Friday September 19, 2008

Friday was our second full day at sea and after 3 really busy days in port Shannon and I were really looking forward to a quieter day. The only thing we were had scheduled for the day was the Cruise Critic meeting at 11:00 am in the Wheelhouse bar. At 10:00 in the Wheelhouse was TV tunes trivia, which we thought might be fun. We had not made it to any of the trivia games yet, and I had wanted to go. So we slept in a bit, ate breakfast, took our time to get ready and then wandered down to trivia.

As we walked into the bar I hear over the speakers, coming from the front, “You guys are way too young to know any of these. Find a team to join.” I looked up and it was JJ talking to us from the stage. I smiled and we saw Mike and Chris from the Cruise Critic group and we joined them. We did okay, but most of the shows were from way before our time. There were a couple of ones that we knew and JJ would make a comment like – even you guys will know that one. After the trivia ended, we had a little time before the get together, so I went to the bathroom. As I walked back in JJ was talking to Shannon. When he saw me he started walking towards me and we chatted. He asked if we were getting dressed up for formal night and if we were going to go to the show – he said the one that night was his favorite of the production shows. He said we needed to come to the Champagne waterfall at 11:30 pm- which he referred to it as the obligatory dance party. JJ also mentioned that after the Champagne waterfall he and the crew go up to Skywalkers and that we should go. We said we probably would go.

After JJ left we helped move some chairs around to set up for the Cruise Critic group. We had another great turn out and it was so fun to see everyone again after several days on the cruise to hear what they had done. Mike and Chris had put together a trivia game based on the posts on the roll call thread on Cruise Critic. They put so much work into it – I was blown away. Again we could work in teams and we joined Bob and Candace. We were all actually answers in the game – one question was who worked on a cross continental bike tour. Shan was the person from the furthest away. Bob was mentioned about his screen name. Over all we did really well – just one less then the winning team. We had a great time with the group and stayed there for a couple hours.

Lunch was next on our plan. We went up to the 14th deck where the food court was located. There was also a pizza place and a grill where you could get hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken sandwiches. That is where we ate lunch every day. Pretty much every day I had a salad and a piece of pizza. After lunch Shannon decided she wanted to go check out the big Champagne art auction. I had no desire to go, so I went back to the room to read, relax, maybe take a nap – since it had been such a taxing day so far. J Shannon only planned on staying at the auction for a little while, so I was surprised when she came back over an hour later. Well it turned out the DJ saw Shannon at the art auction and started talking to her.

Shan decided to relax for a while before starting to get ready for dinner. 13 going on 30 was on the TV, so we watched that for a while. Every afternoon in the food court they serve free ice cream and I decided I wanted to get some. I could not remember if it started at 3:00 or 3:30, so I went up just before 3:00. Unfortunately it did not start until 3:30. So I sat down at a table and waited. Of course the staff was so on top of things a server kept asking me if I needed something. Finally I admitted I was waiting for the ice cream. During my wait I read a little, but I was more fascinated by the family sitting across the isle from me. This family consumed more food then I have every seen four people eat before in my life. It was like a train wreak I just could not turn away. The waiter was so great, he kept coming back and giving me updates on the status of the ice cream. When it was ready he let me know and also told me the caramel ice cream was his favorite, so I tried that and it was great. After my snack I headed back to the room to start getting ready for dinner.

Now I enjoy getting dressed up, there have even been times in my life getting ready is more fun then actually going out. Shan and I were going to wear our fancy dresses for this, the second formal night. A couple months before we left Shannon sent me a picture of the dress she bought for this night and I was in a total panic, I did not have any that fancy to bring along. So in between traveling back and forth across the country I needed to find a dress. It was quite stressful. Finally a couple weeks before we left I found one I loved. The problem was that it needed to be altered a bit and I had not had time to do this before I left. So I tried to make due with safety pins and it just did not work very well. I was so uncomfortable and fidgety all night. It was the only negative thing of the night, other then that we both got all gussied up and got ready for our fancy night.

