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euchre etiquette
How do you know you have an enduring friendship? When after more than 27 years as friends, and seven days of traveling together you can play Euchre – couple against couple – and still be friends at the end of the train ride from Seward to Anchorage. Now you might think that a simple card game means nothing, but there a few members of our party of 4 who are a little on the competitive side.
The controversy in this story came after our third missed bear siting on the train. “There’s a bear up ahead on the left side of the train… No now its on the right… no, now its on the left…” This is some kind of weird plan by the conductor to get the train rocking back and forth, or something to get the people in the back cars of the train to drink more. So, here it is dear readers, as we are all in a state of frustration over bear sitings, the up card is a heart, I’m holding three diamonds (but no bowers). Everyone passes, and it comes back around to me. I bid diamonds. This is when the trouble starts. As it turns out, Holly has both red bowers and only passed because she had better diamonds than hearts. Needless to say we get set, and I launch into some kind of self righteous tirade about “maur passing” just to set us. This scenario plays itself out three times again over the course of the train ride… Now last night I might have said some mean words about Holly’s card playing ethics, but today in hindsight, and in the spirit of type 2 fun, I can see that I might have been overly harsh in my judgement.
The card playing on the train was the culmination of a long day. The last day of a cruise is always a long hard day. For one thing, I think thats one of the things that all cruise lines suck at. You are an awesome person who must be waited on and pampered at every turn, until the last morning of the cruise. Then you yesterday’s news, who must get up early and off the ship as soon as possible, so your room can be turned over to someone new and wonderful who must be pampered at every turn. Or maybe I’m just grumpy that I’m not the new wonderful person anymore. In any case we love cruising and its ability to allow you to see great places in the world, all the while knowing that you have a safe comfortable place to eat and sleep each night.
We spent our day on a Kenai Fjord tour. We had another day of wildlife sitings. The new animals we saw today included Dahl Porpoises and up close views of Puffins and Stellar Sea Lions. The tour company was really good, it was Major Marine Tours. Its not the largest tour company in the marina but the service can’t be beat. When we got out into open ocean areas and the swells got large they were especially kind to the large number of people at the back railing “going for distance."
As I post this picture of the sea lions – whose population has been declining for the last several years – I am reminded of one especially redeeming quality of the day. SUN!! This is the first day since we left Minneapolis that we’ve had a sunny day.
After a long day, we arrived at the Anchorage train station at 10:30 PM. We got our luggage and the hotel shuttle picked us up for our ride to the hotel. Holly and I transported all of our bags to our room, while Jane and Brian stayed on the shuttle to go to the airport to get our car. We lucked out on the emerald aisle and got a good sized Dodge. At least its big enough to hold all of our luggage and all of us. We had envisioned a number of scenarios in which we stored our luggage at the hotel while we went North to Denali.
As I write this we are in our room in the Mckinley Creekside Cabins. Its not quite the same as our cabin on board the ship, but as Gabe would say, in Alaska, “Warm and Dry is more than you can hope for” We had a pretty good drive in the rain to get here, including a swell stop at the liquor store in Wasilla, and some fake pictures of where we imagine Sarah Palin might have lived. We got our tickets for tomorrows bus tour of Denali and then spent some time visiting with the sled dogs of Denali. We took the very scenic Rock Creek hiking path back to the visitors center and then headed out to Prospectors Pizza for a delicious meal.
Tomorrow will be another long day of hiking and bus riding as we go in search of Bear and Moose here in Denali National Park. We are hoping for another clear day so that we can see Mount McKinley.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Alaska
saying goodbye to namibia
Sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Safari this morning. We've checked out and are just hanging here until about 11:00 before we head to the airport. It seems like a lifetime ago that we checked in here, exhausted, and grubby after 39 hours of travel from the USA. Now we are refreshed, our bodies are on the right time zone and heading on to the next segment of our journey. Its really strange to think that I'm heading to Israel, while the rest of the group is heading to cape town. One consolation is that I'll be enjoying nice warm 90 degree weather, while they will be in Cape Town's winter at 59 degrees.
Last night we had a very nice dinner at Nampa and Matty's house. I'm very jealous of Matty's indoor wood fired oven. He had obviously been grilling meat for us all afternoon. Not only does it make delicious meat but it also heats their family room. It was amazing to hear the story of these two Luther College Alums. They were at Luther in the mid 90's, but by the time they found their way to college in the USA they were married and had small children. They are so grateful to the people of Decorah for their hospitality and help that they are always eager to open their home to Americans who are traveling in Namibia. We worked hard on their youngest daughter to convince her that she must come to Luther to go to college.
