January 23, 2019 – at Sea
I thought you might enjoy this handy map given to me by the class of 2018. You might see a familiar face if you look at our starting location. I’ll keep the map updated as to our location.
Rain, wind and rough seas all day as we headed around the Northeastern edge of Cuba. Rough seas are typical in this area and we have experienced this on other cruises.
We began to settle into shipboard life today. There is no lack of things to do. We decided to try team trivia. After arriving at the Ocean Bar we learned that teams consist of 6 members. We found a group with 4 people and started to chat it up. Skip, the leader of this group ask where we were from. Michigan!, we said proudly. Not sure if we were of the correct caliber, Skip asked if we knew the Motto of Michigan. “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you”, I proudly beamed. Correctly assuming we were full of useless information, we were invited to join. Skip is from Maryland but went to the University of Detroit. Our team correctly answered 13 of 15 questions. Not enough to win but enough to convince the team to stick together for the cruise.
Later in the afternoon I chose to go for a walk. The walk around the lower promenade was very windy and the ship was being tossed by huge swells. I imagined myself being tossed overboard quite easily. One lap around convinced me that it was much safer inside and we spent the afternoon exploring different areas of the ship.
Dinner was in the main dining room and we were seated at a table for 8. 6 of the people had done this cruise before. One woman was on her 10th world cruise. All of the folks had retired from various occupations. Next to me sat Bill who just retired from the Marine Corp after 23 years. We chatted for a while and I learned he was from Oklahoma. I told him about Dan from the previous night. Dan was also from Oklahoma. Bill had approached Dan at the Lido bar because he was wearing some Oklahoma paraphernalia. I asked Bill if he was by himself (he was) and did he go to the singles meetup (he did). I shared the comment about Aunt B and the smile on his face told me everything.
The evening show was comedian Jeff Burghart. Great impressions of Johnny Carson, Rodney Dangerfield, Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood. He also did a great impression of Tom Jones, including singing “She’s a Lady”, with a live band for backup. His humor targeted the audience at hand. Very good show. Great laughs.…