On cruise control

As much as I hate getting up in the wee hours of the morning, the advantages are abundant. As we we neared our departure, I ordered a Lyft and was a bit surprised, when my phone indicated our wait to be two minutes. Usually the ride shares are trolling Broadway, and I expect a 5-8 minute wait. “Hurry up! You’ve got two minutes!” I yelled. Kim’s response was not enthusiastic, nor fit for print, but she was able to get herself together by the time “Michael” arrived.

The other benefit of early morning travel is the security line at DIA. We checked in at Southwest and breezed through the checkpoint in near-record time. Boarding was efficient and, before we knew it, we were landing in Houston. Our Lyft driver had been a planner in LA, so Kim and she started talking shop, which always leads to an in-depth discussion of marijuana regulation. Even though it’s been legalized for several years now, these discussions always catch me by surprise.

We easily hooked up with Dave, Kathryn, and the girls at the port. It was oddly smooth, and it was fun to see the girls so excited. Their enthusiasm waned little, as we weaved around the ribbon barriers that corralled the line toward the security check point. Naively, we thought we were in the clear after the security screening, but we met another maze of humanity to queue up for our ID cards. The benefit of all this line waiting is to enjoy the matching tee shirts, purposely printed for a variety of occasions. I don’ recall this phenomena, but our last cruise was in the late 1990’s (I’m not counting the trip to Antarctica. Although it was a large ship, it was not a cruise. Feel free to verify with Kim.) Apparently, if you are traveling with a group, for a specific purpose, tee-shirts are distributed for adornment on day one. There was the “No time to snooze, we’re on a cruise” or the popular “On cruise control.” We saw groups traveling for honeymoons, weddings, family reunions, and a whole lot of old people with nothing else to do.

Our state room is on deck two. I was excited, thinking we were on the second deck from the top, then I realized that the numbers get smaller the farther into the bowels of the ship you go. Deck two puts somewhere in the the small intestine. No matter, we won’t be spending much time there. The point is to be out and about, enjoying ourselves. And we got to it quickly. Since we hadn’t eaten since pre-dawn, we were starving by the time we got on the boat. We met everyone in the buffet, where I watched Zoe devour everything in sight. I was surprised to hear that her goal was to eat 24/7 and put on as weight as possible. I was delighted to see that this 16 year old has no body image issues whatsoever. Right on, sister!

When we moved down to the espresso cafe, Zoe found a free sandwich, which she was still chewing, when her sister brought her a piece of pizza. Nikki (14) is thoughtful like that. I shared with the girls that my dad had informed me that there is always a soft serve ice cream machine by the pool. “Can you imagine eating all the ice cream you want?” Nikki then informed me that her friend got in trouble, when she was on a cruise, because she cleaned out the ice bucket and filled it at the soft serve ice cream machine. I call that creativity, but it sounds like the parents called it “naughty.”

I managed to stay up till about 8. Since we’re sharing a triple cabin with Deb, I scuttled up the aluminum ladder to the top bunk and quickly fell asleep, after a long day of travel and ship exploring.Read more