Retirement Cruise
Pre-Cruise
Now knowing the date of my retirement, I booked another
cruise. It just so happened that my wife loves Alaska, so I offered to take her
there right away, for the official retirement cruise. To my surprise, she
hesitated. She said, “I’ll feel bad either way. On the one hand for spending
the money, and on the other, for not going.”
The daughter piped up. “If you’re going to feel bad anyway,
you might as well go on the cruise.”
That decided it.
I finally retired. I was with the company from 1989 to 2017,
barring a few years of layoff during the
downturns. I remember walking past a group of new employees and thinking, I hired into this company before they were
born.
I had a friend text me and ask for some help moving some
things. My first thought, for a second at the most, was to try and find an
excuse. But knowing this friend would drop everything to help me, I readily
agreed. Little did I know he was distracting me so Deb could spring a surprise
retirement party on me.
When he texted me, “Are you going to be on schedule?” as I
was preparing to leave, it made me a little suspicious.
I’d never heard him use the word schedule before. I’m not sure he knew what it meant. When I arrived
at his house, no one popped up from behind a tree yelling, “Happy retirement.”
So I relaxed. I shouldn’t have.
After moving everything he had to move, I headed for my
truck.
“Can I show you a few things?” he asked.
“Um, sure.”
He took me in the house and showed me his guns. He builds
his own. He had three bolts he showed me, along with various parts and pieces.
Then he showed me, in great detail, how he loads the bullets. The copper
jackets are cut with this press to an exact length, then the lead is pushed in
the jackets with this press. Another press does this and that.
He took me to look at his lathe where he turns his barrels
and bolts. By this point, I’m edging toward the door.
“Wait,” he says. “I want to show you two more things.”
His wife said, “I’m going for my nightly walk.” Then she
snuck over to my house, where the surprise party was going to be.
I should have realized he was stalling, but my eyes had
glazed over by that point. It was about the time he explained what type of
steel he used in each bolt. As I got in the truck, he kept talking. Finally I
extracted myself from the situation. I drove home, when I entered, I found wall-to-wall people in my house.
My dear wife had arranged the whole thing without me getting
a clue. There was even a cake and a lot
of food for everyone.
Embarkation Day
Two days later, the wife and I, are headed to Seattle to
catch the ship. It’s the Oosterdam again, because it was inexpensive. I had gotten an upgrade offer from the cruise
line, so we moved from an inside to an ocean view. Then I got another upgrade
offer, so we moved up to a balcony. We received two more offers, but decided to
ignore those because our cheap cruise was getting more and more expensive each
time we upgraded.
My brother graciously let
me park at his place and drove me down to the port, saving me 145 dollars in
parking fees. He dropped us off at the pier. It was a relatively painless
process after that. The lines moved quickly and before we knew it, we were
getting our key cards.
The lady held up a camera to take a picture of the wife for
security, then said. “You have a beautiful picture from your cruise three weeks
ago. I will use that one.”
She turned to me. “I’ll need to take your picture again.”
She mumbled something about a shadow, but I just knew she was thinking, it’s not going to help, but I have to try anyway. I guess my picture wasn’t
beautiful.
The staterooms were ready when we checked so we dropped off
our bags. The luggage arrived shortly after that. Deb gave me my retirement
present. A spyglass, like the pirates
use. I looked around Seattle from the balcony with it. How cool is that.
We ran down to the dining room for lunch. It’s not a
well-known option and there were only a handful of people there. We skipped dessert because we knew we’d have plenty of
time to eat over the next seven days. The downside of taking the same ship
twice is there is nothing to explore.
After the lifeboat drill, we went to the sail away party. Holland America does a lot of
things amazingly well. However, parties isn’t
one of them. There were servers with hors d'oeuvr, if you could
find one. They would bring a tray out, walk a few feet, and then get mobbed, retreat
with their now empty tray, and go back to do the process over again.
I couldn’t help comparing it to my last Royal Caribbean cruise.
They had tables set up with tons of food and drink. The live band played a few
feet away and crew members mingled with passengers to get them up and dancing.
To our surprise, the two piano players that had come on the
ship with us in San Diego, weren’t still on the ship three weeks later. They
had a different two. I’m wondering what happened there. The new ones were very
good also, but we were looking forward to those two.
We managed to get to the blues lounge and were amazed by the
band and singers in there. They had the house rocking.
The food in the main dining room didn’t look all that
spectacular, so we opted to eat in the buffet. It had prime rib and the dining
room didn’t. The show was a sampling of what we were going to see the rest of
the week for entertainment.
I fell asleep and missed most of the show. I had only two
hours of sleep the night before. Adjusting from working nights, to living days
proved to be harder than I anticipated. I sat in bed staring at the ceiling the
whole night, rather than sleeping.
Sea Day
Had breakfast in the buffet. I love the omelet bar. It was
busy today. Deb got her food, found a place to sit and was almost done eating
by the time I arrived with my omelet.
Spending some time up on the Crow’s Nest Lounge, Deb finally
saw a whale. In fact, she saw four of them. I ran back to the stateroom the
grab the binoculars, and I’m glad I did. I saw a whale, just as it spouted. I
know, from my past cruises, that there is a good possibility of seeing more on
the way into Juneau. We’ll be doing that tomorrow.
We took the galley tour today. Some cruise lines charge for
that, but this one doesn’t. In fact, that’s one of the things I enjoy about
Holland America. They don’t nickel and dime you to death. No pull tabs and things like that on this
line. It’s funny how the crew acts when you’re taking their picture.
They had little stations as we trekked through the galley that told about different things. The
oven never cools down, but bakes bread twenty-four
hours a day. The bakers prepare 20 different kinds of bread, including 4,000
dinner rolls, 800 croissants, and 800 Danish rolls. In fact, all the bread is
made on the ship, including the sliced bread. They go through 7,500 lbs of
flour and 2,500 lbs of sugar on a seven
day cruise.
At the end of the tour, there was a tray of samples. They
were arranged so nicely, that no one was taking any. One man mumbled, “What the
heck,” and took the first one.
I sampled one, and the lady next to me asked, “What’s it
taste like?” Why is she relying on my opinion? If she wanted to know what it
tasted like, she should have tried it herself. That’s how you find that out.
She didn’t even wait for my answer, but kept going, so I tried a different one.
Now I knew what they both tasted like.
Trivia today went strangely again. I made the mistake of
telling the cruise director that we had been on the cruise that spanned his
birthday. So he was suspicious that we were remembering the answers from last
time. We tied with another team. I don’t know why that keeps happening, but it
did again.
“I usually ask how old I am for the tie breaker, but since
these people were on the ship on my birthday, I’ll skip that one.” Then he
asked how far is it from the earth’s lowest point to its highest?
When he read my answer, 65,015, his jaw dropped. Then his
eyes narrowed. “Did I ask that on your last cruise?”
“Maybe.”
“Different question.” I don’t know how many ships there were
in the Spanish Armada, neither did my team, so the other team won.
We had a question and answer session with the captain after
that. One woman passenger wore very tight with little tacos all over them. “Why
am I suddenly thinking about Mexican food?” I asked the wife.
“She must not own a mirror.”
At the end of the session, on the way out, one lady fell on
the steps. She must have knocked herself out, because she wasn’t moving. Then
when she came to, she started moaning. I had heard this before when a friend of
Deb’s had fallen. It’s a sad sound.
The captain was still there so he rushed to help. He made
some calls, but his cell wasn’t working well in the theater. The sound
technician was able to get through. A few minutes later, the ship’s doctor
rushed in. We were leaving as the gurney was brought in.
I skipped lunch today as I was still full from breakfast. I
know, eating is what cruising is all about.
Dinner was formal tonight.
I just brought a tie as packing a suit coat is a pain and they always end up
wrinkled. The food was good. I had soup. They had a little bit of meat and
vegetables in the bowl when they set it in front of us. I was scratching my
head at that point trying to remember what I ordered. Then they poured the
broth over the fixings. Soup, ah that’s right.
I had the pepper steak for the main course. I ordered mine without the spinach, as I can’t stand the
stuff. When I saw the others, they had put the steak right on top of the
spinach. I suspect the cooks had done the same to mine, as I had a green stain
under the steak. The waiter must have scraped it off right before serving it to
me.
