Category: Captain’s Blog 2019

Traveling with the wayward warrior cheerleaders.

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Well, hello my dajeerling! Today, we started the day with high tea at the Empress. For $82, you’d think you’d at least get a sandwich with crust. Apparently, the high price supports the cost of all the finger sandwich crusts to be shipped to feed the starving children in Africa. As our tea steeped, the cost of the scones got steeper. All in all, high tea was a tealicious experience followed by a trip to the washroom for the subsequent high pee ritual.

With our pinkies still out, we moved on to Butchart Gardens, a lovely botanical gardens. Of course, as soon as we got there, it started to pour. The gardens nicely provide you with umbrellas made in China; which, coincidentally, the rest of our fellow tourists found out that they were all no more than Six Degrees of Kevin Bac-Yen in the manufacturing of the aforementioned umbrellas. Aside from the horticulturists and the Japanese Beetles, we were the only non-Chinese in the gardens. Somehow, they were so up our butts with their picture taking that they somehow ended up in our selfies and will be seen in our future colonoscopy films.

From there, we walked around Victoria’s downtown and went to a British Pub to watch the Yankees win. Our polite Canadians allowed for all TVs to be on the game until its conclusion, at which time, they returned to their regular viewing of SIFN, the Saskatchewan Ice Fishing Network.

Vancouver and Victoria are at the literal roots of the locally sourced food movement. We finished our day with a locally sourced meal. At home, I go to the closest ShopRite to locally source mine. By the time we heard in detail about the no-pesticide, no-GMO, grass-fed, organic, sustainable, greenhouse gas free ingredients that compose the menu, their locally sourced produce had rotten and could not be served. We shared a package of twinkies from circa 1967 and called it a night.

Traveling with the wayward warrior cheerleaders.

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We set out early from Victoria to return to Vancouver for our final day of vacation. Ellen DeFlora Sciortino must’ve seen the Wizard, as she pushed through her fear of flying to enable us to take a seaplane and return to Vancouver on a 35-minute flight instead of a minimum 4 hours taxi-ferry-taxi trip. Ellen has courage and will fight you with one hand tied behind her back. Interestingly, as the seaplane is on water and the air, the stewardess had gills and wings having adapted to her role. We landed safely in Vancouver and having paid for the Northern Exposure package, we were flashed by the pilot, as we deplaned.

With one fear conquered, we headed to the Capilano Suspension Bridge to walk between two mountains on a gorge. We Wallendaed our way across the expanse. At times the suspense was killing me, as I wasn’t sure if we’d go one sway or the other. Ellen finished the morning off skydiving, paragliding, running with the bulls, putting her head in a lion’s mouth, eating blowfish, and doing the tide pod challenge.

We descended the mountain and went to the Vancouver Aquarium where Ellen swam in the shark tank and fed the piranhas barehanded. Lynne and I had to finally pull her away from trying to plug an electric eel into a socket.

We finished the day with dinner in Gastown. Ellen wanted to light a homeless man’s canned chili farts in Gastown, but we felt that she had already faced too many fears and conquered too many dangers. Tomorrow’s challenge will be ordering the in-air seafood meal on our way home. Until next time…

Traveling with the Ancients.

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We arrived in San Juan a day ahead of our cruise arriving on 3 planes within 20 minutes of one another. Hopefully, we didn’t use up all our trip luck in the first 20 minutes of it. It rained most of the day, but we were able to stay dry, not because of these umbrellas overhead, but because there were so many rolls of Presidential paper towels left in the Trump surplus from Hurricane Maria. We came into Old San Juan dining on Mofongo, which sounds like a great curse word of the Soprano’s when they are served bad gabblegool, but it’s a delightful dish with plantains. If only we were eating the Mofongo while listening to Mungo Jerry. With Devra Robins standing only 4’8”, she almost got drafted by a scout from Menudo, who erred in thinking she was a tween Puerto Rican boy. To make up for it, she’ll continue to live La Vida Loca. If you love Pina Coladas…after a week with my family, I will plan my escape.

Traveling with the Ancients.

