The Last Day

I forgot to mention that they closed off 9 forward last night. I’d suspected that the reason the secret door wasn’t blocked off was that the band they pull across to say it’s closed was broken, and sure enough last night there was a sign on the door asking people not to use it. Also during the night last night the seas started getting quite a bit rougher – the tossing of the ship woke us up several times. Hooray!

Because of the fitful sleep I slept right up until my alarm going off, then headed up to the gym. The ship is rolling to the point where it’s hard to even stand still up there, so Adriaan led the both classes on the floor. I particularly enjoyed the stretch class. At one point we all held towels and stretched our shoulders back, and of course I could drop the towel all the way behind my back, prompting Adriaan to mutter “there’s one in every class.” Afterwards Dave came up and took a picture of us, and then I had breakfast with three Canadians and one Dutch woman. Nothing in particular to report from there, just a nice breakfast.

The seas were rough enough and the wind strong enough that they had closed off the promenade deck and both pools, which was very disappointing! Dave ended up in the crow’s nest in one of the big comfy swivel chairs, watching the horizon move in circles. I went to the nightclub where Christine had come through with the informational papers. The sound guy got there shortly afterwards with the good microphone and the sound system was working well, so I was ready to go. It ended up being a very small class – I’m not sure why. I had a couple of new people come, and the class was just way fun. I’d put in Le Chant des Sirens and U R the Answer, and they got totally into it. One interesting advantage to teaching on a very unstable platform is it makes people much less self-conscious about whether or not they are doing the move right, because I’m putting in so many extra steps to compensate for the motion of the ship that it’s hard to tell what the correct moves are. I did find out that I can’t sing “15 men on a dead man’s chest” and still keep track of the steps and punches in “It’s Hot”. The Nia class turned out to be a completely good thing, and I’m so glad that I did it. I’m hoping some of the class members will find classes near them and continue dancing.

Dave also came at the end of Nia to get a photo of me with my small but fun class. Afterwards we walked around the ship enjoying the sunshine, the wind, and the waves. From the forward deck on 11 you can see the flagpole at the front of the ship, and it was really obvious that the ship is not just rolling forward and back, it’s also rolling side to side. After our tour we went back to the cabin so I could get a shower and then we headed up to the midships pool for the shipbuilding competition. It’s always interesting to me how many people enter it and how creative their ships are. Our favorite was the Australia, which had working fans on it, was very good looking, and took the 12 coke can cargo without any problem. Interestingly there was also a ship called the boodam/Zaandam which looked very similar to the Boodam we saw on our trip to Hawaii over Halloween in 2011. The ship builder looked familiar too. This version was much narrower, though, and although it was an amazing replica of a HAL ship it kept flopping over on its side, much like the Costa Concordia. We ended up not staying to find out who won, but found out at dinner that it was a family who had made an ok ship but used their 3 children to get the cute vote.

Lunch was sort of a disaster, although we had Yudha as our server which is always a treat. We ended up sitting with the unnamed woman with the food temperature fetish and Erika, originally from New York but now from Florida. It turned out they had been tablemates at a 6-top and everyone except Erika had deserted the table. Erika started complaining about it, and it was very uncomfortable. We tried to change the subject to more pleasant topics and were only moderately successful.

Another short break after lunch, and then Dave headed off to the last not-very-good lecture by Bill Bendel about Southern constellations, ancient civilizations, and the longitude. I went up to the crows nest to save us some seats for the navigation talk, which was very enjoyable and had diagrams and videos of how to use the azipods to steer the ship. It also had the requisite question about whether there is a morgue on the ship (there is), and Marco told a story, possibly apocryphal, about running out of morgue space on the Rotterdam and having to use the flower cooler. He’s a very good speaker.

Then it was time for more relaxing until dinner, our last one with our fun tablemates. I’m not sure we would be friends under other circumstances, but we all were determined to have a good time each night and we succeeded. They did the crew parade and Yudha lead the singing. His tables were the loudest and most enthusiastic cheerers. Then we came back to the cabin and somehow managed to stuff everything back into the suitcases, which was something of a miracle given the formal wear I purchased in Valencia. Packing is depressing and we tried with limited success not to let it make us crabby.

Our last event on the ship will be the dancing with the stars finale. There is no towel animal tonight, which means there’s no hanging monkey this cruise. Other than that, what an adventure we have had!

We got the blues, baby

Wow, it’s November. When we left home over 5 weeks ago, November seemed impossibly far away, and as we arrived in each new place and unpacked it seemed like the trip would go on forever. Now it’s our next to last day at sea, and we’re both filled with mixed emotions – ready to be home, and never wanting the cruise to be over. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, but I will miss having someone to make it, and to put clean towels out, and to clean up after meals. Fortunately for me I will still have someone to do all the cooking J

Because of the extra hour and relatively early bedtime I was up before my alarm all bright eyed and bushy tailed but exceptionally sore in my arms. Jesse did the stretch class and managed to stay mostly present – he struggles more with letting the boredom show. He did let on how hard the sea days are for the gym folks. When the ship has port days, they take turns getting the day off, but when the ship is at sea they both work full days, and aren’t allowed in most of the passenger areas, so it get really monotonous. I think you could make it less boring by offering to help people learn to use the machines correctly or work on form during stretches and so on, but they might not be allowed to do that either.  Anyway, the stretch and abs classes are always a nice way to start your day.

I ended up at breakfast with a couple from Canada and a woman whose home port I never found out. She had a thing about hot things staying hot that was pretty funny – she wouldn’t drink tea on board, for example, because the cups were so cold that when they poured the water in it cooled down too quickly. Other than that she was very nice, and we had a pleasant breakfast. As we’re getting to the end of the cruise I had both the breakfast parfait and the oatmeal. Meanwhile Dave had breakfast on the Lido and went to the astronomy talk, which was just a lot of facts strung together, some of them wrong. Our table has come to the consensus that the speaker is boring. He walked around a bit after that, and ended up finding a nice spot in the crows nest and sitting and reading.

