How cruising is different from land: Christmas on ships

There's no such things as holidays in the service industry.  Especially on cruise ships, where there are no days off.  Christmas and New Years are times to groan, roll your eyes and buckle down and get through.  They're long, grueling days of extra work, special events, demanding schedules and the added pressure of presenting holiday cheer.  With the depressing aspect of not being able to celebrate with family and friends as your culture dictates.

Happy Holidays, all around.

We put together a Christmas show, and I think it ended up looking quite good.  The guys did an excellent job decorating the stage, and we put many interesting acts together to make quite a show.

Let it snow.

How cruising is different from land: House on fire

Every week, we pretend that our house is on fire.  All 850 residents then react accordingly.

Today's drill started with an engine fire, and the crew's response quickly elevated from checking it out to full-on fire fighting and passenger muster to full-on abandon ship drills.

We do this every 13 days.  No one batted an eye.

We packed crew members into a muster station, simulating passengers, and took them out to their life boats.  We went to our muster stations and then out to our life rafts.  We sent the containment party to their life rafts.  Everyone was accounted for, no one went down with the ship.

Then we all went for lunch.  Just another Wellington morning, nothing to see here.

An Adventure Blog About Real Life

This blog is about my life as an adventure.  And it’s been that way for years.  But what happens when you wake up one day in Bora Bora or Papeete or New Zealand or Lombok, and it just feels like another day?  My lifestyle hasn’t changed since my “life aboard” series of posts, but my past has.  It’s no longer new, it’s no longer different.  It’s everyday life, and I’m getting used to it.  And that makes it less of an adventure.

But only to me.

I’m still wicked proud of what I’m doing, and very happy to report in from wild and far-flung places across the globe.

We got through dry dock and headed across the largest ocean on the planet.  Our 27-day long itinerary took us from San Francisco through Hawaii, French Polynesia, American Samoa and New Zealand before landing us in Sydney, Australia.  Along the way, I went scuba diving with dozens of sharks, saw humpback whales almost within reaching distance, brushed up on my technical French (enough to do a dive briefing in French), meandered a Samoan market, ate at ridiculously overpriced restaurants, wandered by mega-yachts with helicopters attached and went on wine tastings in Australian and New Zealand wine country.

All while working full-time, doing shows every night, repainting scenery, calibrating lighting units, sewing scenic drops, training new crew members, practicing safety duties and filing reports.

Only on cruise ships…

Images from Dry Dock

Life at sea, on land

The Sea Princess recently went through its dry dock, where the ship gets refitted.  Cruise ships are in service 365 days a year.  The day we drop off passengers is also the day we take on passengers.  We get about 2 hours every 2 weeks when we don't have passengers.

So all the things that break and need to be fixed when the ship is out of service go on a big list.  Then that big list gets prioritized, budgeted and slashed.  Then in dry dock, every department completes their list.

At the same time.

24 hours per day.

For 10 days.

This was my first dry dock experience, and it was exhausting.  It reminded me of tech weeks on land, where everyone wants the space, the conditions (silence, darkness, etc), the equipment all for themselves, and they clamor to get what they want.  And when we're done, we're done.  The curtain goes up when we go back in service, and tech week is done.  The show better be ready.

So after a slow start where everyone got everything started, the last few days were a sprint to the finish to get things done, taught and checked off.  And I ended up in the middle of it, for my department, as the department head.

So, a new floor, sound console and main curtain later, the Princess Theater is shining.  The atrium system was completely redone, and all our venues have been health-checked, cleaned and repaired.  And everything, which should be sparkling and shiny and lovely, is a mess.  There is dust everywhere, random bits of kit stashed in corners, tools jumbled and a general sense of disarray and jobs left half done.

Sigh.  So much for the glowing concept of the refit as a magical time to end all worries and make wishes come true.

I'm off to repaint an audio snake to match its white marble surroundings.

Go West Young (wo)man

 From Driggs, Idaho to San Francisco, California, I decided to pick up my 42^nd state.  I went the long way, through Oregon, despite having a very tight time frame.  I left Idaho on Tuesday, August 28^th, and had to join the ship on Friday, August 31^st.  The drive was over 20 hours, and I still needed to rent a storage container and put all my stuff in it.  No worries, plenty of time to see Bend.