Once we were ready we went down to dinner. This night we were seating more the in middle of the room then the other nights, and we ended up at the greatest table. Dinner was a riot!! The other people at our table were a couple from Boston, a missionary couple from Ravenna, MI – not too far from me, and a couple from Oklahoma. The whole group just talked and laughed and told stories, it was great! My favorite story happened when we were in a hockey discussion. The woman from Oklahoma was a very petite Asian woman and she was talking about how hockey was way too violent for her all that fighting. Her husband piped up something about how it was so much less violent then wrestling. It turns out she was a huge WWE fan. Then he went on to comment about her getting thrown out of a wrestling match. We all just looked at each other wondering what that was all about – she went on to tell us that her grandsons wrestle and she would get so worked up she would start yelling at the officials or the other kids that she was asked to leave. I so wish I had a picture of this lady, looking at her she would be the last person you would expect to be asked to leave any where or to be a fan of the WWE. The food at dinner was good as well and I ordered the Love Boat Dream dessert. When it came it was so cute I decided to take a picture of it.
After dinner Shannon and I decided to get some more professional pictures taken. We then went to go watch the Newlywed not so Newlywed game show – another one of those cruise favorite activities. We could only stay for a little while since we wanted to make sure we got seat for the show. We got to the theater and found seats in our regular section. The show was destination anywhere and it was based on a around the world theme. It was really good and we both enjoyed it. I did think it was a little funny when they did a segment on Africa and they sang In the Jungle from the Lion King. After the show we headed back over to the atrium to get ready for the Champagne waterfall. At one point we asked this gentleman to take a picture of us together. He was quite particular about placing us in the right light, almost to the point of it being creepy, but it ended up being my favorite picture of us. Don’t we look nice. We then went into the art gallery and had a little photo shoot.

Here I am Here is Shannon More me More Shannon Fun times! Then it was time for the big party!! Here is Shannon getting ready for the fun! I would compare the Champagne Waterfall to a New Years Eve countdown type party. People line up on all three levels of the atrium to watch as the maitre d stacks hundreds of champagne glasses on top of each other. Once all but one of the glasses is in place the Cruise Director and Maitre D do a little program and then the champagne is poured. Here is a picture of the glasses.Before they start pouring the champagne there is a count down and people have streamers to throw. This is just after the streamers came down. Then everyone has an opportunity to pour the champagne if they want – we chose not to, but here is someone doing it. Here are some people dancing. Shannon and I walked around and watch people. I was laughing at these two boys – I would say about twelve years old who went around picking up as many streamers as possible and they were covering each other with them – you could not even see their clothes – it was all streamers.

At one point JJ came up to me to give me a hard time about not joining in the dancing. It was so funny – he was in total cruise director mode – big grin on his face, moving to the beat of the music – Mr. Social Director. I made some comment about the music being kind of old and if they played something a decade or two newer it would be more my speed – he said they needed to cater to the crowd and to come up to Skywalkers later for newer music.

We stayed around for most of the party and then we ran up to the room to freshen up and then we made our way up to sky walkers. We walked in and found a place to sit over in the area where the crew was hanging out. The DJ saw Shannon and pulled her into the DJ booth with him to chat. After a few minutes I was not sure if she wanted to hang out there or not, so I went to rescue her – she was okay with me coming to get her.

The music in Skywalkers was better and I danced to a few good songs. At one point Staying Alive was on and I pulled out all my disco moves. Suddenly I was surrounded by 60 – 70 year old men who were emulating every move I made – it was both hilarious and frightening. I decided to stop dancing for a while.

After we had been for a while Shannon got up to go somewhere, and I looked over and saw that JJ was standing alone, so I got up to go talk to him. We started chatting and had a really great time. Shan got sick of sitting alone so after a while she came over and we all chatted. Since the ship was going into dry dock in two days and most of the crew was leaving there were huge crew parties going on. Shan and I so wanted to go to one of them, just to get into the crew area and see what it was like, but that did not happen. JJ kept getting paged to come to the crew party and finally he decided to go. It was getting pretty late at this point, close to 2:00 am. After JJ left Shannon and I stayed at Skywalkers for another 10 minutes or so and then we decided to leave. Shannon wanted to say good bye to the DJ since he was getting off the ship the next day in Victoria. When we got up to leave we saw that he had gone down a level to go to the bathroom so we started headed down that way. As we were walking down Shan went one way to say goodbye and I went the other way to go to the elevator and much to my surprise JJ was standing there….

It was another great day!

Thursday Night

Sail away from Skagway was at 4:30 on Thursday night. I was pretty tired that night and needed to take a shower, straighten my hair and get completely ready, so I choose to take a little nap instead of going out for the sail away. I think we both laid down for a little while and then I jumped in the shower. I was pretty excited to wear my blue dress that night. Right after we booked the cruise I started doing some shopping for a few things I needed. One of those things was a dress (or dresses). Finding dresses that fit have always been a struggle for me, I am not proportioned right and they never fit me correctly. So one day I went into Ann Taylor Loft and literally tried on every dress in the store. I was shocked to discover the one that actually fit and looked good – it was a style I would have never even tried. Unfortunately the dress was not dressy enough for a formal night, but it was on clearance, so for $12.97 I could afford to buy it for one of the other nights. Thursday was the big night to wear it. Of course Thursday was also the night we barely took any pictures and I don’t have one of me in it.

