Days 10-14: sea daze (OTW to Hawaii)

Sea day 1:
Did bugger all.
Sluggish as, apart from a walk around the deck (x3 laps = 1 mile), we did a bit nothing. OK, we ate and read a bit, and that was tough going.

With days like this I should work?

In the evening we caught the end of one of the acts on board (two British comedians, Hope & Keen, (who must be the last survivors of vaudeville - about 80 years old, and the jokes were older) popped into the nightclub for the tail end of a Karaoke competition (urk) and collapsed into blissful sleeeeeeep.

Sea day 2:
This day started out on a more interesting note when we woke up at 5am to realise the aircon wasn’t working. Or the lights. Or, for that matter, the ship’s engines.

Our room during the power outage

Neither Emma nor I pretend to be experts in things nautical, but we were fairly certain this wasn’t normal. We went for a wander around the deck, and were surprised to find perhaps 40 or 50 other people up and about trying to find out what was on. Which was nothing.
Hoping one of the things that was on was coffee, we went to the bistro on level 14. It was dead too. Probably just as well because the one thing this ship really can’t get right is coffee.
We sat on the deck and watched the stars for a while. It was rather pretty, although the thought of being adrift at sea for two or three weeks slighlty undermined the experience.
I predicted that eventually the captain would make an announcement along the lines of “we’ve had a slight mechanical malfunction, but it’s nothing to worry about. It’s fixed now, and we don’t expect any further difficulties.”
About five minutes later the captain made an announcement: “we’ve had a problem with the power management computer, but it’s nothing to worry about. It’s fixed now, and we don’t expect any further difficulties.”*
So my prediction was close. The captain’s prediction wasn’t quite as accurate, as the power immediately died within seconds of his finishing his announcement. I suspect this may have been followed by rather harsh words on the bridge.
They fixed it a few minutes later, saving the Chief Electrician a short walk along a plank. All up the power was out from 4-6am.
(Incidentally Emma had another theory about the reasons for the rationale for the captain’s announcement: “I’m awake, and you eff-ing will be too”.)
Truth is, it was kind of fun. It might not have been so fun if we were still floating midway between California and Hawaii.
During the day we attended three lectures (the flowers of Hawaii, shield volcanoes of the Pacific, and East Asian geo-politics). The first two were excellent, the last a bit light-on.
As this was also a formal night we got all glammed up, and later caught a show by an illusionist named Garry Carson, whose claim to fame is that he did 8,000 shows at the MGM in Las Vegas over 2 1/2 years (the maths are interesting) who was exceptionally entertaining.

Sea day 3:
The highlight: another three times around the deck. Woo-hoo.
Actually the real highlight is that Emma was getting much better, and was finally feeling rested & starting to fully enjoy the cruise. She is no longer in peril of me putting a pillow over her face to *stop the infernal coughing*.
We attended another lecture (this one on Tsunamis), and read some more (“Film Directing, Shot by Shot” for me, Harry Potter for Emma), and I did a bit of sound editing for an animation sound track in the afternoon.
I suspect this isn’t how most people spend their holidays (except for the Harry Potter bit, which is an extremely popular book on this ship), but it works fine for me.
In the evening they showed the AFL Grand Final in the Vista Room, where perhaps 100 Aussies watched Geelong bitch-slap Port Adelaide into defeat like the whining little girls they are.

Too many Aussies, not enough football

The biggest thrashing in AFL history made it hardly worth watching. The only thing making the game watchable was Channel Ten’s brilliant coverage.
(I figure a bit of judicious sucking-up will help ensure my job is still there at the end of the cruise.)

Sea day 4:
Slackest day yet.
After another three laps around the ship, and then more reading and eating.
Our addiction to lectures continued: Hawaiian birds for Emma, Pacific Ocean geology for me.
But the coolest thing was that all day we’ve been spotting flying fish. Those little buggers can cover a surprising distance. A completely new thing for both of us.

A shot of the ocean where the flying fish where just moments before. Speedy little things.

Otherwise Emma sat on the deck and has almost finished Harry Potter, while I’ve been reading my film book and one on insight meditation.
Tomorrow is Hilo, so an early night tonight.

* I suspect the literal translation of this is “we’ve had a problem (translation: we were dead in the water) with the power management computer (translation: it blew up), but it’s nothing to worry about (translation: we ran around in a panic for half an hour before someone worked out what the problem was). It’s fixed now (translation: we got lucky and dodged a bullet), and we don’t expect any further difficulties (translation: I’m getting off this trash hauler as soon as we hit Hawaii).”
NB Emma wants me to make it clear this is a beautiful ship, and not a floating bucket of bolts. Since she is looking over my shoulder I figure I better humour her.