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Well, the first day of a cruise is more of an administrative day, as we and our fellow 3000 travelers got herded onto the ship and dipped in hand sanitizer to keep the ship named, Freedom of Disease (the Seas). As usual with travel, I share a room with my mom, but use a constant noise machine. She ran herself ragged trying to keep up her conversation with it, so for the first time in over 50 years, I’m sharing a room with my childhood bully, Dev. This caused Royal Caribbean to move the muster station to our cabin, as the casino gave us 15:2 odds that we’d be able to muster one another. Fortunately, Lauren aka Switzerland can always be used as a life jacket saving us from each other; if this version of Big Brother doesn’t work out. Additionally, they made a mistake and had our beds together, as an additional challenge round. I’d give up immunity before sharing with her. Tune into this week’s episode of Big Sister/Retribution Island to see who survives.

Traveling with the Ancients.

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Today, we spent in St. Maarten. While we make sure to washy washy our hands on the ship, we were met with an infestation on the beach nonetheless. Worse than the Norovirus, worse than Legionnaires, yet no vaccine can stop it. I’m speaking of the blight of “Lady, got scarves, got sun hat, I massage you, I braid your hair-itis.” When did a white person with their pasty scalp and fine limp hair ever look good with beaded hair? If they left Bo Derek’s hair alone, the movie could have easily been called Fifteen instead of 10. If it didn’t work on a supermodel, what hope would there be for our kinky Jewish locks? Then, dressed to complete our authentic Island look with a cover-up rocking that carefree Island look as interpreted by 12-year-old seamstresses in China locked in a factory pushing out this beach attire. It’s the textile industry’s equivalent of inmates in New Hampshire prisons banging out license plates with the state phrase “Live Free or Die.” So many women wanted to massage me that I thought I was lying on Harvey Weinstein’s couch in his Ritz Carlton suite vs. on a spinal cord torturing $10 beach chair rental. After being accosted by the first 30 salespeople in about 8 minutes, I now understand why our doctors’ offices and hospitals don’t let our sales reps in. If I had only read up on St. Maarten, I would’ve known that he was the patron saint of crap for sale. Just rename the Island St. Markdown, as we were assured we got the lowest price for beaded necklaces on the Island!

Traveling with the Ancients.

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Today, we had a wonderful beach day in St Kitts. Much like the fun-size Kit Kat Bar, St Kitts gets split in two with its other half being the island of Nevis. We learned that the people are known as St Kittitians rather than St Kittens, as the population is more dog people and they don’t want their homeland to be referred to as a litter box. Speaking of animal feces, we were offered to take photos with several capuchin monkeys in Premie Luvs diapers, unless I’m wrong and they have some god awful looking babies on this island. In short, we described our day as “Monkey see, monkey doo-doo”. We saw a wild monkey cross the road. He was chasing the chicken.

Traveling with the Ancients.

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We spent a lovely day at Ffryer’s Beach in Antigua (which Devra Robins thought was named Friedberg or Friedman’s Beach. Sure there are more Jews in NYC or Brooklyn than in Israel, but Ffryer’s Beach is still not Coney Island but is a place where the Jewish population probably numbers a guy who ate a bagel once, my sister believes the beach has a Jewish name). Anyway, we are midway through our cruise and so far, I haven’t fallen out of the dwarf twin beds, they give you on cruise ships. They are the United Airlines seats of bedding and mattresses. I spend each night in a semi-awake state fearing that my pillow will fall on the floor or I’ll awaken to a face full of curtains not washed since Leon Klinghoffer last cruised. When they designed these narrow short beds, I think that Royal Caribbean used their Filipino cabin boys much like crash test dummies substituting for us large wide-bodied American guests. On a positive note, if you leave your room for even a few minutes, the cabin stewards clean your room in your absence. Much like Bigfoot, they are rarely seen while using their elfin magic, yet some of these mythical creatures even leave behind their calling card shaped as a towel animal. Now, to supposedly reduce their carbon footprint, Royal Caribbean has room attendants only making towel animals upon request. So, now as a guest, I made to feel shame and guilt for wanting to come home to a towel penguin laying in my bed wearing sunglasses. If loving that is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I drive a hybrid, damn it! Is it too much to want to come home to a little towel elephant with a washcloth trunk? Anyway, I read that the average cruise worker works 6-7 days a week and an average of 16-18 hour day and makes only $2000 a month. I’m planning to offer $2200 a month to hire a steward to live in a crevice in my house to provide me the same services and let my love for towel art be what’s sustainable. I’ve just placed an order with Aramark for my first towels. I can’t wait for Bernardo’s arrival.