As I think about the two purposes of our trip, the philanthropic, and the cultural I am inspired to try to return someday, and to help to keep up the good work that EmpoweringLearnersNamibia has started. There is so much more we can do to help, and it really doesn't take much money to accomplish a lot here. For example a new Kindergarden school could be built to replace the 10x12 metal shack for about $5000.00 US.
almost back to windhoek
Well, here we are on the B2 not 55km from Windhoek and the Safari Hotel. Suddenly our coach makes a very bad noise and we begin to coast down the road. Joey looks rather concerned. We coast to a stop and pull over to the side of the road. One of the few places in all of Namibia where there is almost no shoulder. The diagnosis is dire, the clutch plate is out. Luckily its only 1:15 in the afternoon and we are close to our destination. David is on the phone getting another coach on its way. This bus that we've spent so many hours with is not taking us any further.
So far we are all in good spirits. The sun is out, the weather is nice. We are joking about our plight and assessing our provisions. In the cooler we have some apples, a half bottle of Riesling and one Windhoek light. Suddenly Joey says… "I need a beer!" We all crack up, we'd be happy to give Joey our last beer, he's been such a good sport with great humor this entire trip.
We are thankful that this little mishap happened here. When we think of all the places this could have happened. The middle of Etosha, the middle of the desert, Each of which would be hours and hours from anywhere likely to have the ability to come and get us. We'll be just fine, and this answers the important question of what to write about in today's blog.
UPDATE: We're moving again, in a lovely, highly air conditioned coach. Its just 2:55 so we were only delayed about 1:45. When the replacement bus got here we formed a bucket brigade and transferred the luggage from one to the other in no time. We're looking forward to arriving at the Safari and we'll still have some time to relax and refresh before we go to our dinner at Nampa and Matty's house.
you must really like to fly
"You must really like to fly" was the comment of the flight attendant from Scotland on our British Air flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg. What prompted the statement was my comment that I would have the curried chicken because "that was good last night." -- We'll return to the concept of good airplane food later. Its Monday. We left Chicago on Saturday. Two overnight flights in a row with a nine hour layover in London. I feel like I've been in the airport forever. Now we are waiting out our final layover in Johannesburg for the final leg of our flight to Windhoek. We are in Africa, but it doesn't really seem like it yet. We've got to get out of the airport and into the real world. The Empowering Learners trip is well underway.
Because we had such a long london layover we did leave the airport and take the tube into London. We walked around the London School of Economics with Josh Martin, and then meandered through the South Bank area having lunch at Giraffe. Yesterday was a hard day, the overnight flight with the 6 timezone change really messes you up. This morning was easier as we flew mostly north to south, crossing only one time zone. We are really thankful to the gate agent in Chicago who rearranged our seats on this flight so that we had the aisle seats in the middle section with nobody in between us. We were able to stretch out and get some decent rest last night.
About this trip. This is not just a trip for fun, this is partly a mission trip and partly a cultural experience. The trip is organized by Empowering Learners, a non profit organized by Ethan Schultz, and Ann Sponberg-Peterson. The goal is to bring 24 laptop computers and 50 calculators to the Oshigambo high school in Northern Namibia. We also carried along an assortment of Braille books, and Soccer balls to distribute along the way. There are a total of 12 of us on the trip and we got all of this stuff along with us in carry on and checked baggage, we are definitely going to be a lot lighter on the drive home than we on the trip here. Once we complete our business working with the high school we'll be visiting the Etosha Game Park and the Atlantic Coast in Swakopmund. More detail to follow.
For now we are safely checked in at the Safari Court Hotel. After two nights sleeping on airplanes and having our morning coffee in airports, we are all ready for a shower! As a group we will have a little break before meeting with our tour guide for the trip and then heading to downtown Windhoek for a meal at a nice German restaurant.
joshua tree national park
I think I said that the plan for today was to head to the Palm Springs tram, and do a little hiking at the top of the tram then enjoy a nice lunch in downtown Palm Springs. But two minutes before we walked out of the house we changed our minds and decided to go to Joshua Tree National Park. Since we both have boys named Joshua, and they are staying together while we are out here in California, it made sense for us to check out this national park. We are glad we did.