Day 9: "I left my heart, (da-dum-dedum, da-dum-deedum) at Sam Plank's Disco..."

We love this city.
Emma managed to spot whales and seals galore as we approached SF (including one that did flips just outside the window - just after I walked away, of course).
We were late getting into port due to unco-operative currents, so we didn’t arrive until around 10am. On the upside the weather was perfect, and the sail-in was as spectacular as any we’ve had. On the downside our late arrival meant we lost our near-perfect berth near Fisherman’s Wharf and ended up in some crap berth south of the Bay Bridge. Even this had a silver lining (or at least a shiny aluminium one) as we had a great view of parts of the city we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

San Francisco is truly one of the great cities of the world. The look of the place, the mood, the culture, and those indefinable “somethings” that give a place its character are so wonderful here. Like anywhere it has its flaws. but there’s enough right about San Francisco to make up for its failings.
To me I’d sum it up by saying that it feels the most Australian of American cities (this statement which may well serve to insult Aussies and Yanks in equal measure). Hey, they even have Melbourne-style trams:

After a long wander we ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf and had lunch at Fisherman’s Grotto, where we had lunch on Emma’s first (and last) visit in 2001. I had forgotten how *massive* the serves are. I ordered the avocado and prawns, Emma the avocado and crab. We could have had one plate for the two of us and still had enough left over to feed a small Indonesian fishing village for a week.
We caught the light rail to Union Square, where we did our tourist-y duties and dumped massive amounts of cash into the local economy.
The list of goodies (to the tune of “On the First Day of Christmas):
“On the first day of Frisco,
My true love bought for me,
six CDs
five new books,
four pairs of Levi’s,
three pairs of shoes,
two t-shirts,
and a silver 80 gig iPod…”

(For the sake of historical accuracy it was actually seven CDs and four books, and we didn’t buy any t-shirts. But the song worked better with a bit of poetic licence.)

Here’s a shot of Emma later that night. So many shoes, so few feet…

And for the geeks, a shot of the inside of an Apple Genius Bar. The San Francisco is possibly the only place in the world where geeks with tattoos are commonplace:

We then sat on the deck armed with a margarita and a daiquiri and watched the pelicans fly across the bay.

Sail-out was delayed as the last two passengers were running very late. A black car came screaming up to the dock and dumped them out about two minutes before they lifted the gangway (lucky for them they made it as it’s a damn long swim to Hawaii). The delay gave us a perfect dusk/early evening view as we sailed out. My camera can’t do justice to the views of the moon over the Bay Bridge and the city lights coming up, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was stunning.
But these may give a small sense of it:

Day 8: Sea day (day of the living phelgm)

Emma’s cold took a turn for the worse. She spent the night constantly waking up with a horrific cough, and was exhausted by the next morning. As we weren’t due into San Francisco until the next day she made the rather wise choice to take advantage of a sea day and spend the day in bed.
After she fell asleep I went for a bit of a wander through the ship, stopping in the casino to watch a bit of action at the low-limit Hold’em table. There was some terrible play at that table. I really want to find some time to play, although with weak players one of two things tends to happen: you clear them out, or they stay in with stupid drawing hands and clear you out when they call a raise with 37o against your AK, the flop comes down AK5, and they stick around for two more raises as 7s come down on the turn and river.
(For the non-poker players reading this: just take it on faith that that’s about as dumb a play as you can make at a poker table without all the other players executing you, if for no other reason than to keep you from breeding and spreading the stupid gene any further.)
I went to the gym (grr-argh-tough) and came back to find Emma finally rousing around 3pm. More-or-less.
We watched a couple of films, had an early dinner and crashed early. Trez excitemont R uz. But we figured taking it easy would get us ready for San Francisco.

Days 6 & 7: Victoria BC & Seattle WA

We had another quiet day, as Emma was still cold and flu-ey. This seems not to have hampered her incredible animal senses as she still managed to spot two or three humpback whales off the starboard bow.
Due to the storms the day before we were late getting into Victoria. We didn’t dock until after sunset, so our trip into Victoria was dark and short. We only had a few hours so we went for a brief walk.

We found a small coffee shop off the main street, a quirky little hippie vegie bar called Re-bar, and had our best coffees since Juneau (I’m still astonished how good the coffee was in Juneau) and two freshly-made desserts: a very zingy lemon tart for Emma and a rhubarb and strawberry tart for me. Yum.

