Sea Monsters and Pirates: 1/13 - 1/14

Two more days at sea. Nothing real exciting. A huge sea monster did not come and did not eat the ship. No pirates and as far as we know, no one was chucked overboard.

On the thirteenth we had a Virtuoso cocktail party in the main theater. The people running it have never done this kind of thing before, have never been travel agents before and will be with us for the entire cruise.

Bobbi has been doing crafts which I fondly have been calling craps. The first one was great. I think I told you. They took a sun visor, the kind you wear on your head, and wrote something one or made a design with various kinds of beads. Bobbi flunked her first shot a t it and destroyed the visor. But she did a real good job on the second. She now has a visor that has “BEARS” written on the brim. Oh joy. This time it was flowers. She took perfectly good bread, mixed it with glue and attempted to make it into what looks, to me, like cauliflower. Tomorrow she will paint them. Oh goody. The best was really her second attempt at crap, I mean craft. This was something really valuable. She made a bag. I mean a bag. A paper bag. Not a purse, but just something to put garbage in so you can throw it all out together.

On the 14th, all the world cruisers were invited to a party, in the main theater, by a fellow passenger. There were the usual drinks and appetizers, hot and cold and a full orchestra. An entertainer sang and the ship dance group did a nice number. This had to cost the guy a fortune. He does it every year.

Just before the Kramers got here we had dinner with a third couple. A discussion about politicks came up. It was our usual type of discussion. I guess some would call it a heated discussion? Naaa. Verbal war would be a better description. I guess we scared this couple pretty badly. They ran off and didn’t want to see any of us again. Last night we started to have another of these political mayhems again. I guess finally Murial has given up and admitted she is wrong. I said to her, admit it, if you had it to do all over again, you would vote for George Bush. She said, yeah, sure. So I guess I finally won. And I can just see her when she reads this. She will turn all kinds of colors just before she explodes. I can’t wait for her reply.

Nate is keeping a map of our progress across the planet. Nate, our position on 1/15 at 10:52 AM central time is:
1° 52’ 41” North
134° 31’ 44” West

We are supposed to cross the equator on 1/15 at 1:30 PM our time or 4:30 central time. Wait a minute. This is getting too confusing. We turn our clocks back another hour tonight, so it will be 12:30 our time. Or did they figure that in when they made the announcement? Whatever. We are supposed to have a Neptune party on deck after we cross. If you have never crossed the equator, you are a pollywogs. Those that have crossed before are shellbacks. We are shellbacks. I hope this party does not cut into our lunch time. I mean I’d hate to miss a meal or part of one. We have to keep our strength up.

Shellback Sherm out.

(Posted on behalf of Sherman Rootberg)

Tropic of Cancer

Having traveled over 551 miles since the last update (for a total of over 1000 miles), the current position of the Radisson Seven Seas Voyager (at 8:40 pm central) is approximately 245 miles south of the Tropic of Cancer (19° 48’ 16” N, 125° 23’ 41” W). The current speed is about 20 miles an hour. By this time tomorrow, the Voyager should be half way to the Equator. The Voyager has 2223 miles to go to reach its’ next destination: Nuku Hiva, Marquises Islands.

1/11 - 1/12

That’s about it. I’ve run out of words. That happens on sea days. Just a lot of relaxing.

Our friends, the Kramers joined the cruise in LA. They are going to take two segments with us. Originally they only booked the first but decided to take the second in the last couple of weeks. All six of us have had several meals together.

We met some nice people from LA at the party at the Hotel there. They asked us to join them for dinner but we were already invited to the cruise director’s table tonight. We have arranged for them to have dinner with the Kapels and Kramers.

On our last cruise we had dinner at the tables of everyone from the head cleaner to the captain and everyone in between. This is our first invitation to dinner with someone from the ship.

Among others, there is a very interesting astronomer giving lectures. He is a great speaker and you would not believe the new stuff he is telling us. They found 3 more planets around the sun in the last month or so. They have come up with some fabulous new telescopes. They have come up with ways to eliminate the effect of the earth’s atmosphere when looking through a telescope. The old way to build telescopes was with a huge piece of glass that took a long time to cool and a longer time to grind. Now they can make them better with many small easy to make pieces of glass.

