Bill and Sheila At Sea - Day One

I am sitting on the fantail of the Carnival Triumph. To my right is nothing but the wake of the ship, a frothy white and turquoise confection streaming behind us for a hundred yards or so and then nothing but sea to the horizon.

We are just about in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico halfway between Galveston and Cozumel. The weather is pleasantly warm, in the lower 70's. Shorts and flip flops are just comfortable given the wind but overall it is a beautiful day at sea.

We departed Galveston around 4:00 yesterday afternoon. The check in and boarding, while long and tiring, did not have the concentration camp atmosphere typical in most airports these days. The port authority people, the TSA people and especially the cruise line people were all friendly and helpful.

At the sight of my cane, Sheila and I were whisked around the long lines and given expedited handling through every step. And, while the over half mile walk was taxing, just about everything that could be done to make it easier was done. We made it to our stateroom less than an hour after starting the check in process and our luggage was politely placed outside our door before 5:00.

After we had more or less unpacked, the group we are traveling with met at a classy little bar down on the 3^rd deck and split a bottle of Mogen David mixed with ginger ale. Booze is expensive on cruise ships, even in the very moderate quantities that our crowd drinks. We decided to take advantage of the one bottle of “fine wine” per person allowance to cut down on that expense. I was prepared to argue that Mogen David is a fine wine. It says so right there in their advertisements. And anyway, in today’s politically correct craziness what company would dare refuse a bottle of Kosher wine? I called our little get together a Skid Row Cocktail Party because I showed up with a bottle and all my friends showed up with plastic cups. That’s exactly what happens down on 11^th when one of the fellows is seen walking around with a new brown paper bag in his hand.

We passed a pleasant couple of hours in the lounge, listening to a very professional solo artist do standards and light rock. Later in the cruise, I talked to this guy. I heard him several times and he is without a doubt the best solo bar act I ever heard. Nothing but him, a Gibson 335 and a one foot by eighteen inch stomp box case. I asked him how he was getting all of that sound out of so little equipment and he showed me his I-Pad which he was using to store all of his multi-track backing tracks. The most surprising thing however was his voice. On stage, he had the perfect blues, rock southern accent and intonation. Off stage, he has the annoying twang of his native land, Canada.

While it seemed to take forever to get a table in the dining room, the combination of the wine and the company made the wait enjoyable. I really don't know what to say about dinner. They served the best Caesar Salad I have had in a long, long time and the best cup of decaf coffee. But, everything in between was at best lackluster. However, our wait staff was superb. The assistant maitre' de who is a ships officer not just staff was our waiter. He and his crew were cheerful and professional.

With dinner over, I headed back to the stateroom while Sheila and a girlfriend wandered off in search of bingo cards and stage shows. Leaning out over the rail of our little balcony, it strikes me that this is one big old boat. As a matter of fact, the Carnival Triumph is a huge ship, one of the largest passenger vessels afloat. She is nearly three hundred yards long and travels at twenty knots. While not speedy by the old thirty knot plus standards of the golden age of liners, this is nevertheless absolutely amazing for a ten story floating hotel carrying over three thousand passengers

There is a lot of motion for a ship this size in relatively calm seas. The action of the stabilizers is quite noticeable in preventing roll and oscillation. The motion isn't unpleasant but is far more noticeable than my memories of the motion of the much smaller but heavily loaded Navy transports that I sometimes traveled on in my youth. The thing that surprises me most is the fact that even on the 8^th deck we can feel the propulsion plant. Eight stories up, you know those shafts are turning someplace down there.

It is almost a misnomer to call the Triumph a liner. She is a floating hotel, casino and resort that is as much a destination in herself as the ports she visits. The Carnival lines are the Greyhound buses of the cruise industry. This was especially apparent at dinner last night. Some of the ladies were dressed in designer cocktail dresses and expensive resort wear. Others were in what was obviously an outfit chosen from the bargain rack at WalMart. But, somehow it works. The ship and the crew don't take themselves too seriously and realize that their job is just to make sure that everybody has a good time. And, they do that pretty well. More tomorrow.