The south entrance to Joshua Tree is only about 25 miles away from Indio, so its a short drive to get to the park. But, once you are there you find out how huge the park is. We drove another 23 miles through desert scrub before we got to some of the really interesting parts. The Joshua Tree National Park is a mixture of climates, it is part Colorado Desert, and part Mojave Desert, microclimates abound.
Our first big stop was at the Cholla cactus garden, its weird how these pictures almost look like they are underwater photos of coral!
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In the national park there are these small mountain ranges that pop up out of nowhere that look like someone just drove in a huge dump truck and left a pile of rubble behind. In fact these are all granite, and formed from volcanic activity.
Because of all the different climates that are part of the park, the whole southern half of the park doesn't even have any Joshua Trees! You have to wait until you get to a little higher elevation which is in the north and west part of the park. Here's Jim and Karen standing under a very picturesque Joshua Tree.
The Joshua Tree gets its name from the mormon's who saw it and thought that it reminded them of the prophet Joshua stretching his arms heavenward. In fact the "tree" is part of the Yucca family. It has extremely sharp points on the end of the leaves which the loggerhead shrike (a bird) uses to kill its prey!
Our last stop in the park was a great little hike in hidden canyon. Here you can get a sense of how these little mountains were created out of blocks of granite. Its amazing to see the Joshua Trees along with the scrub oak, and Juniper trees just growing out of the rocks.
On the way home, we drove through the wind farm in the San Gorgonio pass. This is a great site for a wind farm as the wind blows here all the time. There are more than 4000 turbines here that generate enough power for the entire Coachella valley! There are turbines here of all ages, some very old and very small, some with two blades, for working in higher winds, and some very new and large turbines. Poor Jim, we discovered too late that you can get tickets for a tour of the wind farm!
cruise wrapup part ii
I've been back in Decorah for less than 24 hours, its been a little more than 48 hours since we got off the cruise ship in Valparaiso. It was great to get a good nights sleep last night after having an overnight flight from Santiago to Dallas. Boy do I wish I could sleep on airplanes.
The Celebrity debarkation process was about as painless as you could make it. We woke up, showered and dressed, got some coffee at the Cova Cafe, checked our email one last time, and then walked off the ship. Like Buenos Aires, the port in Valparaiso is not really designed for cruise ships, so we got off the ship and then took a bus through the containers to the actual terminal. We found our luggage right away and realized that this process was so efficient we still had about 45 minutes to wait before our guide, Mac, from La Bicicleta Verde It was a little odd this morning because Chile was supposed to go off daylight savings time at the same time the US was supposed to go on daylight savings. So, in one day we would go from being 3 hours ahead of home to just one hour. Strangely the government of chile decided at the last minute not to go off daylight savings time, so some people were really off. Mac showed up just after 9:00, and we got our tour underway. We started by exploring the hills of Valparaiso. Its an old shipping town, started when Nitrates were a big natural commodity that was shipped out of here. Before the Canal, and before artificial nitrates had been invented. So there are many beautiful old shipping houses owned by the british that have been converted into small hotels. Here you can see one last view of our ship from the hills:
We continued on past the first Lutheran Church in Valparaiso, and then had to avoid a pack of street dogs. All chilean cities are full of street animals that are well feed and mostly well behaved. The problem this morning was there was one female in heat and four males that were trying to get her attention. Things got a little violent, so we headed off in the opposite direction hoping to lose the pack.
Mac told us that the day before this whole area of the city had been without power. Now as you can see from this picture Valparaiso has a very modern system of electrical distribution:
We were told that whenever there is a power loss, rather than trying to untangle the mass of wires and fix the problem, they simply find an area of the city that has power and then run a new wire to the blacked out area from there.
After the hill tour we headed down the coastline to visit some of the beautiful coastal towns, suchas Vina del Mar. This would be an awesome place to come back and visit on a land tour. The beaches are spectacular, and there are some really awesome restaurants looking right out over the water. Mac got us number one at the most popular restaurant along this stretch. People literally line up outside this restaurant waiting for a table. Something that is unheard of in Chile. We started off with a couple of apetizers: Machas ala parmesan (razor clams smothered in a parmesan cream sauce.) The only way to sum up this dish is: To Die For! We also had Camerones pil pil (little shrimp scampi). Then for the main course we had freshly prepared fish. They have about 7 different kinds of fish on the menu, each one with several different preparations. I had Albacora (swordfish) grilled, and Jane had the Corvina (chilean sea bass) also grilled. We had a side of Arroz and thought we were in heaven. What a great last meal of the trip. Oh, lest I forget , I also had my first Pisco Sour. Pisco Sour is a great chilean drink made of a distilled wine (kind of like brandy) served with lime juice and simple syrup. Just one please!
