience. I come from the Special Forces school of dining: Get in, get the job done, and get out. I like people, really I do; I just don’t do well with the challenge of handling utensils, talking, and eating at the same time. Food usually ends up somewhere it doesn’t belong.
After Linda, we didn’t feel the need for more entertainment, so we skipped the show and decided to go back to our stateroom. The bed was turned down, and on the bed were extra towels twisted and knotted into the form of a cute little pig. At least Sue thought it was cute; I thought it was a comment on the amount I’d eaten so far, so I made a note not to leave a tip the next morning.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton