If You're Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Clothes

Here and There
Pi Day

March 14, 2015

What do you mean I have to get off?

Just when I am starting to think I live here, they want me to pack up all my things and get off the ship. Nobody said life was fair.

Here's some mood music to set the tone for the next part of my story.
 

If You're Going to San Francisco

It's a beautiful day in San Francisco and the Embarcadero is humming with activity. Pier 27 is like an anthill with the old passengers getting off and the new ones lining up to get on in an hour or two.

As we ride off in our SuperShuttle we see cyclists in the dedicated bike lane, families at the Exploratorium, joggers, tourists in pedicabs, taxis, people walking dogs, people pushing baby strollers, and a crowd in that little park over there . . . What IS that? . . . No way! OMG!

Our Russian driver confirms it: "Over there, is nudists."
There must be 15 or 20 of them.  I think one of them was riding a bicycle. I think one, maybe two, are women, and the rest are not. I don't know whether this is a special treat for St. Patrick's Day, or whether it happens every Saturday. And I don't want to know.

We got to the airport without any further distractions and eventually boarded one of those planes with the smiling Eskimo on the tail. Right next to us is a plane with the Eskimo, but he is wearing a lei. Maybe I should be on that plane.

I said "Hola" to Mexico and "Aloha" to Hawaii, and tonight I will say "Camai" to Alaska.
Camai is Yupik for Hello and is pronounced chuh-MĪ (long i).

The Five-Thousand Mile Journey

Off the Coast of California 
March 13, 2015

to be completed

The Star Princess Bridge Club: Chris, Julie, me, and Ed

It's time to say Goodbye

Top Ten Reasons Not to Volunteer for a Game Show

At Sea

March 11, 2015

Marriage Match

We went to see an activity called Marriage Match.  We did NOT volunteer to be contestants. They recruited a newlywed couple, a "middly-wed," and a "nearly dead." The wives were taken out of the room and the husbands were asked questions about their wives, such as "Describe in detail what your wife is wearing." Then the wives were brought back in to answer the questions. After that, the husbands went out of the room and the process was reversed.  The audience had a great time. I don't know about the volunteers.

Well, I'm only going to list four of the top ten reasons. You will get the idea.

4. Your husband will announce that he would not want to be on a desert island with your sister - and your sister is in the audience

3. Your wife will declare that  the dessert that your private parts remind her of is wiggly, jiggly jello with fruit

2. Everybody on the ship will know that you had sex on a trampoline

1. Your husband will tell the audience that you are "underwear optional"

Ask Me About the Star Aft Art

Tittico, a tapestry by Maria Boldrin of Italy

Protea Series, by John Ng, U.S.A.

Apres L'Etude I and II, by Yonessi, from Iran

My favorites: Three Panel Coquelicots, by Don Li-Leger from Canada

The Ultimate Balcony Blow-Down

At Sea near Ensenada

March 12, 2015

UBB

Yay, the sun is out. Boo, it is 62 degrees with Force 6 winds. Today is the last day we can partake of the Ultimate Balcony Breakfast - a gift from our travel agent. We have been waiting for nice weather so we can eat the breakfast on our actual balcony, but it never happened. We could put warm clothes on, but everything would blow away.

Thanks, Debbie!

Ense-NADA

Can you spot the sea lions? I counted 8 of them.

We made a perfunctory stop at Ensenada, Mexico from 4 pm to 8 pm. It is a city of over 400,000, but there is not much there for tourists, but it has a spiffy new port and cruise terminal. Ensenada receives a lot of calls from cruise ships due to the Jones Act. It's not really the Jones Act, it's the Passenger Vessel Services Act, but everybody calls it the Jones Act. Both the Jones Act and the PVSA are antiquated federal laws designed to protect US shipping.

Lining Up Again

We happened to walk by the dining room at 4:10 pm. There was somebody in line already - for the 5:30 dinner seating! Yes, she was in line. She was not just coincidentally near the dining room. She was sitting on her scooter, parked facing the closed door to the dining room and she had her Kindle. 

At 5:00 pm there were maybe eight or ten people in line. I think they had just come back from the port and didn't want to have to bring their backpacks and shopping bags "all the way" back to their cabins.

Cesar and Oleksy  and Jacqi

Oleksy Kovalenko 

A busy night and we lose an hour due to time zone change.

Top 40

March 10, 2015

At Sea

Today was the special lunch with the Captain for the top 40 Most Traveled Passengers. Our table was hosted by Mario Alberto, the Purser. He was an excellent host and was a very interesting man. He grew up in Costa Rica, but now lives in Croatia. The Captain and the Chef de Cuisine both stopped by our table. The waiters were excellent. We enjoyed our lunch very much. 

It was like the difference between night and day, compared to our lunch on the Mexico segment. I'm glad we said something to Abigail, the Captain's Circle Hostess. She made sure we had a good experience this time.

Seafood Risotto

Halibut on a Banana Leaf

Rack of Lamb

Dessert

After dinner we watched The Theory of Everything on TV in our cabin. Allowing for the fact that it was based on a book written by Jane Hawking, it was still a powerful and inspirational story. I think I am going to try to read Steven Hawking's book.

Assisted Cruising

At Sea

March 9, 2015

Today is partly grey with moderate swells. The surface of the water is textured. The mood on the ship is: resignation (to the weather).

Being on this particular cruise is like living in an assisted living facility. The number of scooters, wheelchairs, walkers and canes on this cruise is the most we've ever seen. There are several individuals with severe multiple handicaps, including one person on a ventilator. Most of these people are unable to go ashore in the tenders, and most of them do not go ashore when we are docked. They don't allow scooters and walkers to be parked in the dining room due to limited space, so when you are going to dinner you will pass a "parking lot" of these devices near the door to each dining room.

There is an elderly couple who both use walkers, They have their walkers decorated with a multitude of rubber duckies and other tchotchkies. Wish I could get a photo. 

There are a number of accessible rooms on the ship. They have wider doors, they are larger, and the bathrooms are much more accessible. I have been told that you can't book these rooms uness you have a letter from your doctor - easy to create with a computer and printer - how would the booking office know? I have heard that some people who are very marginally disabled try to book these rooms because they are larger.

In addition to all of the scooters, wheelchairs, canes and walkers, there is a very significant subset of passengers who have problems walking. The most common issue seems to be a waddle. I would guess that 20 to 25 % of the passengers walk this way - mostly women. Less common is something that I would call a "goon walk" or "zombie walk" - mostly men. It is a stilted gait, the arms don't swing, the feet don't look right either.

All of this is one of the reasons we cruise so much. Who knows what the future holds? We want to see the world while we can still walk. We want to be able to go whale-watching in a Zodiac and walk around sampling different types of street food and hike to a caldera. Seeing the people who have mobility problems reminds us that we can't take our health for granted.

Anotther thing that makes this cruise seem like we are living in an assisted living facility is the "early diner" mentality. The dining rooms open for dinner at 5:30 pm according to the official schedule. We were down  in the International Cafe between 4 and 5 and we observed people starting to line up at 4:30. Honest to God. The dining room staff eventually opened up the doors shortly after 5. I don't know if they felt sorry for people who would have to wait in line for an hour, or what. Some of these people were the ones who had mobility issues, so why would they show up 60 minutes early to stand in line? Or even 30 minutes early? They have never run out of food to my knowledge.

When we are not on a cruise people will often tell us that it seems as though it would be cheaper to live on a cruise ship than in assisted living. We don't hear this so often on cruises. In fact, depending on what type of cabin you have and where the cruise goes and whether you can get a deal, it may be a little cheaper to live on a ship than in assisted living in an expensive part of the country. But if you are ready for assisted living you are probably not capable of living on a ship. You might be able to manage a short cruise if you bring someone along to help you. But the ship has the right to disembark you for any reason, and if they think you cannot take care of yourself or they cannot provide the medical care you need, off you go.

Ken went to a "navigation lecture," given by one of the bridge officers. One item of interest: the fire sensors can detect smoke and heat. When two sensors detect a problem, the system can pinpoint the location and automatically close fire doors to isolate the affected area. (You may remember that several years ago the Star Princess had a serious fire that started on a balcony. Since that time, sprinkler systems have been added to all the balconies on all the ships in the fleet.)

When it comes to navigation, they have redundant systems that use GPS. However, the bridge officers are trained to use sextants - just in case. The bridge officer also explained, during his noontime update,  how the Great Circle principle works and why ships seldom use Great Circle routes (because of strong currents and bad weather). Ships use the "rhombus method."

[Find out more]

I also want to mention the specialty pizzas that have been developed for Princess' 50th Anniversary. The other day we had a barbecue chicken pizza. Instead of tomato sauce it had barbecue. It was delicious. Today we tried a Thai Pizza. The sauce was a mixture of peanut butter and tamari, I think. I really liked it, but one piece was enough.

In the evening we went to hear the vocalist, Jacqi Michaels. She was very, very good. She gave a very energetci yet polished performance. She sang songs for the Silent Generation and songs for the Boomers. Everybody in the audience had fun.

By Guess or by God

At Sea

March 8, 2015

Eight Bells

Every day at noon an announcement is made from the bridge. First, someone rings a bell eight times. Then we get a report on the distance traveled since yesterday, our current coordinates and the current weather and sea conditions. Finally, we get a bit of nautical lore. Today the topic was navigation. In the old days they used stars, wind, currents, etc., but they often had to navigate "by guess or by God."

Today the weather is mostly gray and the sea is gray. The surface of the water looks fairly smooth. There is a considerable swell, but very little chop. This means a lot of rolling but not a lot of pitching. It doesn't feel that bad, but occasionally it's hard to walk in a straight line.

The Ship's Company

In the shipboard announcements, the term "the ship's company" is often used. In our case the ship's company consists of about 2600 passengers and 1100 crew members. The passengers consist of:

800 first-time Princess cruisers

630 Gold level

400 Ruby

530 Platinum

270 Elite

There are still a lot of people from Northern California, but not so overwhelming as on the last segment. A lot of us are from northern climates. This batch of passengers seems to be nicer and quieter than average. They don't have all the bad habits you see on cruises with lots of Elites. They don't slam doors, they don't shout in the hallways when you are trying to sleep, they don't cut in line, they don't try to get on the elevator when people are still getting off, they don't reserve seats, they don't hog seats in the public areas all day. I'm not saying they are never rude; I'm just saying they seem to be a little more polite.

Baby Boomers

The average age on the ship is probably around 70, though there are plenty of folks in the 55-65 range.  We have noticed a BIG disconnect between Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation, not just on this cruise, but on most cruises. We are trying to analyze the what and the why of it. The Baby Boomer cohort consists of those born between 1946 and 1964. The Silent Generation was born from the late 1920's through 1945.

As a general rule: The SG has different cultural references than the BB's. The SG got married much younger. They are now great-grandparents. Their world outlook is a lot more black and white than the BB's. The SG are financially conservative and frugal. They tend to be more politically conservative. The SG did not grow up with television. Their music is different. They dress differently. Their gender roles are much more strictly defined. If you see two SG couples talking, the women are talking to each other and the men are talking to each other.

It is more likely that an SG has had the same job all his/her life and the same spouse. They were rule followers. But when some of them reach a certain age, they don't feel obligated to follow the rules any more.

Thus, it is usally easier for us to carry on a conversation with someone 10-15 years younger than with someone 5-10 years older.

Daily Activities

Ken went to a lecture on Natural disasters in Hawaii (tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes). Our PhD scientist/lecturer is not the best and should probably spend more timegathering her facts before she lectures. And if her goal was to deliver a 40-minute lecture in 70 minutes, then she has succeeded brilliantly.

Tonight is Formal Night and most people have made the effort to dress nicely. Before dinner we went to the Captain's Circle party. Captain Nash gave a little spiel. He is a funny guy and better than some of the comedians.

The dinner in the dining room is always extra nice on formal nights. Tonight they had another one of their Chocolate Journeys desserts. It was a caramel-chocolate concoction - really really good.

After dinner we went to see a production show called Stardust. It featured popular songs from the 50's. It's not quite Baby Boomer music, but it is familiar to us and we enjoyed the show.