Day 7 - The Grand Finale

The weather continues to be cloudy, rainy and windy. We’re making good speed – about 21 knots – which means the ship is doing some nice vibrating and little wiggles. (Editor’s note – apparently I wrote this without looking at the display on nerd TV; actually we were only making about 15 knots into a gale-force headwind). None of the rolling from side to side, but you can’t get bad weather all the time.  I woke up before the alarm and took Arnold with me up to the gym to get a little blogging done. There was a woman there who I overheard saying that she’d worked out at least 2 hours a day. It made me feel quite lazy! Alex was up for both classes, and I noticed both yesterday and today during the stretches that he’s really into the long, slow stuff –time under load. He is also, it turns out, into it during abs, so we did a lot of long holds and long repeats. I had to do some grunting.

When I got back to the cabin Dave was up and filling in our departure packet. It’s the part of the cruise where he’s done eating breakfast, so I went down by myself. I ended up at a 4 top with one other couple, which made me very nervous, but it turns out they’re from the Bay area and moved to Portland about a year ago to do childcare for their grandsons. We had a wonderful chat and I would have stayed there longer except I didn’t have my watch and there’s boot camp at 10, oh boy! We went down to the future cruise desk but there was a line, so we went back to the cabin until it was time to go. On the way we saw Tim, who was heading back from the Lido. He’d been planning to work out after breakfast, but had eaten 6 donuts and was headed back to his room for a nap.

I headed off the fitness center.  While I was waiting for class to start the captain came on to say that we’d had really bad headwinds and that because of that we’d not been making good time at all and would be late getting into Victoria.  Armen came on to say that meant that the shore excursions in Victoria had been cancelled, but there would be extra activities on board. On to boot camp, which was Byron. He basically did day 3, except he added hand-to-elbow pushups to the end of it. Those are his and Alex’s very favorite exercises – both of them did it during abs class. The ship’s roll made the lunges a little more interesting than usual. That and the part where they were counting much faster than I do to try to get the extra 66 pushups in. I rocked it. Meanwhile Dave had got to see the illusionist, who was doing an hour long talking about illusions show. We went to something like that on our Hawai’i cruise and I was kind of bummed to miss it. They’re always interesting.

It was good that Dave had that the illusionist to watch, because at 11:30 he had rehearsal for the Big Finale. I got back to the cabin after boot camp to take a shower before my next activity, and he was pacing the room and running through the steps. He took off for rehearsal and I went down to the Ms cabin to pick them up for the Mariner lunch. Tim was supposed to meet us there, but when I called him it turned out he’d forgotten about the time change and was asleep. He did the fastest change of his life and was at the cabin in less than 5 minutes.

The Mariner lunch was fun. We’d expected they would be checking IDs to make sure we were supposed to be there, but instead they just were letting people in and taking their pictures with Captain John Scott and the hotel manager. We got our pictures taken and were seated at a table for 8, with another couple from Tiburon and a couple from the Pasadena area who it turned out were on their first HAL cruise. They were lunch-crashers, but we didn’t turn them in. There was champagne at every place, and Tim managed to make his disappear by the end of the lunch.

After lunch I swung by the future cruise desk, and there was somebody talking to your future cruise consultant Alex but no line, so I called Dave and he came down. After a short wait we were up, and we booked our next cruise – 15 day Atlantic crossing from Barcelona to Ft Lauderdale in October 2014.  Booking your next cruise onboard is very cool because the down payment is small (and completely refundable), and you get $100 per person shipboard credit. The other thing we got is a 15 drink per person per day credit. Even if we get an espresso every morning in the explorations lounge, and pick up bottled water, and have a soda water with lime at every opportunity, I don’t see how we’re going to come even close. I’m sure we’ll give it our best shot though. At one point the Alex stopped what she was doing and said, “I’m sorry, but I keep getting distracted by your fingernails.” It’s true, they were completely fabulous – dark blue with aquamarine sparkles. Who’d have thunk that tiny little Karma day spa would give me nails so fantastic that everyone had to tell me how much they loved them?