When we went to the show, they had a special toast for the
captain. There is an area on the floor of the showroom that is flat, then,
after that, each row is set higher than the one before it. We found a seat with a table on the flat part, but Deb couldn’t
see over the tall guy in the row in front of us. We moved to the row behind
that one, which was a little higher. The couple next to us commented that they
had done the same thing.
The four of us watched as six more people sat down in the
seats we had vacated, only to move a few moments later. In the end, the seat
right behind the tall guy was left vacant.
Something strange had happened to me on a cruise. I sat down
in the second to last row of the theater, only to have the woman behind me
complain that she couldn’t see now. “No problem,” I said as I moved over.
The guy next to her was the next to complain, “Now I can’t
see.”
I offered to change rows with them, but they declined. I
just can’t help how tall I am.
After the show, while we were still looking nice on the formal night, we went to the atrium. Deb
wanted a picture of the both of us. She snagged a passerby to take it for us.
We stood side by side and smiled. The photographer’s wife looked at the height
and said to Deb, “Maybe you should go up a step. It would be better.”
Deb did so reluctantly. The woman looked again. “Maybe a
couple of more steps.” Deb ignored that one, and we smiled for the picture. The
photographer then tipped the camera sideways to get us in the shot, then took
another one.
Juneau
Whales before breakfast. It was awesome. The captain had
told us to be watchful going into Juneau, that there might be whales. So we
were where he told us to be, and they were there. We saw a pod that surfaced
and spouted one after another.
We ate a quick breakfast in the buffet. I don’t know why, as
we don’t get into Juneau until 1 pm. I
don’t like their scrambled eggs. I already knew that, but I figured Deb didn’t
want to wait for me again, so I did the scrambled eggs. Then we proceeded to
some activities.
After watching the ship dock, we were some of the first ones
off. We didn’t have a plan. Deb was thinking about Mendenhall Glacier. There
are lots of places to hike up there. I wasn’t as excited. It was $35 a ticket
to go out there. Too much for a hike. Deb had the idea of taking a cab. I
walked up to the driver who just pulled up and asked, “How much to Mendenhall?”
“Thirty-five, but I won’t take you there. You’ll have to
take a different taxi. I’m boycotting.”
Okay, there was a story there and I wanted it.
“The park service is charging seven a person to go to
Mendenhall. It’s ten if you go to their visitor center. The taxi has to pay
another two on top of that. I don’t work for them.”
He was waiting for some gut named TJ who had called for a
ride, so I backed off. I saw TJ come up to him, but a minute later TJ and his
group got into another cab. TJ wanted to go to Mendenhall and, true to his
word, the guy wouldn’t take him. The cabbie I talked to drove away, his cab
empty. I saw he went next door and parked, so I tracked him down.
“Okay, what do you suggest then?” For seventy dollars, the
same price I would have paid to go to Mendenhall on a crowded bus, we got the
grand tour of nature in and around Juneau. It was perfect for us as we had been
there five times before and didn’t really need to see the typical tourist sites
one more time.
The first order of business was to find a bear. It didn’t
happen, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He even drove us to a nature
preserve, got out of the cab with us and the three of us went for a mile-long
walk in the woods. All the while he was telling us stories.
Deb was a little nervous about finding a bear without a car
door between us and it. “Don’t worry,” the driver said, “I’ll jump between you
and the bear.”
“Which pockets do you have your
keys in, just in case you don’t make it back?” I asked.
“Front left.”
It wasn’t like a cab ride at all. It was like you’re
visiting town and your brother-in-law agrees to drive you around. We would stop
in places, just in case an eagle or an otter showed up to feast on the herring
that were there.
He was a songwriter,
too. His most famous was Turbo Subaru. He had a cd of it and played
it for us on the way to the gold mine museum. It was a cute song.
The Last Chance Museum was on a dirt road, across a footbridge and up a steep hill. It had a five
dollar admission. It told of the history of the gold mine, from the early 1900s
until the mine closed down because the men who worked it went off to war in
1944. There were a lot of old artifacts and history there.
Getting a cab back, because it was too far to walk, we
stopped off at the Red Dog Saloon to grab a couple of pictures. Then we headed
to the Library for its free wi-fi to check our email. The library is perched on
top of a five-story parking garage. It
was the strangest arrangement in a library I’ve ever seen. Nor was our idea
unique, as there were many people using their cell phones to get caught up.