Bill and Sheila At Sea - Day Two

Yesterday, (Day Two) was scheduled by the cruise director as a “Fun Day At Sea.” We spent the day grazing the buffets, wandering the boat and lying around on deck. It is strange but amazingly satisfying to have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

I haven't talked about our little cabin yet. It is a marvel of compact design. No more than 10 feet wide and twenty feet long, it has a king size bed, two more than adequate closets, a long built in dresser and a tiny head (bathroom for you landlubbers) that is a marvel of design of its own. I discovered that I could do my whole morning routine sitting on the surprisingly large and just right height toilet, even shower there with the hand shower had I had chosen to.

Our stateroom actually has more privacy in some ways than our home. The entire outboard wall is heavy tempered glass, with a sturdy glass door leading to the balcony. Once we were out to sea, we simply opened the drapes and did not shut them again. There was no one to see and we enjoyed the view of the ocean. Like many of the balconies on the Triumph, ours was designed to provide maximum privacy.

Last night was “formal night” for dinner. I had taken my cues from other resort experiences and brought a dark suit and tie, the commonly accepted minimum “dress down” uniform for after five. Sheila wore a short, black cocktail dress. I was the only person at our table in a tie. It was actually kind of amusing. You could look across the room and pick out the lawyers by their suits and their lady's cocktail dresses. A large group of Texas lawyers and judges were cruising together. The way we all dress is kind of uniform. Men in dark suits and ladies in little black dresses.  I felt kind of ridiculous looking at the casual dress of most of the other men. I was actually wearing my law school (aka old school) tie and a big gold “ring knocker” law school class ring. Everybody else looked like they were going out to a nice but informal restaurant in their home town. It left me feeling like a fish out of water but I am told that this informality is peculiar to Carnival and that the other cruise lines have more stringent expectations.

Dinner was good. It is kind of fun to just order what you want and not have to worry about the cost since all is included in the price of your ticket. I had two appetizers, surprisingly good Alligator fritters and an equally surprising strawberry bisque (strawberry cream soup.) My salmon fillet was again good but not great. The cherries jubilee for desert were enjoyable and they consistently serve a fine cup of coffee. One person at our table who does not need to watch his weight had two entrees, prime rib and a lobster. The other guys at our table had prime rib. They said it was great.

There was entertainment during the meal. A very good vocalist backed up by the wait staff sang “That's Amore” and invited the couples to stand up and dance where they were. One couple at our table did and gave us an over the top tango impression that was at once both charming and funny.

One of our friends brought a bottle of good champagne and we ended the meal with it. It was a very dry Moet and gave the meal an elegant finish. There is a ten dollar “corking fee” for having your own wine served at the at the table. I had forgotten why I don't drink champagne. In less than an hour, I was rewarded with a champagne headache almost beyond belief. For some reason known only to God, some people react badly to something in champagne, even in very small quantities, causing an almost blinding headache. I am one of them. I don't know how I could forget that but I will not forget it again.

We finished the evening by taking in a couple of comedy shows in one of the ships several night clubs. The first comic was a bland, Gen X type whose humor didn't really fit with a crowd of rowdy Texans. Most of the passengers on this cruise are Texans, many of them from the Houston area.  Gen X whining just did not cut it.

The second comic was highly talented but lost his crowd early. He did a really cute lead in by telling the crowd to go along with him for a few minutes and just laugh when he did. He then began doing his bit in Polish. As the crowd continued to walk into the club, they were greeted a comic speaking Polish and a crowd apparently laughing their heads off at him. Their confusion was highly amusing.