So it was onward into the sunset, across blazing hot open range (sometimes literally blazing hot).

I stopped at BLM land to spend the night, pulled well off the highway on a dirt track and pitched camp.  I made myself comfy with a sleeping bag and pad stretched out on the ground, then read myself to sleep.  So much better than a hotel parking lot.  I’m getting the hang of this hobo thing.

Then off to Bend for breakfast, south to California, around the smoky Mount Shasta (woah, that’s tall), and home to San Francisco.

Now to pack up my life into a small locker.  Oh wait, that’s no different than shoving it in a car…

That took less than an hour.  I love not having too many possessions.  Although I was surprised by the way that storage unit filled up so quickly.  I have a fair bit of stuff.  Four boxes worth.  Might be time to purge.

Pictures of Idaho

A recap of my summer in Teton Valley.

US Capitals

I recently dusted off my old memorization of the US state capitals.

When I was growing up, I had a placemat of the United States, which was my only placemat and with me at every meal.  I remember being quite upset when that placemat was being washed and I had to have a regular flower-print placemat that everyone else had.  I have no idea where this placemat came from, as I did not have any other educational placemats, and no other member of the family had any eccentric placemats.  But the result of my beloved USA placemat was that I endeavored to memorize all 50 state capitals.  I never learned that alphabetical-state song, which might have been helpful, but instead just bulldozed through it using sheer force of mind.

This memorization occurred when I was in elementary school.  I remember my second-grade teacher calling out capitals to me on the playground and I went and stood on the corresponding state on our large playground map.  In retrospect, two things strike me: 1) I don't know if the teacher even knew the capitals, and 2) I was quite a precocious kid.

In the years after elementary school, my knowledge lapsed.  I didn't keep up with my memorization, and as memories do, they faded.  But my brother recently introduced me to an interactive online learning site called Memrise.  There, I quickly planted a garden of memories associated with the US states.  Other gardens I am harvesting include the countries of the world with their capitals, and the flags of the world.  (The flags have already come in handy in the Olympics, with the satisfaction of knowing the athlete's country by sight, a split second before they announce it).

As I was recalling the 50 capitals, I began to count how many I had been to.  It is a sparsely populated list, compared to my slept-in states (34) and visited states (42):

I have lived in:

1. Dover, DE

I have slept in:

2. Honolulu, HI
3. Providence, RI
4. Austin, TX
5. Boston, MA
(Washington, DC)

I have been to for the day:
6. Cheyenne, WY
7. Juneau, AK
8. Richmond, VA
9. Annapolis, MD
10. Denver, CO
11. Nashville, TN
12. Little Rock, AR

I have driven through:
13. Harrisburg, PA
14. Concord, NH
15. Hartford, CT
16. Salt Lake City, UT
17. Lansing, MI
18. Columbus, OH
19. Jefferson City, MO
20. Madison, WI
21. Saint Paul, MN
22. Trenton, NJ

I've visited the airport (does that even count?):
23. Phoenix, AZ
24. Atlanta, GA

Which leaves 26:
California
Oregon
Washington
Nevada
Idaho
Montana
New Mexico
North Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska
Kansas
Oklahoma
Louisiana
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Mississippi
Alabama
Florida
South Carolina
North Carolina
West Virginia
New York
Vermont
Maine

There and back again

I have been trying to get my EMT license in either Idaho or Wyoming since the spring, when I heard I would be in the area for the summer.  I have my Pennsylvania license and national registry, so I figured it'd be easy to fill out some paperwork and get my license.

A few months later, I am in the middle of an Idaho license application, which is permanently stalled, and completing the few last steps for my Wyoming license.

I had to drive to Cheyenne to take a written test to get my license, despite being certified in another state, a member of the national registry of EMTs and having completed an EMT training course in the state of Wyoming.  Cheyenne is 8 hours away from where I live.

So I drove to the other side of the state on a two-day journey to take a 150-question multiple-choice test.  Which took me an hour to complete.

Luckily, I was able to get my fingerprints processed for a background check in the same trip, and now I’m one form away from being a Wyoming-licensed EMT.

Finally.

But it was a nice drive.  I toured the varying geography of Wyoming, from the Tetons to the Winds to the wide, rolling range.

And saw a nice sunset on the way.