We woke in Seattle, and sure enough Emma is still sick. Not good. With her constant coughing and snuffling neither of us is getting as much sleep as we’d like, so we had a slow start and got into Seattle around 9.30am.
First stop: Pike’s Market, starting with the famous fishmonger’s where they throw the fish. My camera was too slow to capture any decent fish-flying-through-the-air shots, so here’s the token shot of the guys actually selling fish instead of destroying them in acts of aerial chaos.

Breakfast was at Lowell’s, another local landmark, which gave us a fabulous view of the wharf area. Like most American eateries the food came piled about three feet high, but it was good enough we struggled through it.
Suitably fueled-up we wandered through the markets, watched some repeat offender get arrested (he and the cops were on first name terms), then caught the monorail out to the Space Needle (build for the ‘62 World Fair), which would have been worth taking to the top to if it wasn’t $US23 each to stand in a queue for 30 minutes before going up for a 15 minute view.

Instead we geeked out at the Science Fiction Musuem (may the Force be with us) and the Rock Experience (the rock n’ roll museum). On the way out Emma called out “Chris!”
I turned and saw Chris Modzelewski, a Polish-American media guy I first met at the ESOMAR conference in Cannes in 2003 and last in Montreal for the ESOMAR conference in 2005. Now based in New Jersey Chris and his girlfriend Erin were in Seattle for a wedding on Saturday, and being as geeky as we are decided to visit the museum yesterday.

[Insert “small world” cliche here]
Sail-out was gorgeous, with much better weather. We only spent a brief time on deck because - you guessed it - Emma’s cold took a turn for the worst. Another nightly cough-fest. Hopefully a sea-day will help.

Day 6: Sea day

Around 3.30am I was woken when I felt the ship slam on the brakes*. A few seconds later was a massive KA-THUMP! as a wave slammed into the ship.
I figured we might be in for a demanding time. I was right.
Some of it was very cool. Feeling the ship lift up, then a few seconds of that weightless feeling before the ship pitched down for an almighty BANG! Between that and the constant rolling it was like being on an amusement ride, but in a warm, comfy king-size bed instead of on a ratty bench that some 12 year old just spewed on.
When we finally began walking around: not so good. Emma had her sea legs, but I was a bit wobbly. I wasn’t sick, but I wasn’t well either. In the buffet plates were crashing to the floor, Emma saved a plate of eggs from following (much to the chef’s delight), and the crew closed off the open decks.
I retired for an hour nap and was fine after that. I was one of the lucky ones.
Many people hid in their cabins, while a few people who were out and about fell over during the day, and even some of the crew were on the green side as well. Seas were between 3-4 metres, with 35-40 knot winds.
Here’s a pic of the water from Deck 5:

The seas continued like this all day. An announcement came over the intercom that the cast and sets kept falling over during rehearsal, so the live show was cancelled and replaced with “Wild Hogs”. This was a suitably stupid film for my tastes so it made for a nice alternative.
The highlight of the day was Emma’s cold had improved to the point I was able to sleep through without her snuffling and snoring waking me up.
Every storm has a silver lining, and that was mine.

* Yes, I know ships don’t have brakes. Metaphoric license.

Day 5: Skagway

The day started loudly around 7am when some family decided they were the only people on ship, and needed to fill the space with noise. Emma’s cold was no better, but good enough we didn’t have to cancel our trip on the White Pass & Yukon Route railway.
A good thing too, as this was another highlight of the trip. We had fabulous clear weather, with a touch of nicely art-directed cloud up in the pass. To give some indication of how much I loved the views I took over 200 photos that day.

It wasn’t so much of a tourist destination during the Alaskan gold rush. Skagway was the major port leading into the Yukon. Conditions were so tough that at one time prospectors were required by law to carry one ton of supplies with them before being allowed to proceed north. Dozens of men and something like 4,000 horses died going over the pass before the railway was built. Considering how demanding the route is between Skagway and White Pass I can only imagine how horrendous it must have been elsewhere.
Today it’s a two-hour train trip to the border in a sealed railcar. Being a tough pioneering type I actually stood on the area between the carriages for up to five minutes at a time.
Back at the port, eagle-eye Emma spotted two humpbacks off the starboard side of our ship. I managed a few photos, but lacked the lenses and shutter speed to get a good shot.
I did manage a half decent sail-out shot.

I like this place.

