Sails of the South Pacific

The more you travel - and the older you get - the more you change the way you do things. This trip is the longest we will have ever been away from home but it was also the one where I did the least preparation. In part this was because LK took on the very arduous task of checking out and booking hotels, leaving me with only a very few things to do to get ready.

Basically all I had to do was get three months worth of prescriptions, get a cortisone injection in my hip and have my prostate checked.

I did mention that I am getting older, didn't I?

Anyhow, the good news is that the scripts are doing their job and my numerous lifestyle diseases are under control, the injection worked for awhile but not as completely as I was hoping, and the prostate is not a problem.

That has allowed us to relax completely on this trip. Well, that and the fact that there is just about nothing to do. It is a re-positioning cruise from Sydney to Hawaii and on to Ensenada Mexico, lasting almost a month.

The first 2 1/2 weeks are being spent chugging through the South Pacific with only a couple of stops - first in New Caledonia, and right now in Tahiti for three days first at Papeete, then Moorea and today at Bora Bora. There really isn't a lot to do here - well, I should say that there really isn't anything to do here except look at the beautiful scenery.  And the islands are very hot and very humid so it was easy to stay on the ship today and avoid one more set of stands selling t-shirts, seashells and black pearls.

Not that we're getting jaded but several of the group we have drinks with during the cocktail party each night agreed when LK noted that we were looking at "just another lush volcanic island in the South Pacific".  OK, we are getting jaded, but you cannot force yourself to get excited about seeing one more place pretty much like the last one.  (And yes, the more observant will have noticed how I casually slipped in about having a nightly cocktail party.)

Then again, we will probably wish we had walked on land today even if it was hot and steamy, for tonight we head
northwest (yep, a little bit of backtracking) to Maui and Honolulu. That will take more than 5 days - by which time we will have either developed great sea legs or be covered in bruises from falling against the walls whenever we walk around on the ship as it rocks across the waves.

Of course, I've noticed that even when the ship is docked, I've knocked against the walls a few times. Usually, soon after the cocktail party.  But I doubt that there's any connection.

Really bad internet connection here on the ship so no pictures with the blogs until we get to Hawaii and can catch some good links.

Lost and Lost and Lost and Lost and Lost and Found

Our last trip was a bit of a lost and found tour. Actually, it was exclusively a lost tour.  

Even the usually ultra-reliable LK joined in the fun most often reserved for me, as she began losing things left and right. It started with a sleep-deprived layover in Bangkok during which she failed to see that she left her iPad on the table next to her chair in the lounge. 

On our wine cruise I somehow managed to lose my Kindle while on the ship. This one is still a mystery since two factors are at work here. First, 5-year-old Kindles simply aren't worth stealing or keeping if found. And secondly, I am 99.9% sure I had it in our cabin. My only conclusion has been that I somehow threw it in the trash can when I was discarding the mountain of paper that cruise lines feel they have to give you every day.

On the Caribbean cruise, I must have forgot to pack the camera when we were leaving - which is why there aren't a lot of Christmas pictures from last year.

And that same day, one of our suitcases was lost by the cruise line when we disembarked and they were supposed to deliver it to the airline.  After more calls than I would have had the patience to make, LK ascertained that A) neither the airline or cruise line could find our suitcase and B) we were both pleasantly surprised to see how much our travel insurance was going to pay for our used tennis shoes and dirty t-shirts. 

Losing the bag almost looked like a profit center. That is, until a rather exuberant young lady from the cruise line rang to tell us they had indeed finally located the suitcase and were fed-exing it to us. Never have two people been so sad to reclaim their dirty laundry.

Even more so, I should add, when we discovered that someone had stolen a bottle of Johnny Walker Black from the suitcase during its unintentional journeys. Talk about adding insult to injury.

