Today we’re cruising Glacier Bay all day, which means it’s
kind of a sea day and kind of not. I woke up ridiculously early and eventually
got up around 6. I grabbed Arnold the Laptop and we headed up to the crow’s
nest to do some blogging. It was surprisingly crowded up there, but I got a
table looking out. There was a little fog ahead of us, and about 6:30 we ran
right into it – complete whiteout. It was unnerving, and also a little
worrisome because what if it didn’t clear up? It was also cool because it meant
they blew the ship’s horn every 5 minutes or so. At 6:45 I headed up to the
fitness room, and sometime during stretch and abs it cleared up. Byron has been
getting steadily more creative, well, challenging, and ended abs with some
variations on mountain climbers that I knew I’d regret.
Breakfast was at a big table with 4 other couples and was
fun. Everyone had good stories to tell. I headed back upstairs for boot camp,
which was day 2 with Alex, and he did an extra set of 18 to start with, and the
classic no break between 8 and 6. He also improvised on the static squat at 6,
doing 3 sets of hold for 12, bounce for 6. All bad ideas, especially given that
he counted the mountain climbers in sets of 4 and Byron had already had fun
with that. One thing we did was have him
lead the class from the back, which meant that during the static squats we
could look out at Glacier Bay. After class I went out on deck in front of the
gym and watched the Margerie glacier do its thing, which involved dropping
small chunks of ice in the water periodically. Eventually the Captain turned
the ship lengthwise to the glacier with our cabin facing it, so I went down
there. Dave and Tim were there watching. There was one big formation that
looked like it might be ready to fall off (calve), but I figured it wouldn’t
while we were there because they never do. And then it did! It was gigantic,
and it seemed to take a really long time to collapse. Then a wave big enough to
rock the ship came too. Later our cruise director Armand said it was the
biggest one he’d ever seen. Dave pointed out to Tim and me that it was just
like a supernova explosion – you get the gamma ray burst first (the giant
crashing noise) followed by the shock wave (or ocean wave) later. Tim and I
made eye contact, but refrained from commenting. Although I’m sure Dave would
have pointed out that I knew it before I married him.
By now, of course, it was time for lunch. We met the Ms and
had a good table where all of us except Tim could see the scenery. After lunch we
went out on deck for a while, but it was very hot! Eventually we went back to
our verandah, where I had to put on shorts, for pete’s sake. Dave had gotten
some beers, so he and Tim had beer and we had a great time cruising around
looking at glaciers. Then Tim and I had to take naps. Dave went to show
pictures to the Ms and try to get Merna’s iPad to connect to the ship’s internet,
which it wouldn’t do. Then he came back and took a nap and I went up to the
crows nest again and worked some more on getting caught up on the blog. There
were either whales or porpoises, but I couldn’t see them. They seemed to be on
our side of the ship, so I went down to the room to see if I could see them
from there. I couldn’t, but Dave was just waking up and it was time to get
ready for dinner anyway.
Dinner was slow and the food was not great. There seemed to
be a general things-aren’t-going-well vibe in the dining room – Dave’s soup got
forgotten and Renee didn’t make it back in time to get him his port, which is
unusual since he takes very, very good care of Sir Dave. We did have the 2004
Evenstad reserve which we’d brought from home. We shared a glass with Renee and
he liked it very much.
After dinner we hung out in the Ocean bar with Robbie and
his HalCats until it was time to go hang out with Barry from Boston in the
piano bar. Tonight was Barry Manilow (yuck) and Neil Diamond. I requested American
Pie and he complained about playing it for almost 5 minutes. I didn’t know you
could play sarcastically, but he did. We gave it up around 11 because Dave and
Tim had an early excursion.
Tonight’s towel animal: Elephant. Excellent.
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