Traveling with the Ancient.

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Well, despite paying $200 so that we can have “Zoom-the fastest internet on the seas,” the comparison of Zoom to dial-up speeds would be equal to the speeds in a race between Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking. This causes a high degree of difficulty in being timely with my daily posts.

Today, we spent in St. Lucia where they practice a form of voodoo known as obeah where they communicate with ancestors and have visions of what is to come. The locals must’ve had a collective vision about the arrival of Devra Robins for as soon as she got out of the cab, they all rushed to her and called her “bossy lady”. Of course, she tried to boss us into believing that they called her boss lady, but Lauren and I know what we heard. As they all surrounded her trying to rub in her suntan lotion, feed her, and get her high on the herb, we realized that they were preparing her to be sacrificed to the volcano. After realizing she was not a virginal child, when she heard someone comment “You be 40” to which she replied that she was much older than that. Alas, he was referring to the band UB40, who’s song “Red, red wine” probably be close to 40 by now. In any event, instead of getting to enjoy a single cabin on the ship tonight, we averted Dev being used to appease the deities. Meanwhile, back on the ship, my Mom adopted an Indonesian waiter, who’s been disowned by his parents for being gay. As long as my new brother, Christophe, sends some of his wages home to our Mom, I’m good with having a little brother.

Now, the three of them are off to a magic show. He must be a great magician for as soon as I heard about it, he made me disappear. Anyway, I’m going to watch a picture buffer on a friend’s Facebook feed and call it a day.

Traveling with the Ancients.

We spent the day in Rihanna’s homeland, Barbados. We had a beautiful beach day despite some light rain, but of course, we had an umbrella…ella…ella. We shared the ocean with a monkey, who was being forced to swim (I hope his owner gets a some flung poo his way), two horses who were lead to water but couldn’t be made to drink, and a Rasta with who knows how many creatures were living in his hair. I’m sure if you did a dread check, several animals could be taken off the endangered species list. We were driven both ways by a driver, who’s eyes resembled the blind sheik. He certainly must have been an optimist, as even if he had sight, he could never look back, as he had no rear-view mirror. Fortunately, the President of Ghana was on the Island creating traffic making a safety barrier.

On another note, I think we stumbled upon a Pinterest cruise with people competing for best door decorations and family communication hacks. There’s dry erase boards letting family members know that they’re at the casino, shopping, and the pool. I saw one saying if the “ships a’rocking, don’t be a’knocking”. These tend to be the same families who wear matching t-shirts everyday with sayings like “Sea our Family Cruising,” or “Oh Ship, Look’s who’s 50,” or my favorite “Pigged out at the buffet, now in the bathroom-Bomb’sAway!” Ok, that last one was mine, but I have no Pinterest in group t-shirts. We also don’t need no stink in’ badges. On the other hand, a nice dry erase board would’ve come in handy.

Traveling with the Ancients.

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Today was our last day on the cruise, which was a day at sea. As almost 3000 people fight for a couple hundred lounge chairs, it’s like the Hunger Games. However, as everyone is bloated and overfed from the buffets, pizza bar, and dining room; it’s more like the Extremely Full Games. The pool area was a sea of humanity, but there’s minimal humanity at sea. By 830am, there wasn’t a chair that didn’t have an ownership staking flip flop or Romance novel. People think of Thurston and Lovey Howell on the QE2 with their steamer trunks when the day at sea is more like the late-night Circle Line Cruise with the hood representing. Sure, we could’ve left the pool area to go to final art auction which touts famous artists known only to those who frequent Holiday Inns. Of course, there was the napkin folding class where if you’re deemed the star pupil, you mysteriously disappear at sea only to be held hostage in the ship’s laundry room folding napkins for the next 30 years. Always as you leave a cruise, you have to put your bags in the hallway to be reunited in customs. I’m sure my new Indonesian brother, Christophe, packed himself a few apples and is folded up in my Mom’s suitcase ready to start his new life serving the people in her senior living place. Until next time…