They gave the world cruisers more stuff. A log book, a world clock that does not have our present time zone and a gold plaque to hang on the outside of our suite door. It says this is the suite of Mr. and Mrs. Rootberg.

Dinner with the cruise director and his wife was very nice. There was just one other couple at the table. They were people from Orlando we had met earlier. Usually the dinners with the ship’s staff had been at tables of eight or more..

The entertainment tonight was a woman singer. She came out and did what sounded like someone choking a chicken and then butchered the song Georgia. We left and watched port talks and the news on TV.

Sounds like a pretty boring day. It was.

Snoring Sherman out.

(Posted on behalf of Sherman Rootberg)

Current Location

At about 4:27 PM Ship time or about 6:27 Central time, The ship's position was:

27* 00’ 53” NORTH
121* 28’ 37” WEST

I may add Google Earth Placemarkers to this blog in the future.

LA: 1/9 - 1/10

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Good. Huh? And here you thought I never showed up for English class. Well I do remember showing up for a few. I thought a book written by a guy named Spear, Shaker, or something like that must be exciting. What a bummer. Just another lousy trick to try to get me to do stuff I don’t like. Turns out this is just some sucker that can’t even talk right let alone write about good stuff. Soon as I found out it was just a cruel trick to try to suck me in I quit showing up.

Back to the day in California. First off, there was this huge brunch at Signatures just for the passengers that were on from Port Everglades and are continuing on for the world cruise. Lobster, caviar, foix grau, scrambled eggs topped with caviar and put into half a vulture egg shell, shrimp, and on and on. From there it was all down hill.

While in the middle of brunch we had to go and leave our overnight bags, filled with jewels and medicines, and go to immigration on the ship. That was pretty quick and just a minor annoyance. After brunch it was out to the Limos.

We had a walk to the terminal building and just outside were the waiting limos, NOT. Not limos, that is. Just mostly black town cars of various vintage and condition. One by one they were bringing up the cars and loading us one couple to a car. When my turn came a pretty well battered one showed up. Being the general pain in the rear that I usually am, I said, NO WAY! I’m not getting in that death trap. It worked. To get me to stop encouraging a mutiny, the starter said, okay, pick out any one you like. Just as he said that a new looking Mercedes drives in. Naturally I said, that one, thinking it was really someone’s private car. He said okay and that was what we got. It was a nice fairly new one but no bargain. I forgot how rough they ride. Nothing like the BMW.

After about a 3 hour freeway ride we got to Beverly Hills and in about 20 minutes we arrived a t the Beverly Hilshire Hotel. The driver informs us that this is the most famous hotel in town. As we get out and retrieve our overnight bag we notice that famous hotel has not so famous mile long line to register. Being not real good at lines I start to get a little noisy. It’s just one of my better personality traits. I complain often and loudly. It works again. To shut me up a young lady comes from behind the desk and ushers us to another desk in the lobby of another building and signs us right in. Now things start to get really crummy.

Our room is very clean and in very good shape and about the size of my closet on the ship. It is so small only one of us can breathe at a time. It’s so small that I have to open the window if I want to bend over. It’s so small we can’t tell which one of us fart. I have lots more. If you need them just write. I guess you get the idea. We are not happy campers. And then to add insult to injury, the people that did not do the first two weeks and got to the hotel later, got large suites. There was one couple that we talked to that didn’t get a room until after 6: PM. The excuse was a basketball team had left late and trashed a lot of the rooms. I guess the hotel screwed up a bunch of stuff as the CEO of Radisson had a few words for them later at the ball.

At 5:45 we got a message that the drinks and party would start at 6:00 instead of 6:30 as previously advised. No problem. Bobbi likes it when she had less then 15 minutes to get dressed in the interior of a room smaller then a sleeping bag. I may have even heard her mumble a dirty word under her breath. Muriel Kapel had no problem. She showed up promptly at 7:30.