After our delicious lunch we headed out to wine country. The Casablanca valley is between Valparaiso and Santiago. We stopped at the Emiliana Organic Vineyards, for a wine tasting and a walk around the vineyards. We had a great wine steward, named Joshua, who served us samples of their premium Emiliana Adobe line. This is sold in the United States under the Emiliana Natura label because of a trademark dispute with the Adobe software company. Please lawyers find something more productive to do with your time. The highlight was their Gewurtztraminer, its not nearly as sweet as the German Gewurtztraminers and was very refreshing. In addition to being organic they also practice Biodynamics (you'll have to look it up). This sounds like a lot of hokum to me, but you can't argue with the results.
Finally, what trip would be complete without some cute animals. The vineyard also raises Alpacas, which we learned are part of the Camel family.
With the vineyard tour over, our last stop was the Santiago airport. We had lots of time to kill, since we got there about 5pm and our flight wasn't supposed to leave until 10:05. Of course at 5:00 the American Airlines counters were not even open yet. Then at 6:00 when they opened it was a mad house. hundreds of tired cruisers all anxious to get home, and all accustomed to being pampered for two weeks were now forced to stand in extremely long lines like so many commoners. It was not pretty. An interesting thing about flying out of Santiago is that all the outgoing flights leave in the evening, this is partly because you want to time your flight to get in to the states at a decent hour of the morning. Say 6:00 AM or so. But all the incoming flights get in to Santiago at 7 or 8 in the morning anyway, so why not have an outbound flight at 10AM? By Chilean law, all outbound flights must have a complete mechanical inspection within 12 hours of their flight by a Chilean mechanical team. The reason for this law dates back to 1972 when the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. The Chilean legislature wanted to ensure that nothing like this would ever happen again so they passed this inspection law. The result is that the flights that leave in the evening are never delayed for mechanical reasons, because they've had all day to inspect and fix everything. Nice, makes you feel safe.
Well, that brings us as far as our last flights, which were pretty uneventful. A bit of turbulence somewhere between Santiago and Dallas is about the only thing worth mentioning. This was an awesome trip. Thanks again to all the great new friends we made on board the ship for making it a fun time!
cruise wrapup part i
Its the last day aboard ship, and it has been a day of mixed emotions. We are excited to get back to our friends and family in Decorah, yet we have had so much fun on this cruise, and we have actually met some great people as well. Some of these people get to stay on the ship for the next leg of the cruise and as we think about our long day tomorrow and our overnight flight we are a bit jealous that we don’t get to go through the Panama canal, and then fly home from Fort Lauderdale. I’m amazed that I could even consider staying onboard for another two weeks, but we’ve learned that its really all about pacing (note to self, next time do not buy the unlimited drinks package.)
The cruise critic message boards really provide a great service. Not only can you find good reviews and recommendations of the non-ship excursions, but we’ve met a lot of fun people, and have been able to enjoy excursions with people that we met online prior to the cruise. So to Carol and Mike, and Carol and Ralph, and Scott and Gai, and Kristine and Craig (our aussie friends)… Thanks!! To Jonathan and Nancy and Jo, we look forward to the final Martini rankings, Aloha! And to Shila and Yogi, Kim and Rico, Rachel and Howie, thanks again for the fun dinners! Hopefully we’ll cross paths with some of you again on a future cruise.
So, where have we been? Here’s the super-fast summary of our travels:
Decorah to MSP with Jenkins, Thanks for the ride guys!
MSP to Dallas
Dallas to EZE (Buenos Aires) cross town transfer to Jorge Newberry and then on to Iguazu
Two fantastic days at Iguazu falls. If you are looking at this cruise or planning a trip to South America, do not skip Iguazu. The views are fantastic.
Iguazu back to BA and on to the ship!
BA to Montevideo, Uruguay
Montevideo to Punta del Este
Punta del Este to Puerto Madryn – Desert like climate but great penguins and sea lions.
Puerto Madryn to Cape Horn and the Ushuaia (Ushuaia gets my vote for favorite city of the trip) Its the southernmost city of the world, and the hiking and views on our hike in Tierra del Fuego national park were just phenomenal!