But, after that strong start, he told an anti-American joke that was dead on arrival before a crowd of patriotic Texans. Make no mistake.  This crowd was all Texan and the comic just did not understand them at all.  He then tried to work on a Latino angle with an obviously Mexican man who corrected him immediately and proudly proclaimed himself to be a Texican, an American born Texan of Mexican ancestry, a group whose Texas patriotic heritage dates back to the Alamo. The guy finally went to work on a group from Maine and Canada and one of the Canadians took a shot at America which the comic followed with a line about Canadians having free health care while Americans don't. Again, dead on arrival. The small group of Canadians and Easterners sitting together laughed.  Everyone else sat there stonily silent.  It was sad in a way. The guy is a gifted performer but his LA politically correct viewpoint killed what could have been a rolling in the aisles performance.

After the second show, we called it an evening. I went back to the stateroom, took a handful of aspirin and sat out in the dark quiet of the balcony wishing and waiting for the headache to subside. It soon did and we settled in for the night.

Bill and Sheila At Sea - Day Three

It is 8:45 AM and we are in the final process of docking in Cozumel. The delicate ballet of mating a 300 yard floating hotel to the pier is going on as I write. I am flooded with memories of the charged atmosphere on a small bridge, crisp commands and an almost desperate coordination between rudder and screws trying to coax a reluctant ship close enough to the dock for the lines and winches to snug her in. These memories belie my age. They are from another generation. The modern miracle of side thrust propulsion nudges this giant in nearly as easily as parking a car. Just now, I felt the final bumps indicating that we are once again bound to shore. There are several cruise ships nearby including another giant from the Royal Caribbean Line which is moored on the next pier over.

Our group was up early and by 7:30 or so we were all sitting around the Lido deck grazing from the multiple breakfast buffets. All of the men were fascinated by the maneuvering going on as we eased up the channel toward the port. We all watched in fascination as the pilot boat approached and out of sight below us, the pilot jumped from his small moving boat onto our huge ship. And, to remind us that we are living in a post 9/11 era, a Mexican Navy patrol boat met us at their territorial limit and escorted us into the harbor. I don't know if there has been a recent terrorist threat or not but in other parts of the world, cruise ships have been attacked.

I was up early this morning. 4:30 style early. I slipped out onto our tiny balcony and was greeted by an old friend from my youth, the tropical air. The air of the tropics is different. It has substance, almost a creamy texture. When the temperatures are moderate as they were this morning, it has a luxurious, almost sensual feel on your skin. This is the good time of day near the equator before the sun becomes a hammer on your head and the humidity turns on you and sucks your breath away.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was treated to a seemingly endless stream of delicate shore lights passing on the horizon. Morning showers were already forming and as I watched from eight stories above the water level, we seemed to pass through the moonlit clouds between the ship and the horizon. As the dawn was breaking, I watched a parade of tiny showers, only a hundred or two yards around, pass along the side.

A few minutes before 9:00, our crowd joyfully set out for a day ashore. Sheila and several others are going snorkeling and will shop later. Others will just see the town. But, like an unlucky sailor who has drawn the duty in a liberty port, I am remaining on board. My worn out knees and shattered left leg would have made a shore excursion more painful than it would have been worth and at any rate, I don't have much desire to see the state fair midway display of Latin America that awaits a couple of hundred yards down the pier. In my youth, I was privileged to sail these waters and visit some of these ports before they became carnival attractions. I prefer my memories of a slower, dustier, grittier but somehow sweeter and more authentic Latin America to what lies beyond our gangplank now

It is just past 9:00 now and the ship is quiet, almost empty. I am greeted by more familiar sounds from my youth. With the passengers ashore, our mostly European crew is doing the things that sailors have done since the first ironclads. Above me on the next deck, a small crew of seamen are working away with chipping hammers, arc welders and paint brushes, mostly winning the war all iron ships fight with the cancer of rust brought on by seawater and salt air. The Triumph is a clean and pretty ship. Her European crew look the same as professional merchant seaman anywhere in the world, just in cleaner uniforms.

I spent the solitary morning writing and drinking coffee near the fantail, eventually going back to the room to tidy up our belongings and get them in some kind of shape for repacking before they got out of hand.