Day 3: Tracy Arm: cold, wet and perfect. Juneau cold, and wet, but not so perfect.

This was what I was expecting from Alaska. Only better.
We woke up with the ship travelling up Tracy Arm. We sat down to breakfast, looked out the window, and saw bits of ice floating past us. Not quite the norm in Sydney Harbour.
I bolted up to the deck, camera in hand, and was absolutely gobsmacked by the absolutely stunning scenery, including my first-ever glacier. Photos don’t really capture it (just as well or we would have spent a tonne of money for nothing), but to give you a bit of an idea:

We passed one of our sister ships, which was lucky as it let me get a picture of a Princess liner without having to swim to shore. So we would have looked something like this:

We spent a few hours on deck, but Emma managed to catch a cold so we retired to our stateroom to give her a few hours sleep. Then we had our first bit of bad news for the entire trip.
On hour and a half from Juneau were were told all flights were cancelled, which meant our heli trip out onto a glacier didn’t happen.
As I put it at the time, ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! But more colourfully.
In many ways it’s probably just as well given Emma wasn’t feeling any better, and conditions are moderately appalling, but I was still disappointed.
We booked a bus trip to Mendenhall glacier as an alternative, which was our original first option, so it we still managed a bit more of the great glacier experience. The next shot gives of idea of how vile the weather was:

The pic doesn’t really give a sense of scale of how big the glacier is. The glacier is about a 1.5 km wide. The worrying bit is how fast they are receding. Two or three years ago Mendenhall receded about 300 feet in one year.
We also discovered an unidentified dropping on the footpath between the lake and the visitor’s centre. The source was a mystery, as I hadn’t noticed any Frenchmen. The mystery was solved a few minutes later when Emma looked out the window of the visitors centre and spotted a bear crossing the path we had just been walking along.
So the age old question has now been answered. A bear does *not* shit in the woods. A bear shits on the path:
(bear.swf)

Day 2: Ketchikan

Ketchikan, rain capital of North America (13 feet p.a., plus snow) is a gorgeous little tourist trap - er, destination - on the Alaska coastline. Major industries are salmon fishing, and flogging jewellery. Flogging really, really hard. Especially Joe… but we’ll come to that.

We hoped to watch the ship sail in, but the ship docked early so we missed that bit. Then we hit the deck for our 7.20am “backcountry jetboat excursion” to be advised it was postponed to 9.30. So far so bad.

As it turns out, this wasn’t a bad thing at all. It gave us time to wander through Creek Street, the core of old Ketchikan where, as you’d expect, we met a guy from Adelaide running a shop there. It’s spawning season so there were salmon everywhere, but mostly dying as they do after they spawn, which makes the whole mating thing somewhat less attractive to me.

One of Creek Street’s most famous attractions is Dolly’s House (the light blue building in the photo below), which was one of Alaska’s most famous brothels. They seem to take an extraordinary pride in it, which probably says something about Alaskans that I’ll leave to others to interpret.


We eventually managed to catch the jetboat, which took us into some tiny and rather spectacular bays and inlets, where we saw seals, bald eagles, jelly fish and a two to three metre sea lion. None of the animal pics turned out, so have a look at the shot below and imagine an eagle with a three metre wingspan flying across it:


Back in Ketchikan we went to few jewellery shops as Emma had seen a rather nice Tanzanite (no, I’d never heard of it either) ring and thought it worthwhile shopping around. Being the last week of tourist season prices were rather competitive.

Shopping for the best piece and prices was a good idea in theory - and then we met Joe.

As we passed one shop Joe greeted us, chatted a bit, then invited us in and talked about jewellery. After a few minutes he showed us a few pieces, “just for fun”. Then he talked some more. Then a few more pieces. If we didn’t like that setting we could try this one, or that one, or what about that stone? No? Well how about we see their other shop, where he showed a few more pieces, and talked a bit more. Then a bit more. Then a bit more.

We fled for the nearest fish and chip shop.

After lunch Emma decided she particularly liked a ring we’d seen in the second shop we visited. The catch was Joe’s shop was between us and this jeweler, so we took a two block detour, bought the ring, and planned our escape:

Joe’s shop was between us and the Sun Princess. I’d fire the smoke grenades and lay down covering fire with machine guns, while Emma sprinted for the first building. Once around the corner she’d lay down suppressing fire while I leap-frogged past her to the boarding ramp. Then I’d drop more smoke as she bolted past me.

It worked. But it was a close thing.