There is an upside to all this lost technology, of course. It must be replaced. Which means that LK and I are travelling with new iPads and a new camera. We are getting a new Kindle when we land in the US (much cheaper than in Oz) although I am not getting one since the iPad is plenty for me. I've even upgraded with a few accessories so I don't have to bring my laptop along and we have a cable that lets us get pictures from our camera to the iPad and - best of all - a wireless keyboard so I can write really long posts for the thousands who have the time and inclination to read them. OK, the 4 or 5.

But all of the above is just a prelude to the real story of this post. We left Hobart on Monday at noon, flew to Sydney and have boarded the Solstice to sail our way across the Pacific Ocean for 29 days. More on this trip in future posts, but I have to share what went on as we sailed out of Sydney Harbor on Monday night.

Watching the lights recede along the coast, I was fortunate enough to still get a signal so I could call the phone company and tell them that LK had lost her mobile phone during the travels from Hobart to Sydney. Given that it was on, active and missing, it was good news when the very attentive young man offered to suspend service and disable the handset rather than come home to thousands of dollars of someone else's calls.

And it was even better news ten minutes later when I still had a signal and got another polite customer rep - a young woman this time - who happily took the five or six minutes it takes to restore LK's mobile phone service since she had found the phone after a little more looking.

It happened, as you might suspect, because for better safety she had put it in a place she never uses. And it was only dogged determination that led her to keep looking even after service was suspended.

It would be nice to tell you that this place was also where the iPad, Kindle, camera and Johnny Walker were, but unfortunately it's only a good story not a great one.  But it is encouraging as we depart for the longest time we have ever been away from home. For now I am pretty sure that while we may lose stuff, we're just as likely to find it again if we keep on looking.

Back to Oz

It's now a new year and time for us to head home. We are in San Francisco and will catch the late-night Sydney flight this evening. As much as we love to wander around the world, it's always a good feeling knowing we're heading back to our own bed.

We had a great time in Pittsford. Sandy and Dave were wonderful and found plenty of time for us, even though they were so busy with the return home of Christopher and his fiance Laura as well as Jordan's imminent trip to France for four months of study.

Not to mention frequent visits to Peg who is recovering from a broken leg at the Living Center.  This will be a short post (and who can fault a short post on the day after New Year's Eve?) My mother-in-law is one of my favorite people in the world, and it was great to see her. Despite still not being able to put weight on her leg, she is looking stronger and better every day.

Two moments stand out from our visits to the Living Center.

On our last visit as we were heading to the airport, the social worker was in the room doing a mandatory Q&A.  She asked memory questions and then some others to indicate the mental attitude of the patient.

LK and I listened as Peg answered the questions. And we both agree that we would have had a fairly difficult time answering the memory questions ourselves, so we were pretty impressed that Peg did so well.

On the series of questions about her emotional state, the answers were fairly predictable. But Peg, who is 93 and has a broken leg, couldn't help rolling her eyes when the social worker asked, "Do you find yourself moving more slowly than usual?"  I think they might consider adding some intelligence questions for the social workers.

And the other moment came on another visit when Peg was telling us that they had taken her in a wheelchair to dine with other patients in the Center. She told us how most of the people didn't say much and many of them were having troubles feeding themselves.

Perhaps my favorite 93-year-old said more about herself than the others when she summer it up:  "They were so old!" she explained.

Keep getting stronger, Peg.  And a happy, healthy 2013 to all.

Super Dave's the Man

It's been a while since I last wrote, and a fair amount has happened so I'm going to write a long-ish catch-up post.

We visited Cozumel and then took a day at sea to get back to Fort Lauderdale. In that time, we had a lot of fun. Or at least the bits I remember seemed to involve having quite a lot of fun.

There was, however, an unusual afternoon at the poker table. After a great dinner in the Italian restaurant with Walt and Terry, I had soldiered on and decided to play poker.  This was late at night and faithful readers will recall that I had rather recklessly purchased the All You Can Drink card at the beginning of the cruise.