Around 12:30, I decided to have lunch at one of the buffets on the Lido Deck above me one level and a little aft. I was surprised to see that the buffet lines were set for French cooking and selection was excellent. I had a very good filet of turbo in a sweet cream fennel sauce and a small piece of wine basted chicken along with grilled corn and peppers and coleslaw. A large bowl of fresh fruit and a cup of decaf finished it nicely. It was the best meal I had had to date on the ship.

A little while later, Sheila came back to the ship from her adventures and had not eaten, so I went back up with her and a friend who had gone on the shore excursion with her. As I was passing, the sandwich shop products looked good so I ordered a small turkey sandwich. It was the best turkey sandwich I have ever had in my life. Nothing fancy, just wonderful French bread cooked that morning, high quality sliced turkey breast (not luncheon meat disguised as turkey breast) and the usual vegetables.

We met with the gang again for dinner. This time, our table was nearly in the galley. Hurried waiters dashed back and forth within inches through the entire meal. But, our waiter was superb. A friendly little guy named Jose from El Salvador. And, the meal was remarkably good for a change. I had roast turkey prepared in what I suppose was a French fashion. The breast meat was sliced and rolled into a tiny tenderloin while the thigh had been sliced like a ribeye and stuffed with seasoned vegetables. It was an innovative take on an old standard. We all wound up sampling each other's plates and ordering extra desserts.

After the meal we wandered down to the Oxford club where a remarkably talented pianist was performing. We settled in and enjoyed the music until the end of his set. We then wandered the boat a bit and eventually wound up out on deck on the starboard side of the fourth level under the lifeboats, watching a huge thunderstorm a few miles to our side. By then it was going on 10:00. The ladies had previously gone their own way to watch dance lessons of some sort while we men called it an evening. I finished the evening alone on our little balcony, watching the lightning on the horizon and savoring the last touches of tropical air I would enjoy for a while.

Bill and Sheila At Sea - Day Four

Sheila and I were up at 6:30. I am back on the fantail again. Having finished a leisurely buffet breakfast and several cups of coffee with the gang, we have split up and gone on to our individual pursuits.

The weather has not been kind to us. It is a cold and windy by tropical standards. The temp is in the lower 60's and there is a strong wind. There is also a strong quartering sea off the starboard bow and we are pitching and rolling noticeably. Nothing bad by small ship standards where twenty and thirty degree rolls are common but enough to make some of the non sailors on board uncomfortable.

Around 10:00, I decided to go back to cabin and start packing up for our debarkation tomorrow. In one of those things that only happens in the movies, I look down the two hundred yard long passageway and saw Sheila approaching from the opposite direction. The rolling had gotten the best of her and she didn't exactly know what to do. I told her to sit down quietly and sip some ginger ale. She retrieved a scopomaline patch from her makeup bag and applied it as well. Within a little while, she was recovering somewhat and with her help, I proceeded to put four suitcases of stuff plus what she had bought in Cozumel back into three suitcases. It wasn't easy but I think I managed it. I will know for sure in the morning.

In the meanwhile, the weather has gotten worse. We seem to be steering nearly due north with a strong easterly sea and wind hitting us nearly abeam. I am amazed that this giant ocean liner is managing to repeat less violent but otherwise identical gyrations as the cursed Gator Navy LST I served on for several cruises long ago. LST's were universally denounced as the worst riding ships ever built.

The Triumph is rolling about five degrees from side to side and pitching more than that. There are two to three foot waves in the swimming pools from the ships motion and the water from them is splashing all over the deck. Occasionally, the stern shakes from side to side like a salsa dancer. When that happened on our LST, the bow had taken a dive, the stern was rising and consequently the screws were partially out of the water causing them to shake the fantail of the ship like a terrier shakes a rat. I can't imagine that happening on this giant but I guess it is possible. Every once in a while she seems to stop entirely in the water and then crab forward to one side. Another favored move of the old LST whose blunt bow could not cut through waves.

These are the classic moves of a shallow draft ship in heavy seas. I really don't understand this at all. The seas aren't that heavy, barely white capping actually. And, while the wind is stiff, I'm guessing twenty knots gusting to thirty or so, again that is nothing compared to a real storm or even a moderately bad day on the Atlantic. The stabilizers keep her from taking the long, sickening rolls that plagued older ships but the motion is still annoying. She bounces around like a cork.