Day 0 & Day 1

Day 0:
Despite dreading getting up at a quarter to oh-my-god Sunday morning we were both awake just before the alarm rang at 6am, sparing Emma the trauma of having to kick me out of bed.
This was a good omen; I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother trip OS. No queues at Qantas check-in or customs on the way out, and the easiest processing ever at LA International. Even the Homeland Security guy was downright charming, which was complete turnaround from the obnxious clown Emma had to deal with last time. He would have been thrown out of the Nazi Party for being too being too rude to foreigners - but that’s another story.
All of our connections fell into place and we made the ship in plenty of time, sailing out around 4.20pm. Seattle put on it’s best weather for us (the rain stopped), and we hit the decks on level 7 for a quick bit of sunbathing:

I think the easiest job in the world would be running an observatory in Seattle:
“Did you see any stars last night?”
“Nope.”
“The night before that?”
“Nope.”
“Uh - any this week?”
“Uh-uh.”
“This month?”
“Nah.”
“When did you last see any stars?”
“What year is it again…?”
We did our best to stay awake until 8pm local time, and managed to get back to our stateroom just as total catatonic shock set in .
Day 1:
Twelve hours later we woke-up, jet-lag free (have I mentioned how much I hate jet-lag yet?)
I was fine, but as Emma didn’t quite have her sea legs, I went for a 20 min walk. I came back to find she’d had a navigational intestinal adjustment (ie spectacularly chucked her guts), which served to re-set her brain to “sea” mode. She’s been fine since, and even managed to hit the decks in time for the 15 min of sunshine we had today (yes, they do have sun; photographic evidence below):

Today was a sea day, which meant we were able to do pretty much nothing. The highlight was at lunch. I mentioned to the couple at our table we were hoping to see orcas on this trip, and Terry pointed out the window and said “there’s one”.
He was wrong. There were two. I made a quick dive for the binoculars (great impulse purchase on the docks that proved to be) and got a few good looks.
Emma dragged my lethargic butt to the gym, which I figure means I earned dinner tonight. As tonight was our first formal night at sea we decided to hit one of the flashier restaurants (the Marquis Room). Just outstanding. Emma did the Alaskan gravlax and Louisian crayfish, I did a shrimp salad and cornish hen, and a chocolate dessert that will need another two hours in the gym - but worth it.
Almost bed time. We’re up tomorrow at 6am for sunrise and to watch the ship arrive in Ketchikan, then we’re doing the Back Country Jetboat Adventure train trip. Next inciting installment tomorrow. If we don’t drown. Or get eaten by orcas.

For those who don't know where we are going

Stage one: Alaska.

That's going to take seven nights onboard, staring in Seattle, up to Skagway, and back to Seattle. We'll be doing quite a few cool things, which I may or may not find time to write up before we go.

Stage two: the Pacific.

This is 31 nights onboard, heading south from Seattle to San Francisco, than island hopping via Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand... a few islands I can't recall... then stepping off the ship back in Sydney and a short cab ride home.

With no jet-lag. Woo-hoo!

(The alert reader will have noticed this is the second time I've mentioned jet-lag in three posts. I really, really, really hate jet-lag.)

How we'll be roughing it.

Here's a picture of the ship we'll be on, the Sun Princess, sailing through Alaska.

That will be us in about one week, hopefully with weather this clear.

The last weather report I checked had the temperature in the high teens (that's the temperature in celsius, of course - I don't do Fahrenheit), but I don't know if rain is expected. Given it's the North American northwest I expect a solid drenching or two. As long as we aren't caught in it during a tour that's merely an excuse to retire to the bar for a margarita.

Of course we won't always be sailing down post-card perfect coastlines. Some days we'll be caught in open sea in horrific conditions like this:

It's just terrible. Simply thinking about spending days and days under such conditions is killing me. I hate to think what it's doing to Emma.

And so it begins (more-or-less)

OK, the trip isn't here yet. But there are only five more sleeps to go.

Emma has been in packing mode for a week and half, with a major frenzy on Saturday night. We're currently up to about 87kg, and counting.

I've even sorted the bulk of my stuff, although I never really think about it until the day before. How hard can it be, needing to pick clothes for everything from the arctic to the equator?

For those of you who don't know, Emma and I are cruising from Alaska to Sydney, with a few stops in between. We'll be sailing on the Sun Princess, starting in Seattle, then up to Alaska, back south to San Francisco, and then wandering across the Pacific via Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand and a few other places as well before getting off the ship in Sydney in six weeks.

Then back to work the next day, jet-lag free. Coool.