Anyhow, the next day - our final one on the ship - I went down to play my last game of poker. The usual suspects were at the table and I knew there was more to the previous evening than I could quite recall. "How are you today?" asked one of the players, looking sceptical when I said I felt fine. That is always a clue to me that people suspect I have no right to feel OK.

I then asked the casino hostess about when she planned to get back to her family in Capetown. She smiled politely (as the job spec requires, I presume) and said, "Well, we discussed this last night, but the answer is the end of January." Oh, I said, perhaps I was a little over-served last night.

"That's one way to describe the fact that you were totally blitzed last night," said another player.

Experience has taught me there is only one way to deal with this situation. Plead ignorance and offer abject apologies.

"OK, " I said, "how obnoxious was I and who do I owe apologies to?"

Yet a third player piped up, "You weren't obnoxious at all. In fact you were quite entertaining, except for the fact that you kept winning all our money." This was quite startling to me since I only had a little bit more money in my pockets than I had started with when I checked that morning.

And then another player added his piece. "Yeah, you were pretty funny. In fact it's about the only time this trip that you've shown any personality. So I don't think you owe anyone any apologies."

So, weighing being funny versus usually having no personality, this kind of made me feel good, so I smiled and said, "That's good."

Smiled, that is, until Shaun, the dealer, said, "Well, except perhaps for the fact that you kept making fun of me all last night, calling me 'little' all the time." So, one apology and a little bit of winnings - who knew where the rest went, but I suspect one of the guys was deliberately not reminding me of how he beat me in a big hand late in the evening.

At long last we reached Fort Lauderdale, the official end of our Cruisin' and Boozin' with Friends Tour and flew north to Rochester on the 21st. Coming from warm, sunny Caribbean ports it was disconcerting to hear the pilot tell us that we were going to have a bumpy ride into Rochester which was bracing for its first major storm of this winter.

Frankly the flight wasn't all that bumpy but Rochester did in fact greet us with the beginnings of what would be a full-fledged snow storm throughout the next 12 hours. We had intended to drive to Rutland the next morning to spend the next few days with the family, but the New York Thruway had winter storm warnings, was covered with ice and snow for most of the stretch we would be on and had winds in excess of 55 mph.  When I then read on the TV news scroll that parts of the road were closed near us due to an accident, it was an easy decision to postpone the trip for a day.

Once there we had a great time. Dinner with my mother Sunday night and then a Christmas Eve day-long fest at my brother's house featuring more food than the cruise ship offered and starring not just my niece and nephew but the star of the day, 4-week old Brady John Kennedy. This bub made my mother a great-grandmother and is one cute little critter. I don't think there's anything better at a family get-together than a new member of the tribe for everyone to moon over.

After Christmas breakfast at my Mom's, we drove back to Pittsford NY to spend Christmas evening at Sandy and Dave's. It turned out to be the easiest and fastest trip possible on the Thruway. The road was dry, the traffic was light and there were no trucks on the road. Probably the best Christmas present possible.

Driving wasn't quite as easy yesterday as we had a Boxing Day extravaganza at Sand, Dave and Jordan's. Brunch at 11:30 was good breakfast food but the star was Peg. LK and Sandy's mom has been in recovery mode since she broke her leg several weeks ago, and this was her first trip out since then. We were also joined by Christopher, Sandy's son, who had flown in from the west coast and I think it made it very special for all of us to be sitting around the table together.

We all took a break in the afternoon and LK and I used the time to reinforce my loathing of shopping when stores are crowded. And believe me, Wegman's was very crowded with Pittsforders abandoning the holiday spirit and developing strategies that involved using shopping trolleys as tactical weapons.

Anyhow, we finished the shopping, went back to Peg's place for a couple of hours and then visited her for a few minutes before heading off to Sandy and Dave's for dinner. It was a short visit with Peg because the snow had already started falling heavily before we left and it was pretty obvious that the forecast for blizzard-level drops of 12 - 15 inches of snow were accurate.

