A day at sea

Day 2, cruising towards Juneau

We’re always within sight of land but there are some low swells anyway, so the ship is rolling nicely. I woke up before the alarm and went to meet the new fitness center folks, Angie and Steve. They were quite disorganized, and Angie was very crabby and stressed. But I did enjoy stretch class and abs class, once I got used to the strangeness of it not being Mark and Matthew. Breakfast, the usual oatmeal for me and bagel & lox for Dave. Since there’s no Zumba, we were able to linger over breakfast. Our table partners were a married couple and their friend, who had met 51 years ago when the husband was stationed in Germany and the wife and her friend were teaching on the base. They were with a group of the folks who had taught with them – apparently they have reunions every so often. I refrained from mentioning that I was born the year they all first met each other. It’s nice to be on the other side of that sometimes.

Next item up for me was boot camp. Yes, again. Since the ship is so crowded it’s hard to get a SEB or time on the machines, I decided to do boot camp again. I enjoyed the camaraderie last time, and it’s pretty adaptable to folks at different fitness levels, so even though I’ve done it before we figured it would be ok. But when I got there, it turned out everyone else who had signed up had backed out, so it was only me. I decided to do it anyway – Steve and Angie will take turns working with me, and it’s like having a personal trainer. Angie was much less crabby and stressed, and the workout was very good. I’d say it was fun, but that’s just not the right word. About ¾ of the way through they rang the fire alarm for a crew drill, and I tried to convince her that it meant I should go lie down in a lifeboat. She wasn’t buying it. Also she said that Mark had taught us the wrong ab workout, it was supposed to be 4 different ab exercises done in sets of thirty – 120, instead of 66. She just laughed when I turned to her during the second set and told her that I hated her. But no pain, no gain… or maybe given the availability of food on the ship it should be no pain, much gain. Dave had come up and ridden a SEB until a treadmill opened up, and when I got back to the room he was in the shower. There wasn’t time for a shower for me, so I just put on my beloved pink HAL sweatshirt and we headed down (way down, did I mention our cabin is on the 8^th of 10 floors and we’ve challenged ourselves not to use the elevators?) to the Queen’s Lounge, now set up in its other configuration, the Culinary Arts Center.

Last cruise we’d really enjoyed Chef Pablo, and hoped he would be back. But Your Party Planner Amanda had told us yesterday the classes would be taught by Sous Chef Rob (interestingly, not Your Sous Chef Rob. Apparently he’s more committed to his work than to us). He turned out to be a Brit with a cold and a good sense of humor, and we enjoyed watching him and Amanda make Halibut Caddy Grandy and chocolate-raisin bread pudding. Once the demonstration was over and I’d managed to stand up (boot camp day 1 is particularly brutal on the legs) we went back to the cabin so I could shower, then off to lunch. We shared the table with two sisters and the food was very good, so we’re feeling a little more hopeful about the food. In particular Dave’s tilapia and my tuna were nicely seasoned and perfectly cooked.

Our big afternoon activity was the navigator (low-end) wine tasting with Cellar Master Zoltan. He’s from Hungary and is responsible for there being better wine on the ship than the last two times we’ve been on it. But the tasting was not a good activity – it took over an hour and a quarter to taste 4 wines (which all fell into the not bad category),with way too much talking about attack and legs and tears and minutiae that people who drink that caliber wine don’t really want to know about. Come to think of it, we drink a much higher caliber wine and we didn’t want to know about it. The whole thing could have been done in half an hour with time left over for questions. The premium wine tasting is on Friday after Ketchikan, and I for one will not be there.

Actually our big activity for the afternoon was taking a HUGE nap, me on the bed and Dave on the full-length couch. Between getting up early for stretch class and staying up late with the HALCats, the afternoon nap isn’t just a good idea – it’s the law. After our excellent naps, I went to check out Tai Chi and Dave went to check out the other HalCats. It used to be that generally the HalCats played in the Queens Lounge, and the Neptunes played in the Ocean Lounge. Not so this cruise – there is a second group of musicians, also called the HalCats, playing in the Ocean Lounge. We don’t know why, and Dave said they weren’t very good. He did like that you could sit in the Ocean Bar, his favorite indoor place on the ship to sit and watch the waves go by.

While we were in the cabin relaxing before dinner, we got a call from the dining room saying they were moving us to a new table, 21. It was formal night, so we got all dressed up, and when we got to table 21 it was one of the long 8 person tables, with two people sitting at opposite ends of one of the sides, not speaking. Nearest us was Olympia, and at the other end by the window was Earl. Earl was hard of hearing and not inclined to chat, and Olympia sat with her arms folded and refused to look at us. So we weren’t feeling very encouraged. While we were eating our appetizers Dave and John, an older gay couple, showed up and sat at the end of the table with Olympia, who took off her frosty white jacket and frosty persona and began talking softly and animatedly with them. Earl was not dressed up, and is married to Olympia. Dave’s guess is that she refused to sit with him because he wouldn’t dress up. I think he’s right, and I can imagine the way she was feeling but it was extremely uncomfortable. Eventually Dave and I gave up on trying to make conversation with the rest of the table and just chatted with each other. I may see about being reseated. Fortunately, the food was very good.

Our before dinner entertainment was Matt in the Crow’s Nest, and after dinner we went to the show, which was called Braodway Blitz, starring the Oosterdam singers and dancers. We enjoyed the show and also enjoyed seeing the capabilities of the stage, which is completely mobile, with sections that rise and sink and even rotate while rising and sinking. Then we went over to the Queens Lounge for the good HalCats, and danced our feet off. They were playing 50s and 60s music and it was very fun. I enjoyed the dancing even though I was wearing possibly the highest, pointiest heels I’ve ever had. It turns out the solution to not walking like a man is a couple of glasses of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and a glass of champagne. In the heels and floor length dress the elevator ban was lifted, so we rode the midships glass elevators by our cabin for the first time, and also noticed that all the elevators now have carpet in them with the day of the week printed in large, friendly letters. Very helpful.

We finished dancing when the band quit at midnight. Fortunately, the clocks get set back an hour tonight. But our walk back to the cabin was fraught with tension… would tonight end in another crushing disappointment? Would our bed have nothing on it but advertising and chocolate? Or would tonight’s crowning moment be when we came into the bedroom and discovered…

Tonight’s towel animal: stingray!