After getting ready we headed down to dinner. This night was a bit different from the other nights when it came to the time of the shows, the early one started at 7:00 and the late one was at 8:45, this was because the crew talent show was at 10:30. Shan and I were both very excited to see the talent show – it is always a high light on the cruise. So our plan was to go to the 8:45 show and then save our seats for the later show.

When we got to the dining room we were seating more in the middle of the room at a table for 6 people. There was an older couple there when we got there and then a women who was cruising solo was seated just after us. The women was from Portland and her husband had decided they were going to move to Hawaii – he was already there getting things settled and she was back in Portland getting the house ready to sell – she was not too excited about moving to Hawaii and quite stressed out, so this cruise was her treat to herself for dealing with it all. She was the most entertaining lady – we heard all about her life – her really old cat, her son who had many issues, her grandchild who was adopted by another family in a really open adoption, her husband – our dinner that night was so interesting!! I almost didn’t want to leave. But we had other things to do that night.

Shannon and I have always been big fans of production shows – we both love musicals and plays, watching people dance – it is just our thing. To this point both of the shows had been good. The lead female singer was Becky. She was a total diva, seamed much older then she was, and a really good singer. The show on Thursday was Words and Music and it was the Broadway themed show. Being huge Broadway fans we were really excited for this show. As we went to the theater and sat waiting for the show to begin we talked about what shows might be included. We didn’t really think there would be anything from Mamma Mia, Moving Out, or any of the really recent show, but we were thinking along the Andrew Lloyd Webber lines. We were way off – the show featured Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein… stuff that was so old and just not what we thought of when we were thinking Broadway. I can’t say the show was bad, it was just not our taste and I was actually bored. After the show Shannon and I just stayed in our seats for the Crew Talent Show as the crowds all left. We both had to go to the bathroom, but I went first. As I was walking back over to our seats is when it finally happened!!

JJ was walking up from the stage area and came over to talk to us. He asked us if we had enjoyed the show – which we both totally lied and said yes, if we were staying for the crew talent show, if we were having a good time this week. We chatted for a few minutes and then he was off. I was so excited, I had finally talked to JJ – my cruise goal was complete and I was so happy.
Shannon then ran to the bathroom and while she was gone an announcement came that everyone needed to leave the theater. So I got up and left and met her in the hall. A few minutes later we were allowed back in and we sat back down. The theater started getting filled up and some of the crew handed out balloons. They had everyone hang unto the balloons until a certain point when said to blow them up and start to toss them around. The entire theater came alive with people throwing and hitting balloons all around. It was a riot. I am convinced I was the target of a group of older men who were excited to see me get up to catch or throw a balloon. Here are some pictures of the balloon party. JJ then came up on stage to start the show and said “We spend millions of dollars each year on entertainment and all it takes is a bag of balloons.” I laughed, it was so true, it was the most excited the crowd was the whole trip. Then the crew talent show began. The first crew member was a bar tender who sang “Sex Bomb” He totally hammed it up and you could tell he totally loved being up there. Then the cruise director staff (minus JJ) did a little skit in a doctor’s office. Then another crew member came out dressed as a man on one side and a women on the other – “he” sang a duet with himself. During the show they showed some video clips of the crew performing in their quarters and some of it was pretty funny. Then Meg, the host of Princess Pop Star sang and did a great job. The show ended with the cruise classic of “If I were not upon the Sea.” It was as funny as usual. Shan and I both really enjoyed the Crew Talent Show.

After the show we left the theater and as I was walking down the stairs I caught JJ watching me. I smiled. It must have been the cute dress. After we left the theater we went up to get some dessert from the food court and then decided not to go to Skywalker, since we were both tired, but to go to bed. Tomorrow was our day at sea and we were both excited for a more relaxing day. I went to bed pretty happy – it had been such a great day!!

Official Stats

When I got home from the cruise I decided to post the stats of my bike trip to the cyclist’s forum from the tour I worked on. During the tour many of the cyclists kept stats each day on their ride. I spent hours over the summer reading their blogs (to monitor them) and so I thought I would follow suite. Here is my post….

Hi Everyone

Last week I had the opportunity to take a wonderful vacation to Alaska and after watching you all cycle all summer long, I decided to take my own little adventure. I rode a section of the Klondike Highway in Skagway, otherwise known as the White Pass. Like so many of you, I thought I would provide my statistics for the day. (I didn’t have a bike computer so I am relying on some info from the group guide)

Falls – 0
Flats – 0
Miles – 15.1
Beginning Elevation – 3292 feet
Ending Elevation – 33 feet
Average miles per hour – 15 – 20 MPH
Number of SAG (Scenic) stops – 6
Countries – 2 USA and Canada
Time – 1:30:00
Animals – Mountain Goat
Ice Cream stops – 0 too cold!
I have attached my picture with the bike – just to prove I really did ride. I hope you are all doing wonderful!

I included the picture of me all decked out in my bike gear and got a lot of positive response from the real cyclists.

Summit to Sea Bicycle Adventure

After all of the planning that went into my Alaska trip I can’t say I was more excited about one thing more then another, but the cycling excursion held a special place in my heart. The day before leaving for this cruse I officially ended my work on the bike tour. For 15 months I planned a nine week cross continental bike tour with out once getting on a bike. I would not have minded riding a section of the bike tour, but these were serious cyclists with very expensive bike and most of them had clip-in peddles. Now I had never used clip-in peddles before, but I have dispensed advice to many of the cyclists that they take some time to get used to and that it is not uncommon to fall when you are learning to get out of them (I can talk such a good game when it comes to cycling). So I did not want ride and fall potentially damaging one of the cyclists bikes – because they are so expensive. This cycling excursion became my own little mini cycling adventure – which I called my Summit to Sea Adventure.

After wondering around town for a while, Shannon and I went back to the ship to get ready for our adventure. It was a relatively cool morning and we were going to start at the top of the summit so we dressed in a few layers. It was so funny, that whole morning my mind was racing with all the knowledge I had picked up over my time on the bike tour. As I was getting dressed, I kept thinking that I needed to make sure I had the proper clothes, layers, things that were easy to take off if needed. Then I started thinking I needed to make sure I had the proper hydration – I had one water bottle, but wondered if I needed a second. Then I was thinking what I should eat – was a getting enough calories, had I eaten the right amount of protein, I needed to make sure I grabbed a banana for the potassium… Then I just started laughing at myself. I was going to be riding a bike for about 90 minutes, basically down hill the whole way – I was not going to be spending 6 or 7 hours in the saddle riding 70 or more miles – I didn’t have to worry about all this stuff – it was definitely a case of having too much knowledge!!

Once I relaxed about everything, we were on our way….

We got back down to the dock a little before 10:00 am and found the people for the bike tour. Once everyone was accounted for we headed over to the van and got in. We started our journey up the Klondike Highway to the summit. On the way up the staff of the Sockeye Cycle Co introduced themselves as did everyone in the van. Gordon was the lead guide, and he started things off – everyone had to say their name, where they were from and something interesting about themselves. HP was the driver (his real name was Ryan) and he claimed he could hold his breath for over a minute. Emily was one of the other guide and Jacob was the mechanic. Shan and I were in the back of the van and tried to think of something interesting to say. Shan decided to say that she was on the synchronized ice skating team in college. I mentioned that I had worked on the bike tour and not ridden a bike.

As we were driving up, there was a mountain goat on the side of the road. HP quickly pulled over and Gordon took pictures for everyone who wanted one. The mountain goat was beginning to go back up when our picture got taken, but here he is.

We started our journey at the top of the White Pass summit at 3292 feet. Here is the sign showing the elevation. It was really cold up at the top – pretty much the coldest temps we had the whole trip.

The summit is right on the international boundary, so we never really crossed into Canada except when we walked over to the sign, we might have taken a few steps out of the Country. Here is the sign. Here is the gorgeous view from the top. They then pulled the bikes out of the trailer and we had to find a bike that fit us. We also had to find a helmet and gloves. No safety vests though.

Here is Shannon in her gear. Here I am with the red bike I picked. Shan picked a red one too. Here is the trailer from the cycling company. Gordon is standing next to the trailer.Much like the start of all of our excursion there was the 15 minute overview/safety spiel from the organizers. This was one I could have actually given. We were going to be riding on a highway and sharing the road with buses, trucks, cars… so there was a level of danger there, but seeing as I had just lived 9 weeks knowing full well of the dangers on the road I did not think much of it. Shannon on the other hand was a bit scared by it all. One thing I was surprised by, but should not have been, was that if you had a moving fall they would pull you off the road for the rest of the trip. Good thing we did not do that for our bike tour – there would be no one left. We let people ride with broken bones if their doctors cleared it. :) Then we were on our way. I rode behind Shannon, at the end of the pack – I let her set the pace she wanted to go. I would have gone faster, but did not want to leave her. So I actually rode a lot with Emily the guide and we chatted.