Anyhow, weather be damned (not necessarily a sensible attitude), we landed at the Wiggs for a major feast. Nibblies that were enough to constitute a full meal on most nights --  clams casino, spring rolls, three kinds of cheese and an olive medley -- but, no, the question still remained: Yo, Sandy, what's for dinner? Well, the highlight of the evening was Sandy's Beef Wellington accompanied by my two current favorite veggies, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. Yum. I had even wanted to show off my new found wine knowledge and had picked up a bottle of Chateau Phelan-Segur, the place we visited on our immersive wine tour in France, and the wine went really well with the beef. Yum again.

So much for the pleasant evening, it was time to get back to Peg's unit for good night's sleep. I think LK and I have lived in Oz so long we had forgotten that you could go indoors with a little snow on the ground and emerge 3 hours later with snow half way up your calf. Or, to use other words, as high as the bottom of your car.

Super Dave - you may remember him from previous posts here and here - hustled out ahead of me and swept the snow off my rental car and then backed another car out of the driveway so I could get out without doing thousands of dollars worth of damage. A snowplow went past as I was walking to the car, so it seemed that careful driving would get us home.

Even with the hard work Dave had done, I still had trouble getting out of the driveway as the car seemed to think that it should be surfing sideways instead of driving forward. Dave's advice - back up and just gun it till you get on the road. It worked.

Once on the road, it was relatively easy driving. Well, easy in part because there were no other idiots on the road. And in part because going about 15 miles per hour seemed to give me traction more than half the time.

It's been a very long time since I have driven in conditions like these, and I realized I had forgotten that it isn't nearly as much fun as it looks when they show it on Mythbusters. Of course, on Mythbusters they do it in controlled conditions. And, come to think of it, they almost always end up smashing the car and laughing about it. Best not to think of it at the time, I guess.

Well, despite the car repeatedly flashing a symbol that the tires were not getting traction we eventually got to the entrance to the development where Peg's unit is. And it hadn't been plowed.

And it was uphill.

And we couldn't make it.

If this weren't already a very long post, I would share some of the conversation LK and I had. Suffice it to say that faced with either a messy divorce or a messier criminal charge, I finally agreed that we should call Super Dave.

Sitting crossways in the road, unable to go back or forth, and fumbling to figure out where the four-way flasher button was, I was suddenly happy that no others were adventuring into the night. And not soon after we sent out the call for the Davemobile, headlights loomed through the darkness and swirling snow.

Before I knew it, Dave's big truck was on the hilly entrance and David was on his back in the road hitching the tow rope to my car. I felt as if I should have been the one doing that cold, wet task but I knew that 1) I had no idea what you would hook the rope to; 2) I had no idea how to hook the rope and 3) they would have only had to tow me as well once it was apparent there was no way to get me upright again in the slippery conditions.

Anyhow, let's ignore the details and just say that Super Dave and his faithful companion Christopher had hooked us and towed us then pushed us and even took the steering wheel from my incompetent hands to turn the wheels in the right direction. And they got us in the garage.

We stood gratefully behind the car waving at them as they rentered the DaveMobile and telling them how grateful we were when one of our heroes yelled out, "Don, you forgot to turn the car off."

By the time I had done that we could just see the dim red glow of the DaveMobile as it rode off into the night. But it is time for the world to know: Super Dave is the man!

The Albanian Dilemma 2: Daydream Belizer

Every trip teaches you something new. This one, for example, has taught me that I should never ever ever ever again buy the unlimited drinks package. Somewhat surprisingly, most people who meet me for the first time are not shocked to discover that moderation is not one of my key traits. Even more surprisingly, I guess, is that I am shocked when I realize that as well.

Which is a long way of saying that I am a bit jagged this morning. LK assures me that I had too much to drink last night. Not recalling much of last night, I cannot really argue with her. However, given how I feel right now, I think she may be telling the truth.