Then we walked over to The Hangar for lunch. We had stopped
in at Tracy’s Crab Shack, but they were out of a lot of things, so we skipped
them. We had the Captain’s Platter. We shared it, as it was expensive and
large. This worked out very well, because our tastes are enough different that
what one of one of us didn’t like, the other one did. I don’t like salmon, she
does, etc.
We tumbled back onto the ship, tired but happy. We did do a
lot of the evening’s activities. There was a BBC trivia, which we did badly at,
then a call my bluff game after that. They put up a word on the screen and two
of the three commentators give you a false definition of what it means. You
have to figure out which is telling you the truth.
The show was Nick Diffatte. I wouldn’t miss his show, asmagician / comedian.
I laughed long and loud. There was another show after that, but Deb and I were
just too tired to stay up any longer.
I
enjoyed it a lot. He’s a
Hubbard Glacier
We decided to have a nice leisurely breakfast in the dining room,
allowing plenty of time for the class on digital cameras that Deb wanted to go
to. They put us at a table with three other couples. It took a long time for
them to even take our order, when they finally did, the lady next to me ordered
an egg scramble without the egg. Or something like that. It turned out to be
sautéed vegetables over rice. The group sat there talking.
More and more time went by and our order hadn’t arrived.
Just as the food was getting there, Deb had to go or she would have missed her
class. It had been almost an hour since we ordered. The waiter was all beside
himself. He just knew he was going to get a bad review. I don’t think it was
his fault. It was the special order that confused the cooks.
They gave me Deb’s breakfast too. I commented, “If she’s
going to leave early, she can at least order something I like.” I ate a couple
of things off her plate, but I had my own, so I didn’t finish it.
We agreed to meet at the theater for a behind the scenes
tour of it. She was a half hour late to that. She had the time wrong.
Getting there early to get a good spot, we waited for
forever in the cold. There was a cloud obscuring the glacier, and it looked
hopeless. As we neared, suddenly we were inundated with people. One girl walked
out there in a T-shirt. I guess everyone needs to get attention somehow.
Someone asked if she was cold. “I’m from St. George, Utah. I’m used to the
cold.” I’ve been there and it isn’t that cold.
The girl kept edging her way forward. I turned to look
behind me and she was right there. A few minutes later she was at my elbow. I
couldn’t move without touching her, she was so close. Her face grew redder and
redder. She ducked down below the bulwark to get out of the wind. Someone took
pity on her and handed her a small blanket. It wasn’t enough. Miss I Don’t Get Cold was freezing. She
disappeared back into the ship.
The cloud lifted and the massive glacier was visible from
end to end. Suddenly I had twenty new best friends. Some of them were getting
intimate. I turned to look at something, when I turned back, someone was
standing right in front of me. I was getting upset. He finally backed off, and
a woman took his place. The lady in front
of me was taking a movie and had an expensive camera and a tripod setup.
She asked the newcomer to step back.
“But, I want to see, too.”
“I can’t move the camera with you there.”
The lady didn’t move, though. Soon, another person had
slipped in and was taking pictures by standing right in front of the lens of
the movie camera.
The ship turning was the only thing that got the crowd to
move away from us. The best viewing was now on the starboard and they all
rushed over there. After that the ship started moving away. We went to the
stern to watch it fade into the distance.
There were only a handful of people there when we arrived, but it didn’t take
long for the crowd to follow us.
I did get to see a small chunk of ice break off and slide
into the water. That was awesome. As the glacier faded in the distance, the
crowd faded, too. It was an amazing thing to see. Four miles wide and a
football field tall mass of ice, and that was just the part we could see.
Behind it was a river of ice four hundred years old.
It was time to come in from the cold. I did great while I
was out there as I brought home my Boeing flight line coat before I retired. I
ignored the florescent yellow. At least I was cozy the whole time. The ship was
a little chili the rest of the night though.
A strange thing happened when we went to dinner. Deb and I
were given a seat on the 3rd floor, up
on a little round area that only had five, two-person tables. I wondered
if it was because she walked out of the dining room at breakfast. It was either
an exclusive area, or an area they put trouble makers in. More likely, it was
just a coincidence.