By now, Sheila has recovered enough to seek more adventures. She has sworn that she would descend the large water slide on the Lido deck and now dons her bathing suit and soldiers off to do it, dragging me in tow. We meet one of our traveling companions on deck near there. He, ever the scholar, is taking in the sun and reading something heavy. He decides to take the slide in too. Who says sixty year old people can't have adventures?

Most of the gang came up to our room around four. I took the memory cards from their cameras and downloaded their cruise pictures onto my netbook. When I get time, I will make a DVD for them all.

We gathered for dinner around 6:00 in the usual lounge. We were seated immediately at a rather nice table with an excellent view to port. The meal was nothing less than superb. I started with an excellent onion soup and then had a little sushi. For my main course, I had grilled Mahi Mahi and for dessert Baked Alaska. Sheila had basically the same meal except that she had chilled asparagus soup. It was very good as well. Again, friends had brought a bottle of good champagne and this time I took only a tiny sip to be polite as the usual toast was offered. Sheila drank her glass and managed to repeat my champagne headache of last night.

After dinner, we popped in to the second half of the Vegas style show in the main theater. It was definitely a PG version of a Vegas show but very well done. There was Latin music followed by a finale of patriotic music. Everything and everyone involved was top drawer. The show would have been at home at any the best hotels on the strip.

When the show ended, some folks went back to their rooms to pack. Sheila and I, having already taken care of that chore, ambled down the Oxford Club to listen to some Karaoke. As would be expected, some was bad and some was very bad. But, the final number before we left redeemed the whole enterprise. A smiling little Texas gal of about twenty strode up, took the mic and proceeded to bring the house down with a highly professional rendition of “People Get Ready.”

By this time, most of the gang had wandered back down and joined us. They were going to go back and do the Vegas show again. I had had enough for the day and came back to the room to mentally and physically prepare myself for tomorrow's ordeal of debarkation, customs and the long drive back to Tulsa from Galveston,

While Sheila is intermittently swearing she will never do it again, I have to say that I had the time of my life. We were traveling with a group of dear old friends. Aside from the weather, most things worked and worked very well. I love the sea and had been longing for another voyage for years. This one was all of the fun with none of the work with good friends thrown in to boot. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Bill and Sheila At Sea - Day Five

Sheila awoke at 3:00 AM, anxious that we would oversleep and not make wake up calls to the other gang members who had asked us to. She apparently didn’t hear when I said that I would set my Blackberry alarm to wake us in plenty of time. She went back to sleep but I was wide awake.

I walked out onto our balcony and saw that we were winding our way through the seemingly endless maze of huge tankers and container vessels that are waiting for dock space in Galveston. In a while, I noticed that we were overtaking what appeared to be much smaller vessel in the ship channel, passing her in exactly the same way you would pass another car on a highway. We went roaring past at twenty knots. I was pleased that I remembered how to read the running lights and channel markers. As I looked down on to her deck thinking how small she looked, I realized that she was about the same size ship that I had served on for over two years, sailing not only the Caribbean but also the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

We got ready and did our final bits of packing. When it opened at 6:30, we were waiting to be seated at the oh so fancy Paris dining room for breakfast. One of our friends who would be traveling back with us in the car soon met us and we ordered. I had an egg white omelette with vegetables, honey dew melon, hash browns, chicken sausage, turkey bacon, toast and marmalade, orange juice and decaf. Sheila had eggs benedict. It was a fitting end to the cruise. The whole stern bulkhead was glass and we watched the City of Galveston pass by as they twisted and turned the ship into the pier.

Debarkation and customs was fairly painless. By ten o’clock we were driving up the bridge/causeway that links Galveston to the mainland. There was only one spot of stop and go traffic in the Houston area. We stopped for a quick sandwich lunch near the junction of I-45 and Texas 19 and by dinner time we were pulling into Paris, Texas where we introduced our friends to the old Texas institution known as a David Beard’s catfish restaurant. Before 10:00 PM we were driving through Tulsa taking our friends home.