Everyone has a hangover cure, I guess. My favorite usually involves V8 juice and Absolut with tabasco sauce. Terry, the medical professional in our travelling group this week, is a firm believer that 2 aspirins and a valium does the trick. Mind you, the aspirins are probably not the key ingredient in that recipe. Anyhow, in the spirit of moderation I mentioned earlier, I will let you know the results of combining both of those cures. At its worst, I have a hunch I will be taking a nap just a few short hours after waking up.

No matter what, here we are in the harbor of Belize City and I have decided the 20-minute ride on the tender into port is not something my brain pan needs to cope with today. LK is fighting off what looks like her last cold of the year, so she isn't arguing about the decision and is opting for sunbathing by the pool.

This leads to another issue that LK and I have occasionally had to wrestle with. Namely, just what constitutes visiting a country.  We call it the Albanian Dilemma. On an earlier cruise our ship stopped at Sarabande Albania. Much like Belize City, this is not a place typically mistaken for a tourism mecca.

If I am not mistaken we decided not to take the tender into Albania for pretty much the same reason we are not taking it into Belize. As the 7 or 8 people who follow this blog would know, this is not the first morning in which I have awakened to a slow rolling pain in the back of my skull only to discover it only takes standing up to reach the front of my head.

As it turns out our decision to stay on the ship in Albania was probably a wise one albeit for different reasons than those we used to make up our sluggish minds. Our fellow passengers who did go ashore told us it was not very pretty, there was nothing to really see and the only interesting event was a full-fledged fistfight between two Albanians just as the tender landed at the port.

So here's the dilemma. Can we count Albania and Belize as countries we have visited in our unofficial attempt to mark most of the countries on the globe? LK tentatively votes yes;  I say who cares except us so of course you can.

But, as you can imagine there are other dedicated travellers who would consider us pikers. Of course, they are the sort I can drink under the table once the ship leaves port so how significant is their attitude?

Back to Mexico tomorrow. In the meantime, Belize looks like - well, actually, it's just a little too far away to tell you what it looks like. But I'm sure I will have fond memories of it.

The Endless Vacation

Greetings from Cartagena Colombia

It's been a foggy, rainy morning here in Panama and it seems a perfect time to get the monkey off my back and write another post.

OK, now it's a cloudy, humid morning a day later here in Costa Rica and it really seems like a perfect time to write a post.

It's hard to believe it's been a week since we left Cancun. We had a fantastic time with Jaki and Robert but there were a few moments on our last day when we thought we might be spending even more time with them. I went online to check whether our 2:25 flight to Miami was on time only to discover that American Airlines had changed their entire schedule since we had booked back in August.

The flight number we had tickets for had been moved to 6:30am and, needless to say, was well and truly out of Mexico by the time I discovered the change. There wasn't even a 2:25 flight any more, but there was one around 1:45. I tried to call the airline, but in this day and age they don't even want you to know their number. I rang our Australian travel agent and got a polite message urging me to call back Monday morning.

So, fingers crossed, we decided to go to the airport and take our chances. And, having learned our lessons well in our week in Mexico, we decided to play dumb. LK turned on her best charm offensive and with a look of utter confusion asked the man at the ticket counter if he could help us since our flight didn't appear to be on the board.

Turns out he was very helpful, typed a few entries into his system and gave us boarding passes for exit row seats with extra leg room. And he didn't even charge us for our extra bags. It was so easy and helpful LK even had time for some duty-free shopping before we headed to Florida.

We rented a car at Miami and drove the 20 or so miles north to Fort Lauderdale where we were boarding our ship in two days. Getting out of the airport was interesting as many of the rental car drivers decided the rules of the road didn't apply to them. One just slowed down to a crawl, obviously figuring he would eventually see a sign that might help him get where he was going. Another cut across several rows of traffic, although that was pretty safe given that everyone was already slowed down.

But the best happened at the exit to the car rental parking garage, where two cars had already managed to have a fender bender without even making it out of the airport. Fortunately the highway wasn't half as crazy as the rental car garage.