The show was Alaska in Concert. It had a live orchestra
along with pictures of BBC’s Earth. This is one you don’t want to miss. Afterward, we stopped in at the B. B. King’s
All Stars Blues Club. Most of the ship’s entertainment staff was in there
dancing. Truly talented people.
Sitka
Sea Princess sent me to breakfast by myself. Miss, I’ll Just
Have A Banana met me back at the stateroom. This time we got off the ship at 8
am. We had to tender and they weren’t supposed to even open the tender ticket line until 8 am, but at 7:56 we had collected our tickets,
made our way down to the boat, and found a seat.
It was a fifteen-minute
ride to the shore. We then found a taxi to take us to the Fortress of the
Bears. And you thought my bear pictures were taken in the wild. They had eight
bears in the enclosure, but had sent three others to zoos across the country.
They try and keep the habitat natural. In the spring they feed them fruits and
vegetables, and in the fall they have more protein. The keepers put salmon in
the ponds of the enclosure and the bears chase and eat them. Then when the
bears eat all the fish, the keepers stop feeding them so they hibernate.
The area the bears are in is eight times larger than they
would have in zoos. The habitat just received permission to enlarge the
enclosure, so they are excited about that.
All the males were shedding their winter fur, so they looked
a little scruffy. The females will do this later on.
Several bald eagles were circling us, so the head of the
organization grabbed a piece of pizza and threw it in the air. The eagle
swooped down and caught it. He did this several times as more eagles arrived.
Each time, the eagle snatched it out of the air.
He said a few weeks back that a ten-year-old was impressed. “Good throwing, you hit them in the
feet every time.”
A light rain was coming down the whole time, so we were getting wet. Passing a soda fountain, we
decided to stop in. One girl, behind the counter, took the orders while another
one made the drinks. The order taker kept getting them wrong, and the other was
getting very grumpy and snarling. When she went to make my vanilla malt, it
came out of the mixer and splashed all over her front. Karma rears its ugly
head again.
When we arrived back at the ship, we changed clothes and
went up to eat lunch. I was in line to get a hamburger, when someone behind me
asked, “Is this the end of the line?” I turned and there was my ex-coworker
standing there. He retired the same day I did, and somehow took the exact
cruise I did. I grabbed him in a bear hug.
I had talked to Kip, another worker, the day before I
retired, and told him about the trip I was taking. Then Kip talked to Manzar
the next day and asked what his plans were. He told him about the trip he was taking.
When Manzar told him, Kip said, “Wait a minute, that’s the same cruise Clark’s
taking.”
So Manzar knew to look for me, but I was totally stunned to
see him. Then I didn’t get his room number, so I was kicking myself, but
luckily, I found him at the show that night and we caught up on old times.
Okay, it was a short catch up, we both had been retired less than a week.
Dinner was prime rib. Very rare for my tastes, but I ate it.
The potato soup was good, but not the gazpacho.
Natalie Toro was the show tonight. Amazing singer. Most of
her jokes fell flat, though. Worth going to.
Ketchikan
We ordered room service as the ship arrived at seven in the
morning. It came at six twenty. We were up and dressed in plenty of time to get
off at seven, but were delayed. At thirty after we finally got off the ship.
I’ve seen lots of people falling down on this trip, and today was another one. No
sooner had a woman gotten off the ship, than she tripped over the wood sidewalk and face
planted. I’m sure it was broken as she went straight down on it. Not how she
intended the day to go.
A firetruck arrived on the scene to help her, so we moved
on. We walked down the length of Creek Street. At the end, there was an
annoying man talking loudly. As we passed Dolly’s, he said, “What, you’re not
going to go in the whore house? Boy, I sure would.”
Why don’t you then,
I thought.
He seemed to follow us to the funicular that goes up to the
hotel. An Asian couple was here, so he
said hello in Japanese.
The man said, “We’re
Chinese.”
“Well, how do you say hello in Chinese, then?”
“Nee how.”
“Nee ha,” he tried to repeat.
The woman corrected him. “No ha, how.”
“No ha how,” he repeated.
Blissfully, we reached the top and parted ways. We took the Married
Man Trail back down the hill. It was nice and calm. Then we went to the
Southwest Alaska Interpretive Center. A good place to stop. Earlier, we tried
to go to the museum, but when we entered the building, we were looking at empty rooms. They hadn’t finished the
remodel and only one display was set up, but they were still charging
admission. We didn’t stay.
