December 5, 2014

Good evening Mr. And Mrs. America and all ships at sea.  Stand by for news.

Not a bad intro, borrowed from two of our greatest newsmen – Walter Winchell and Paul Harvey (if you are too young, Google is ready when you are).

This blog is coming to you from Stateroom 7135 on the “Explorer of the Seas.” Day 2 of our final sailing for 2014.

They say that getting there is half of the fun.  I don’t know whether it is half or not, but it certainly was an adventure.

Frank (for those of you not acquainted with my new car, a 2013 Sonata, hence the nickname Frank: Frank Sonata – it was either Frank of “The Silver Bullet”) was loaded and headed south, having been toodling down Highway 25 for about 30 minutes when a cry of despair issued from the co-pilot’s seat – she had forgotten the patterns for the projects she intended to crochet on this trip.  The yarn was on board.  The needles were on board.  The patterns were still at 233 Woodland Drive.

No problem says I (your friendly neighborhood driver and blogger).  One quick U-turn professionally executed, traces restepped (or was it steps retraced) and we were once again on our way to Port Canaveral.

Somewhere north of Jacksonville we stopped for a break and to switch drivers.  I am sitting in the car waiting for Bonnie to return.  And waiting.  And when she finally appears she is laughing.  Not quite maniacal, but hilariously for certain.  It seems she came out of the ladies room, opened the backdoor of a silver car with a gray haired man in the passenger seat, and said, “Oops!  This is not our car and you are not my husband!”  But it was a silver car.

We reached our motel without further excitement, other than the horrendous traffic around Jacksonville, and went to Longhorn steak house where we consumed large portions of dead grass and dead cows.  A quick trip to a local shop for one more skein of yarn and it was off to bed.

Getting into Port Canaveral was only slightly less stressing than getting into Port Liberty.  You’d think a woman who climbs into strange cars with unknown men wouldn’t mind a little stop and go traffic, well actually, a lot of stop and go traffic.  But driving, literally four miles an hour, was stressing.  Seems like folks stayed on board the Explorer to watch the lift-off of the brand new Orion space craft – Cape Canaveral is only about 5 miles away from the cruise port, and it would have been a great vantage point.  However fuel issues and strong winds aloft delayed the launch and delayed our entry onto our ship.  We did bypass the unwashed masses to get our credentials and get on board, going straight to the Pier Coordinator while everyone else waited their turn with lesser agents.  Take that Crown and Anchor!

One of the first people we saw as we strolled down the Promenade (and we did look up at some windows where the guest were sitting in their window, but fully clothed) was Cornelia Bolocan, our friend from Romania.  She welcomed us with big hugs, and broke into a second big grin when we told her we had brought presents for her from Georgia.  Cornelia is a magnet collector (definitely not made of iron) and we are adding to her collection.  Since our suitcases were not yet in our room, we promised them to her during tonight’s Captain’s Reception – the first formal night of this cruise.

I gave my first talk today, “When Pirates Sailed the Atlantic” to about 200 folk in the Palace Theater.  Good, receptive crowd.  Tomorrow’s talk is “The ABC’s: Basic Paradise” – about Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao.  I will do the protestant worship service Sunday and two more talks.  We have booked a historical excursion for Curacao and will explore Aruba and Bonaire on our own (we will do missionary work in neither island).

The ship has Christmas decorations up, so take a look at them and I’ll see you tomorrow night.

TTFN!