Barb’s Burblings

So, I went on a cruise with Becca and Steve. Technically it was a few weeks ago. But look! Pictures! The cruise was indeed super fun. I actually felt bad for the crew–it must’ve been a rough week for them.
On a cruise, you get a little card that’s basically everything on the ship; it’s your room key and is programmed with your picture to use when boarding and leaving the ship, it’s how you charge everything on board (food, casino, bingo, spa services, etc.). And it turned out that there were issues with the cards we were initially given; they all were associated with the wrong names. So on the second night, we had to exchange the cards for new ones.
On top of this, it was the first time they had done this cruise. The ship had been doing sailings in Europe all summer, then did a trans-Atlantic, followed by an 8-day cruise, then our 6-day. The crew hadn’t done the same cruise once in over a month, which had to have thrown off their routines.
But the topper came on Wednesday, when we were in Grand Cayman. As we headed off toward Jamaica, I could feel the ship make a very sharp turn. And then…keep turning. Eventually the cruise director made an announcement, that someone or something had gone overboard. Turned out that it was the giant inflatable monkey that someone had on their balcony (visible in one of the pictures linked to above). But they had to make absolutely sure–due to international law–so we were required to figures 8s just south of Grand Cayman as everyone on the ship had to check in again. Which took three hours. Steve, Becca, and I wound up sitting in the bar near where the check-ins were taking place to watch the fun in the latter portion of the proceedings. By that point, the director was listing names of people who hadn’t checked in. When the last ones did, there was much cheering.
Anyway, I did get my bobsledding in. Mystic Mountain was just fantastic–so beautiful. I went on the bobsled three times. Seriously, there was nothing not awesome about that day. And we got to Jamaica on time; just barely, due to aforementioned circling of Grand Cayman. In any case, if I run away from home someday, you’d be wise to check out Mystic Mountain. I may be living on a zipline platform there.