Ushuaia to Punta Arenas… OK, but not that spectacular. If you haven’t seen penguins by now, you should definitely do the trip here to see the penguins.
Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt. The port area is not spectacular, but once you get out into the country or to one of the other smaller neighboring cities its great. Beautiful scenery…. second favorite city. Of course the zip line ride really made this stop worthwhile.
Puerto Montt to Valparaiso to Santiago
Santiago to Dallas
Dallas to MSP
Ride home with Sandy Larsen! Wow gone 16 days and no parking charges at the airport!
Other stuff:
While on board, we used up 435 minutes of internet time.
We drank 2 bottles of wine :-) or more…
Jane won $700 at the craps table
We really enjoyed many of the shows onboard the Celebrity Infinity! We had become pretty much jaded about cruise line entertainment, but the quality here was really high. I missed having a magic show, but the music was mostly really great, except for the aging former Argentine star, who just doesn’t realize its time to hang it up. When you are on a cruise ship and you have to start your show with a video about how great you used to be, that is not a good sign! Travis, from Nebraska, you rock. The a cappella group top shelf was great too. It was hard to listen to this recently graduated group of young guys without thinking about Kaia’s future as a musical performer.
No summary would be complete without some room pictures, so here are a few pics of our Celebrity Suite. This suite will be redone when the ship is Solticized in November, but we thought it was perfect for this cruise. Not only was the room spectacular, but our Butler, Teguh, was the most Amazing person. No job was too big or too small, he really made our cruise seamless. From sneaking into the room before I was awake every morning so that my coffee was hot and fresh on the table, to organizing a part for 20 in our room one night. He was the best!
Jane says I can type and read at the airport tomorrow, so I think its time to get dressed for dinner one last time!
tsunami warning!
This is weird, but I woke up this morning wondering about the question: "what are the ships procedures in case of a Tsunami?" Would we head for the open sea and ride out the giant fast moving swell there, or would we seek safe haven in a harbor of some kind. Then, when Jane checked her email and the news she told me about the 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan, and the Tsunami warning issued for the entire Pacific Ocean. I didn't really give it much thought, because after all we are a LONG way away from Japan. However, when we were in the tour bus this morning, our guide told us that they were evacuating Easter Island and some of the other Chilean Islands. OK, maybe this is more serious than we thought. Now I was thinking what kind of damage could be done to the harbor in Valparaiso? Will the tsunami have an impact on our trip home? When we returned from touring we noticed that they were essentially evacuating the harbor, all of the ships we already towed out or in the process of being moved out of the harbor to more open water. Score one for the open water solution.
As far as we know, this is not going to have a big impact on our trip. Out at sea, the tsunami is nothing but a big swell that we would ride up and over like any other large swell. Its only when it gets toward land that it becomes the giant wall of water you see on the news. The captain is going about business as usual and we are on our way out of the harbor at Puerto Montt as I write this. We have about 650 nautical miles from here to Valparaiso, and tomorrow we will spend a relaxing last day at sea. If we were the tsunami, we would be able to get there in just a little over an hour! According to news reports the wave traveled from japan toward Hawaii and the west coast of the US at over 500 mph. The pictures of Japan on the news are just unbelievable, but again it appears that distance will sufficiently weaken the tsunami to the point where we will not be affected at all.
So, lets turn our attention to our fabulous day here in Puerto Montt! We got to check off a bucket list item today. What could that be you ask? Zip Lining! The highlight of todays tour was going to the top of a volcano, and then riding a series of zip lines to the bottom. When we arrived on the pier this morning it was quite overcast and the owner of the tour company warned us that with the rain from last night and the wind today we might be out of luck. But we took off in our little bus and headed for Lago Llanguihue, this is a huge vacation lake that sits below the volcanoes. And when we arrived at the base of the ski lift on the volcano it appeared that we might in fact be out of luck. Here's a view of what the side of the volcano/ski area looked like:
We were clearly in and above the cloud line, and it was really eerie to see the wisps of clouds, that looked like steam rising from the dark sides of the volcano. Our guide told us that we would not be allowed to go because of the wind. So, we just hung out for a while looking at the clouds and suddenly we noticed that the sky towards the top was starting to clear. Suddenly the chair lift even started running. Our guide came out and said OK team lets head down and we'll go into Puerto Vargassafsf for some shopping and a nice lunch. Wait! a couple of the women (including jane) said. Can't we at least ride up the chair lift? Of course I'm thinking you guys are mad, why would we want to ride higher up into the clouds to just see more clouds. So our guide told us to wait and she would check. Miraculously, now the 'experts' were out checking the zip lines to see if they were safe. The verdict came back that it was safe, so a few of us decided to follow the original plan and go for it.