They were still repairing the toilet lines when we arrived
back on the ship. It was soon fixed. I took a nap, and luckily we missed
trivia. We’ve not done so well on this trip. We did go up to the Crow’s Nest. I
like to call it Ten Forward, as it is on deck ten, all the way forward. It goes
back to my Star Trek days.
While there, I spied two men playing chess. Another man
asked if he could watch. A minute later, his daughter told him she found a set,
so they set up the board. I then asked if I could watch their game. The
daughter seemed to mind, because she stood up and said, “You go ahead and play
him.”
I won the first game, but lost the next two. I haven’t
played over the board, face to face, chess in years. I play on the internet,
but there I have three days to decide my move. I played too quickly. That,
coupled with him being a better chess player, led to my losses. I did give him
a run for his money every game though.
It was formal night at
dinner. We were put at a table for four. The other couple seemed nice, but the
man wouldn’t talk. I think he said all of ten words that whole dinner, and that
was because I asked him direct questions. He would say a couple of words and
his wife would finish explaining what he meant. It made the meal awkward.
The menu had surf and turf which consisted of lobster tail
and filet mignon. It was excellent. The lobster wasn’t overcooked at all.
The show was by the production staff. They are leaving the
ship soon, so it was the last time they would do that show together. I think it
was called a Thousand Steps or something like that. It was fun and worth going
to.
Victoria
We slept in till after nine. I thought the main dining room
would be closed, but it was open. We ate there. The breakfast food is good.
Everything was moved up because of the stop in Victoria at 6 pm. The nightly show was held at three pm.
We had the luncheon for the returning Mariner members. I had a hard time
deciding what to eat, because I didn’t like much on the menu. It was all fancy
stuff, and I’m not really into that. They handed out the tile coasters again, the
ones with the ship on it. I keep telling Deb, I’m going to tile the shower with
these. She just rolls her eyes.
The show was half comedian and half singer, they brought
them both back on stage, but not together. I guess they figured he might
accidentally make her disappear during one of her songs.
We attended the last trivia game. I don’t know why we go, we
never win, almost always coming in second. The best we did was tie for first, only to lose the tiebreaker. We asked to join the team of a man
and his wife, with an opinionated brother-in-law.
They said it didn’t matter they always did poorly. We told
them we usually come in second.
“You ain’t coming in second
today, we’re really bad,” the brother-in-law commented.
Deb shrugged. The second question was what was the world’s
second most popular beer. He named some Chinese beer that no one had ever heard
of. I suggested a different brand. I know nothing about beer, because I don’t
drink it, but got the answer right, anyway. Sure enough, when all was said and
done, we came in second.
I took a lot of good pictures on while crossing the harbor
on our way into town. We passed some kayakers, the skipper commented, “We call
them speed bumps.” Then a huge ferryboat left the dock, and we were suddenly
the speed bump. He slowed way down and gave him lots of room. “That ferry was
built in 1958 at the cost of two million. They said at the time it would never
earn that much money back. Fifty-nine years later, it’s still going strong.”
When we arrived, we walked around the town, bought some
gelato, then headed back on to our stop. There are yellow taxi boats and green
tour boats. The same company owns both. We tried to board one of the green
ones. “I am a tour boat,” he said with his nose in the air. “You’ll have to
wait for a water taxi.”
We moved further down the dock to wait for the water taxi. I
heard the lady selling tickets announce that there would be no more tours that
day. The tour boat guy went and talked to her, then talked to someone on the
radio. With a heaving sigh, he moved his boat and picked a bunch of us up. I
guess he was a water taxi after all.
We walked along the pier, before getting back on the ship.
Seattle
I always hate when a cruise ends. We called Brent from
Victoria the day before, to pick us up early. He was glad we did, because there
was a festival of some sort going on later. I ate my last omelet from the
buffet before getting our bags and heading off the ship. Brent arrived at eight
thirty. With heavy hearts, we drove home to wait, impatiently, for the next
one.
Other Cruise Blogs
Cruise Books by Deb Graham
I enjoyed your report and all of the photos very much! We are sailing on the same ship in a few weeks. Happy Retirement to you!
ReplyDelete