I have not mentioned my friend’s names because excessive internet exposure can have bad results these days. Let me describe them for you for those of you who don’t know us all. They are all dear old friends. Our children grew up together and went to the same schools at one time or another. One of the men is the headmaster of that private school. His wife is an administrative professional in the public school system. One of the ladies is an RN who is a now nursing professor at a local college. Her husband is in business. The last couple are a retired medical services technical specialist and his homemaker wife. In no particular order, their pictures are shown above.

On the day that we were having the bad weather, Sheila swore she would never set foot on another ship as long as she lived. She probably meant it at the moment. I asked her again last night and she said maybe. I asked her today if she had fun and she replied enthusiastically yes. So, since she was the last holdout, I can now truthfully say that a good time was had by all.

Bill and Sheila At Sea - Epilogue

After a day of resting and unpacking, we are now facing our first day back at work. It is a good time to take a minute and think back over our adventure.

It is amazing that we traveled as far as we did in such a short time. Last Wednesday night we were in the middle of the US in Tulsa, OK. By Friday morning we were halfway across the Gulf of Mexico with Cuba coming up to port and the Yucatan Peninsula to starboard. We started Monday in the plush dining room of a huge ship being docked in Galveston and ended it at ten o'clock that evening in our own beds back in Tulsa. And, we did not fly. We drove.

I plotted our route to Galveston and chose to avoid Dallas. We took the Indian Nation Turnpike all the way to its' end at Paris, Texas and then took Texas Route 19 almost all the way south across Texas until it meets Interstate 45 about an hour north of Houston. While much of the road was two lane, it is the wide shoulder, well kept, seventy mile per hour speed limit two lane that Texas does so well. I will take a fast, pleasant, two lane drive through the East Texas piney woods over trying to negotiate the LBJ and the High Five any time.

The one mistake we made was over packing. This probably does not hold true for other cruise lines but on Carnival, men could get by fine with one pair of dark slacks, a casual sport coat and two or three collared shirts for the evening. Shorts, flip flops and bathing suits are the uniform for the day. Women could easily get get by with a dressy sundress or two and maybe a soft, simple cocktail dress for the formal evening. Shorts, flip flops and bathing suits will do for the days. We could have gotten by with one wheeled suitcase and a couple of small individual shoulder bags if we had packed carefully.

One of the things we did right was tying large yellow "Caution" construction banners from Lowes to our luggage handles so that we could spot our own black nylon roller cases in a sea of black nylon roller cases that all looked pretty well alike. A second thing we did right was to hire a porter to help us with our luggage as we debarked. Our porter had worked this same terminal for over thirty years and knew every trick in the book about getting through it quickly. We made it out at least twenty minutes faster than other people who started with us simply because this guy knew which line to choose and which direction to take at the right time. He opted not to wait for a full load for his luggage cart and took us through alone and I tipped him the amount he could have expected for a load. It was still a a great deal.

Carnival cruises are without a doubt the best bargain in the travel industry right now. The cruise rates start at less than four hundred dollars per person for a three day, four night cruise. You can't stay in a Hampton Inn for that on land. And on the cruise ship, everything is included, all of your meals and all of your entertainment. The only things you need money for are booze and gambling. Since we don't gamble and only drink a little wine, most of which we brought with us, it is a very cheap vacation.

Oh, and did I say it is FUN. I had the time of my life. Perhaps I am easily pleased, but who wouldn't enjoy sitting around on deck getting some sun and watching the younger folks have fun in the pools, or sitting on your own quiet little balcony watching the ocean go by, or having good to great meals and drinks with good friends every day and night without even thinking about the check, or listening to great music and taking in club style entertainment any evening you want. To me, that is FUN with a capitol F. So, I think I will end my account of this little adventure with links to some old TV ads that still happen to be true: Carnival Value If They Could See Us Now Ain't We Got Fun .