Next we went to look at pictures. The one of us at dinner on formal night came out nicely, as did the one of us with the Eagle in Ketchikan and me with the Moose in Sitka, so we got in line to get them. The line was very long and moving very slowly, so Dave stayed there while I went to the Vista Lounge to watch the comedian.  I wouldn’t normally have gone to the comedian, but I wanted to try to get good seats. I should have gone earlier, but I managed to snag 3 pretty good seats. And the comedian turned out to be Dan Bennett, a juggler, who was quite funny. Whenever he’d drop a ball he’d say “Dan Bennett!” as if it were a curse, and it was very effective at getting his name in our heads! He juggled lots of different things – my favorite was probably the 3 tennis balls with the can. The most impressive one was when he balanced a bowling ball on his foot, then kicked it in the air and caught it on his forehead.

He finished about 2:45, which was when Dave showed up at the stage door to go in for the performance. Mama and Merna and Tim came down, and we all found seats that worked. The show started at 3 with a dance number by the Westerdam dancers and singers, and then they brought out the contestants. First each pair had a backstage interview with Jacob the culinary host, then all the other contestants would make a tunnel with their hands and arms that you ran through on your way up to the stage (Dave told me about that part – we only saw the interviews). They went through one set of contestants in the order that they’d had the competitions – jive, samba, cha-cha, then had a short musical number by two of the singers, and then did the next 3. Dave was the first one in the second group, and he was really good. He missed a couple of the steps, but he was totally hamming it up and clearly having a blast. The audience loved him! The next performer was a classically trained ballet dancer, and while her performance was technically fantastic – you’d have been hard pressed to tell which one was the professional – it was completely lacking in personality. Shanti went last, and although she’d done a great job at the competition she was not as good in the finale. After each pair danced, the judges – Barry from Boston, Illusionist Leon Etienne, and his assistant “illusionette” Rami – would each make comments and then give them scores. The first 3 pairs each got identical 25 point scores; the three groups Dave was in each got 28s. The comments were very funny. Barry said that Dave’s dance reminded him of a totem pole - “Spirit of raven, cleverness of beaver, dance of chicken”. Dave does love to use his elbows. Rami said he was a fantastic combination of a great dancer and Steve Jobs, and Leon just said he liked watching Dave’s partner Laura in the sparkly dress.

Then they did the applause-o-meter. Dave said he could hear Tim and me. When they were done, the couples in the first group were excused, leaving Dave, Jillian, and the ballet dancer, who was so mechanical we can’t remember her name. It was very exciting! Jillian was announced as the third place winner, and then they announced the Westerdam champion – none other than our very own Dave! We had to jump around and cheer, and I thought Mama was going to burst.

They all took off and I went to wait for Dave. Cameron and Tony were sitting by the stage. Cameron said Dave won because of all the extra teaching he’d done for us during the Samba class. Finally Dave came out and we headed to the cabin to put away his gold star trophy. People kept stopping him to congratulate him. We headed over to the ocean bar for happy hour with the Barbie-less HalCats, and people kept coming over to congratulate him. Mama and Merna stopped by for a bit. The weather had cleared up so we went for a walk around the promenade. It was nice to see Dave so completely relaxed – I think he’d been just a little tense the whole cruise knowing what was coming. People respected his privacy on the promenade deck, but walking through the ships people would be saying, “Hey, it’s the winner! Congratulations!”

We went back to our room and Tim came by for a beer, so I was able to warn him about being with a celebrity. We had open seating reservations, so we met at 6:30 at the 2^nd floor dining room. In the couple minutes we were in line, 2 different people came to congratulate Dave. It was really funny! Dinner was the international menu and it was good. I have been leaving out most of the list of what we ate, but the Mohr in hemd dessert was unusually good, so I’m mentioning it.

After dinner we went back to the cabin to pack, then hung out with Barry in the piano bar for Sinatra and requests. The Assassin there, in fact, he was sitting in my seat. He says his name is Phil, but when Barry said his name once he didn’t even glance around – like he’d forgotten that was his name. We think he’d completed whatever task he was on board for, because when Barry was looking for a volunteer to start the rockettes kick line during New York, New York he volunteered, and I was next to him and he didn’t try anything. Also he came behind the piano and sang a song. Dave says he might not be an assassin, he might just be a very boring child of rich parents. I think that might be it. Anyway, it was a nice ending to a very good cruise! No towel animal tonight.