It was hard to get a drink and then they brought the wrong thing. Appetizers were little pieces of hard toast with chopped tomato and some kind of old dead dried up bird on a stick that was uneatable. We did find a lot of nice people to talk to. One couple lived about a mile away and returned home to sleep when they saw the room and they got a mini suite.

Next was the dinner, speeches, dancing, and entertainment in the grand ballroom. The orchestra was the Nelson Riddle and was terrific. They had a very good singer doing Sinatra type songs. The CEO of Radisson talked a little as did several others but none too long or too serious.

The food was served typical banquet style. The Salmon was said to be pretty good. We tried to get rare fillets and after two tries gave up and ate potatoes, veggies and dessert. After dinner there was music, at least they call it music. None from close to this century. All of it was for people that were so old they couldn’t hear any longer let alone get up to dance. No boogieing so it was back to our closet. We had cable available if we wanted to pay $5.95 per hour or $14 for an old movie. I watched Letterman while Bobbi snored. If I wanted some bottled water they had some for only$8 for a pint or pop for $6 a 10 ounce bottle.

This morning they had a buffet breakfast in the same Grand Ballroom. Radisson Voyager this was not. It was okay though.

At 10:30 AM the people that had come from San Diego were to board cars for the trip to the dock at San Pedro. Naturally there was perfect organization again. They were giving cars to people one at a time from a line. Trouble was no one could find a line or anyone taking names off a list. Of course being loud got me out of their quickly and her we are back on the ship typing away.

When we got to our suite there was a gift of a nice log book and a world clock. At the hotel they had delivered two very nice, Timberland, red and blue, water proof jackets with hoods and removable linings.

I know it has to be time for some meal or another and it’s been at least an hour or two since I’ve eaten so off I go.

It all starts at about 5:00 PM this evening. Six days straight south with no stops unless we hit something or blow up. That ought to get enough of them sick enough to keep out of our way.

(Posted on behalf of Sherman Rootberg)

Cell Service at Sea and Indians

Today is another sea day. Lots of stuff to do but we didn't do that. We ate, we read, we napped, (I'm real good at that) we talked to lots of peoples, and we watched a DVD in the room that we borrowed from the ship’s library. It quit about 3/4 of the way through which was okay because it sucked anyhow. It was Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe. Don't waste your time.

We had dinner again at Signatures. That's the fancy Cordon Blue restaurant. I do not remember ever getting a better meal or nearly as good anywhere in Florida.

In the afternoon I tried my cell phone. I had to charge it up because we are leaving for a day tomorrow. It did not have the right time, hour or minutes, but showed a full signal. So I just hit call on the first stored phone number I had. It was actually the last phone number, Yael. It worked perfectly. I then called my slave Vicki to see if she was getting all the work done I ordered her to do. That call worked to. I caught her on her cell. She was at Home Depot getting the materials to build a monument to me I ordered her to build. She really is a doll. She is doing all kinds of good stuff for us while we are gone. I might have to give her a thank you or something.

I asked the front desk and then the computer guy if they knew why the phone was working and on what. They knew nothing. They are good at knowing nothing. This morning I mentioned it to my butler as he was bringing me my breakfast in bed. He knows everything. They have been installing T-Mobile Service at Sea, on the ship. It is not supposed t be working and they have no way to charge for it yet. I don't know if there will be an extra charge on my cell bill or not. When we get to San Diego I will call T-Mobile and find out. If it is cheep or less I will try calling many people.

By the way, I forgot to mention that my butler's name is Ian, same as my grandson. They are both Indians too except the butler is East Indian and my grandson is Wild Indian.

That's about it for today. Tomorrow we are supposed to get into San Diego at about 10:00 AM. At about 11:00 we have to go through customs and then at 11:30 we are scheduled to have a brunch at Signatures. It is just for the passengers continuing on the full world cruise. Then they will limo us to the Beverly Wilshire [sp] Hotel in Los Angeles. We are supposed to have a big dinner party there tomorrow evening and then be transported back to the ship the next morning. It will have moved to Los Angles also. So if you do not get my wondrous writings for a day or two, that does not necessarily mean I fell overboard or was killed by Bobbi's Whisper Diet.

Sea Sherman out.

(Posted on behalf of Sherman Rootberg)