We went out to dinner Saturday night, somewhat dismayed to re-enter the real world where you had to actually pay for your food and grog. After dinner I decided to show LK a shortcut home that I recalled from when I lived in the area almst 30 years ago.

I tried to act as if I expected to be waiting for the drawbridge to go down as we crossed the canal, and did my best to imitate someone who knew where they were going as I searched in vain for another bridge to bring us back across the canal. I finally gave up and admitted I was lost and retraced our path. Well, not exactly because I did end up in a dead-end a little later, but eventually got us back to the hotel.

Walt and Terry flew in Sunday, we boarded on Monday and rejoined the world of all you can eat and drink. I think it's going to have to be a very long diet once we return to Oz.

A little bit about the cruise in the next post.

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blog

I had a comment posted to yesterday's post  about our wanderings in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland before ending up here in Mexico.

It read "This does not mean, necessarily, letting down your guard and pouring your heart out about how much you love your grandmother. You have to find the right balance, and with practice you'll discover it. A good rule of thumb is: if you wouldn't say it in an email to a client, it shouldn't go up on your company's blog. " This was followed by a link to a site selling NFL jerseys.

Since the comment doesn't seem to have much with what I wrote, I am 99% sure it is probably spam. I can't be 100% sure, though, because I do have several friends who drink enough to frequently make rather astonishingly incoherent statements.

Regardless, this latest note remains just one more comment on my blogging - or in most cases lately - lack of blogging. It comes in all forms. LK periodically hits the toolbar link and gives me a disappointed look as she says, "You haven't blogged in a long time." When I explain that I will blog when I have something to say, she sniffs and tells me to stop whining, just suck it up and start typing.

Or as AB wrote, why should I be the only blogger in the world who doesn't write something because he has nothing to say?

My mother has more or less given up letting me know she is disappointed I'm not writing more often. Friends like Jon and Davy will make comments like "I looked at your blog the other day and see you haven't added anything," which makes me think I could have written 60 blogs in the past 2 months and they would only just be getting around to them now so it isn't all that important.

And there's the positive encouragement I always get from Judy, who drops a short note in the comments section when I re-enter the blogosphere. Carrots are nicer than sticks, I've learned from her.

But probably the most interesting recommendations I have received came from my friend Robert last night when he asked me why I wasn't blogging much any more. I explained to him that I tend to write when I'm travelling because there's new stuff to tell people about, but day in and day out at home it's hard to think of what's new to write. "How often do people want to read about me ironing the sheets and making the bed?" I asked.

Robert thought about it and then proposed a course of action that, quite honestly, I don't think I would have come up with on my own.

"Why don't you just write about vampires this week?" he said. "You know, tell a story about vampires. And then maybe next week you could switch gears and write a sports commentary about a game that never happened. Your readers would keep coming back to see what you were going to write about each time."

Now I don't know if this suggestion was in any way influenced by this resort's policy of all-inclusive food and drink (OK, the food wouldn't have much to do with it). And I don't know if my reaction was at all influenced by the rather large tumblers of vodka they served me at dinner.

But I have to tell you there was an eerie calm in the resort as we walked back to our room. You could hear something rustling in the trees just past our line of sight as the full moon made dark shadows stretch across the landscape. I could swear one of them moved ever so slightly more than the rest.

I tensely clutched the crucifix I had hung around my neck and patted my shirt pocket to make sure I still had the clove of garlic I had grabbed at the restaurant. Yet still I felt as if there was another presence in the corridor as we arrived at our room, but when I quickly turned around there was nothing to be seen. Only a slight scrabbling noise on the roof above us.

Anyhow, I started this post to let you know I've put up a bunch of pictures from our European cruise and you can see them here.  Next post I will tell you more about our time in Mexico (especially once the sun sets) and, weather permitting, the llama polo match I am hoping to catch later in the week.