Sea Day #3

Wednesday, April 18 – Sea Day

Bob was up and out the door to go walking before I even woke up. I took my time getting ready and then went to the buffet alone around 7:30. Our clocks had been moved back an hour the night before so we had a nice long sleep.

I visited with a couple sitting at the table next to me who mentioned that their toilet wasn’t working. Turns out they were our next door neighbors! Bob showed up a few minutes after I sat down and enjoyed visiting with the couple as well. The guy was a biker (which was a common interest for Bob) and had biked across Canada and the U.S. (The pedal kind, not motorcycles!)

From breakfast, Bob and I went to the theater for Tim Calvert’s lecture on the history of the Panama Canal at 9:00. We got there quite early and saved seats for Danny and Stan thinking they were coming right away, but when they didn’t show up by 8:50 we quit trying and they were quickly snatched up. Of course they showed up about 3 minutes later.

Following the presentation, Bob and I wandered around the ship so I could take some photos and video. The weather was very humid and warm so most of what we did was indoors.

No activities were of interest to me for the rest of the morning so I went back to the cabin to try and backup all of the photos I had taken in the last few days. I had been researching ways to do this without lugging a laptop computer on the ship and discovered a gadget called the RAVPower Filehub Plus . This thing is a wireless router that lets you transfer photos from either an SD card or an iPhone to an external hard drive without having an internet connection. The process is not intuitive but eventually I got it figured out. Having the photos backed up to the hard drive will give me a little piece of mind. The photos are important to me...my way of preserving the memories that I would soon lose without the pictures. And as the title of my blog...the memories ARE my souvenirs!

Danny and Stan stopped by our cabin around 11:45 to go to lunch. Getting there a few minutes before noon meant the lines were much shorter. After hearing Bob rave about the Asian food, I decided to try it…but only a small amount. Mmmm…quite good. I went back to get some more, but by then the line was pretty long so I opted for some food from the main buffet…the oxtails were outstanding!

For dessert I took a piece of almond cake but I couldn’t pass up the bread pudding…so I took some of it too. I have had some every day so far and as much as I love it, I need to resist.

Danny, Bob and I went to team trivia in the Crow’s Nest at 1:00 and played with the Aussie crew. One of the questions was “which of your senses is usually affected when when you get hit by lightning?” Others were debating what the answer should be when Bob spoke up and said…”Well…when I got hit by lightning I lost my hearing.” This took everyone by surprise and provoked a lot of questions, but the answer was correct!

(Bob actually did get hit by lightning a couple of times during a freak storm while mountain climbing in the Tetons. One friend died in the storm and Bob and the others he was climbing with had to be airlifted by helicopter. The incident sparked the largest rescue mission in history for the Teton's and was covered in length by Sports Illustrated.)

My only contribution was to answer “how many equal angles does a scalene triangle have?” The correct answer? Zero. Our group tied for 1^st place and unfortunately I really failed the group when it came to the tie-breaker question. “How many yards are in a mile?” We had 30 seconds to answer and Danny was in the process of doing long division when I quickly wrote down 1740…the answer that I “thought” I remembered from my teaching days. But...I remembered wrong. The answer was 1760 and I felt so stupid. The prizes were Panama Canal pins which the other team had already won multiple times so they let our team have them. Sort of pity prizes I guess.

At 3:30 we had to choose between a “virtual tour through the Panama Canal” with the EXC host or a PBS movie on the building of the canal. We had seen the latter, but I knew it was good and had a lot of interesting information.  We chose the virtual cruise which turned out to be a slideshow and lecture that was very, very similar to the lecture we had just attended that morning. Should have gone to the movie.

Afterwards, Bob went up to the buffet to get some ice tea and I popped outdoors on the promenade deck. Having a cabin on this deck means people are always walking by the window, but also means it is quite easy to get outside quickly…sort of an un-private balcony. The weather was feeling less humid so I just sat on the padded teak lounger enjoying the waves. I visited with another couple that I met at the Cruise Critic meet & greet until it was time to get showered and dressed for dinner.

Stan had requested that we try and get to dinner a little early. Even though our scheduled time was 5:45 pm, the dining room was usually open and people were being seated around 5:30. He was hoping we could get done early enough to get to the Panama Canal movie that we had missed in the afternoon. It was being shown again at 6:30 but it was well after 7:00 before we finished. Danny loves his desserts and wouldn’t think of skipping! 😉

Andhika Putra...or as we called him...."The Ginger Man"! Each night he would be outside the entrance to the dining room offering after-dinner treats...candied ginger, figs, dates and mints. 

We did have plenty of time to get good seats in the theater for the first production show of the cruise…”Road House”…a country themed show which we enjoyed.  All of the singers and dancers had boarded the ship at the beginning of the cruise so it was the first time they had performed together.

Tomorrow will be the big day…the crown jewel of this cruise. The Panama Canal. The captain announced that we “should” be starting through the first set of locks around 6:30 am so the alarm is set for 5:30 am!