When we reached the top of the ski lift we were treated to the following view:
Clearly you can see the clouds had dissipated and we had a fantastic view of the top of the volcano, and its glacier. It took us a few minutes, as the guy working at the top of the lift did not speak any english, but we eventually located our zip lining guides. They got us into our harnesses and led us to the top of the launching pad for our very brief (10 seconds?) safety briefing.
Him: hold
Me: Si
Him: break
Me: Si
Him: No touch the cable, only here and the break
Me: Si
And off you go!
Here's Jane and our friend Scott before we got our helmets. Those harnesses are certainly stylish.
And now here's Jane on her first run of the day. Yes kids thats your mother hanging by a thread from a long thin piece of cable.. Don't worry she's having the time of her life.
And now here's one of me coming in for a landing after our longest ride. The span of this ride was 600 meters! The total ride time was about 38 seconds which means our average speed was 15.78 meters/second or about 35 mph.
In all, we got to go on four different runs, each was great and very exhilarating. We had an adrenaline rush for a good hour after we were all done, talking excitedly in the bus all the way back down the volcano. A great day and a lot of fun. Can't wait to try it again sometime!
on the high seas
We are sitting here having our morning coffee and hot chocolate watching the waves crash and roll. We left the Straits of Magellan sometime in the middle of the night and entered the Pacific Ocean, where we have high winds and, as the captain says, "Big Waves." I took some video looking out our window, but I'm not sure you can get the real sense of how much we are rocking and rolling. I'll post the video when we have a faster internet connection. Meanwhile I just walked down the stairs to the Cova Cafe to get some of their great little croissants for breakfast, and I noticed that the crew has strategically placed barf bags along the stairwells and in other places. According to the captain, who just updated us, we are experiencing winds at 50-60 knots with gusts of 70 knots. In addition the waves are 15-20 feet high.
I just got back from the workout room. walking up the stairs was quite an adventure. At times I felt like I was floating up two to three stairs at a time, and at other times, I felt like I was carrying an elephant on my back as I was trying to go up a single stair. Bootcamp was postponed this morning due to the high seas. I decided to go ahead on run on the elliptical, which was kind of fun with all the dipping and plunging the ship was doing.
We will be at sea today, and tomorrow, although later today and all of tomorrow we will be cruising through the Chilean Fjords. The Fjords will be much calmer than the open ocean. I'm not sure whether or not to even attempt to go to bootcamp workout in these high waves.
Yesterday we were in Punta Arenas. It was our first stop in Chile. We did not do any kind of excursion or tour. We just took the tender to shore and walked around the town a bit. There was a nice park square with trees, and a statue of Magellan, and handicrafts. Apparently you are supposed to kiss the toe of Magellan and you will come back again, but with the crew having you sanitize your hands every five minutes, I can't imagine why anyone would want to kiss the toe of a statue and share the germs of a hundred other travelers that way!
While we were in town we found an internet cafe, where for the price of a cup of coffee we could get all the free internet we wanted. It was nice to have some high speed internet for a change.
We just got back from a tour of the bridge. It was very interesting and one of the officers confirmed that the wind was very strong this morning. He said the maximum gust was 99 knots. Thats about 113 mph for you non-nautical types. So what do you do when you have a twelve story floating building and the wind is blowing against one side of the building at 113 mph? Several things, it turns out. The ship has stabilizers that can be deployed to counteract the forces of the wind. These protrude out of the ship under the water at an angle like long wings that are under the water. In addition there is water ballast that can be pumped from one side of the ship to the other to counteract the wind and the seas. So when you consider that we had a strong current, 15 foot waves, and strong winds gusting to over 100 mph its amazing how little rocking and rolling the ship actually did.
Here are a couple of photos I snapped while we were on the bridge:
Since we are back we are also getting ready to host a little party in our room for some of the people we've met on board. The party will start here, and then we'll also visit some of the rooms and suites that others have. This is a great way to see what kind of room you might like to have the next time you come on board. Here's a shot that I took on the balcony of our friends Jonathan and Nancy.