Meanwhile I went back to the cabin to pick up my phone and headed to the nightclub. I wore my leopard niawear to the morning classes and breakfast, so I didn’t need to change for class. The sound system was wacko again, but I was able to get the sound guy out of the Queen’s Lounge again to fix it. The mike was a little quiet, so we had to turn the music down to match it. The class was small, possibly because of the second Mariner lunch – nobody wants to be smelly when they meet the Captain. But I was feeling much higher energy, and I had a blast teaching. There was a woman in the class who I think this was her 2^nd or 3^rd time, and she was grinning a huge grin the whole time – I think that must be what it must be like to have me in class. We’ve been doing the song Lost Harpist for the whole cruise, and it’s been fun to see people get more and more involved in the free dance section. Afterwards I was telling Dave about the class and realized that I was calling 10 people a small class. It’s going to be hard to give this up since it’s been such a fabulous experience. One of the big changes I’ve noticed is what happens when I miss a change from one move to the other, or lose the beat. I used to have to stop, or spend a long time in my head figuring out what to do about it. Now I just keep going. We’ve had “It’s Hot” in the playlist since the beginning, and I almost always ask “what happens if you punch with the other hand?” and everybody yells “NOTHING!” I’m starting to feel that in my own teaching as well.

I’d swapped out Touched by God for Luna, which is shorter, and since Kieron only interrupts during Touched by God we were done a couple of minutes early so I could get up to the cabin to get cleaned up for the Mariner lunch at 11:30. I thought I’d take the elevator, but it was stopping at every floor so I got off at 4 and ran up. Fortunately the short hair means a short time to get ready, so we were in plenty of time. We ended up at a 10-top with 4 Germans, 4 Americans and 2 Brazilians, so conversation was a little difficult but still enjoyable. The other American couple had never cruised on HAL before, so we’re not sure why they got an invitation, but they were very nice. We got our tiles, which have the picture of a vista class ship with a sailboat and the names of the 4 ships of this class – Oosterdam, Westerdam, Noordam and Zuiderdam. We’ve now sailed on all but the Zuiderdam. The picture on the tile is of a painting by Captain Stephen Card, and we have that painting of the Noordam IV on this ship on the landing between decks 7 and 8 in the forward stairwell. What we can’t remember is whether we’ve had that picture on the Oosterdam or Westerdam, and my picture archives don’t say. If we ever make it on to the Zuiderdam we will need to look.

Since the lunch started at 11:30 and was 3 courses rather than 4, we were done well before 1 so Dave could go to the chilled soup demo in the Culinary Arts Center, also known as the Queens Lounge. The host, Ashley, continues to be mostly useless, but Daniel the chef has gotten more comfortable and engaging as the cruise has gone on – this is his first contract. Today the chilled soups didn’t take very long, so he decided to whip up some almond brittle just for fun.

I’d gone down to see if I could get Christine to make some handouts with the Nia and BodyFit websites and my BodyFit e-mail listed on them, and she said she would. Dave got back from the culinary demo and did some verandah sitting even though it is very hot and humid out, but then came in for a nap on the couch which is more comfortable and looks out on the ocean. At 2:30 he went off to try to get a seat in the crow’s nest for the 2^nd officer’s talk, and I fired up the computer to refresh my memory of the opening part of the first song of Dreamwalker. But, oops, I have the DVD of regular Dreamwalker, but I learned the choreography for the first song from the white belt version. So I’ll make something up for the first bit. At 3 I headed up for the last day of bodyfit with Jesse. I have moved some of the exercises to different days to balance them out, but as they are written day 4 is a lot of upper body, and I was already sore from Adriaan. It turned out to be a very funny class, because Jesse hasn’t done it very much and the get-ups are unique enough that he was struggling and I was the one saying “come on, keep that arm straight, let’s go” and all the instructory things. He got me back during abs – crunches in boat pose, my weakest thing.

Afterwards I had a short swim and then went down to talk to techspert Frank. Go ahead and sing with me: I’m off to see the techspert, the wonderful techspert on board. I was hoping that (1) he had a printer I could use in case Christine doesn’t come through and (2)he could explain why the pictures on my android phone show up with the columns for music when I plug my phone into my PC, and tell me how to fix it. Like Dorothy when she finally met the wizard, I was disappointed because (1) he didn’t and (2) he couldn’t. Next cruise Dave will be the lecturer and I will be the techspert. Then there was a short break for relaxing before dinner.

It was formal night tonight, which is always a good time. I wore my second Valencian dress and Dave wore his Barcelona suit and we looked gooood. We had the photographer who comes around the dining room take a picture of our whole table, which we hope came out. Also Marc, the ship’s doctor, came to sit with us, which was good because he paid for all the wine, but not so good because he kind of broke our stride. He’s from New York but is working very hard to get rid of his accent, which made him sound kind of weird, actually. We eventually all settled in and had a good time, and yes, Jim had the crisp.

After dinner we went around and had our picture taken, and then went to the show which is called Droom (Dutch for dream, they tell us). It’s a classic story of thwarted love, good and evil, etc, set to rock and roll, and aside from the bad singer it was very good. I especially liked the butterfly costumes in the final sequence. Then we headed over to the BB King band who have gotten better ever time we’ve seen them, but they are so loud that we can only stay for one set. But maybe that is good so we can get a good night’s sleep, since for some strange reason they decided to hold off on our extra hour until tomorrow night. Maybe that way they think people will be ready to go an hour earlier, I don’t know.

Tonight’s towel animal: crab?