The first scenic stop was at Bridal falls. Here are the falls. Me by the falls. Shan by the falls. Us together by the falls – don’t we look cute in our gear. Along the route we stopped at several other spots to take in the beautiful scenery.

Here is a waterfall. Some Mountains. Way in the back there is the Denver Glacier – the 3rd glacier we saw on this trip.
Some clouds hanging over the mountain. A sign talking about the highway.As we got further down the mountain things were getting more green and vegetative. Midway down the ride we had to go through customs. Even though the actual border is at the top of the summit, due to grade of the mountain it made more sense for the custom offices to be further down road and not right at the border. So we all rode through customs with a quick check with the customs agent.

This is a bridge we rode over. I love this bridge – it is located on a major fault line so when they built it, it is suspended on one side, but not on the other. This way it should withstand a major earth quake. At this stop we saw the train go by. It was fun to see that we were riding parallel to the train.
After one of the scenic stops we had our only incline of the ride – about 200 yards – it was the only time we really had to peddle.

Once we got back into town we got to ride through some of the residential area, past the school and the airport. It was so fun to see a part of Skagway that was not so touristy. When we got back into town we were at 33 feet elevation - so we had ridden about 15 miles, downhill dropping 3259 feet!

The bike ride ended at the cycling company’s store a few blocks away from the ship. We dropped off our bikes, grabbed our stuff and then wondered back towards the ship.

Around the corner from the bike shop is one of the most photographed buildings in Alaska. The face of this building is completely covered in driftwood. Then we headed over to the Red Onion Saloon. The Red Onion Saloon was Alaska’s most exclusive brothel in the days of the gold rush. It is now a restaurant/bar on the first floor and you can take a tour of the brothel on the second floor. As we approached the building we took a picture. Then I noticed the Obama sign in the window – I thought that was the funniest thing. Then started thinking of all kinds of campaign slogans – “the red onion mama’s for obama” “Brothels for Barack” “Madams for a change” I could go on and on…. So I went in for a closer look. Then Shannon and I went inside where we ran into Chris and Mike from the ship. We chatted with them for a while and then Shannon decided to buy a t-shirt. While we were in line I got the opportunity to get this ultimate picture.
I am not sure how the campaign would have responded to this, but I think it is great!!

We then headed back to the ship and took another great picture.
If this is a small boat, I would like to see a large one.
Here is another picture of our lovely home.

We then got back on the ship to get ready for another busy night!!

Thursday, September 18 – Skagway

When we initially booked this cruise I saw we were going to Skagway and I have to admit the first thing that came to my mind was who would name a city Skagway? It sounds like “skank way.” Shan admitted later that she actually had a similar thought. Then as I was putting together the shore excursion excel sheet (yes I did put together an excel sheet of all the excursions – there was so many offered and I needed them organized to figure out which ones to do.) I noticed there were options like - learn to cook in the red light district and take a walking tour with a madam. Hmm… it got me thinking maybe there was some connection. So I consulted wiki and found out that “Between 1897-1898, Skagway was a lawless town, described by one Royal Northwest Mounted Police "Mountie" as "little better than a hell on earth." Fights, prostitutes and liquor were ever-present on Skagway's streets.” Interesting… Anyway…

The ship docked at Skagway at 6:00 am and we had planned the mountain biking excursion, but that did not start until mid morning. Since we had gone to bed early the night before, we got up early to go wonder around Skagway before the bike trip. One of things we had heard about was the cliff bordering the pier, every time a new ship comes into port, someone from the ship gets off and paints the name of the ship on the cliff. Here is some of the artwork.

We talked into town and found this handy map of the city.
I have to admit I really liked the town of Skagway – it was so cute and so quant. I know so much if it touristy, but I didn’t care. Here are some pictures of the main street.

Isn’t it cute?
We found a new friend – Mr. Moose - here I am giving him a hug Shan visiting the moose This was another little street with the mountains in the background The Alaska Shirt Co was a store that had amazing deals. I got a couple long sleeved t-shirts for $5 each. The big excursion in Skagway is the White Pass train ride. People take the train route that was built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush. The route climbs 3000 feet in twenty miles and provides breath taking views. Shannon and I did not take this excursion, but we did get our picture taken with the train Here is Shannon. And the mascot of the train.

After we wondered around town we went back to the ship to get ready for our excursion.