On Board the Spirit

We stepped on board the Spirit and were transported to another world. It�s not an overstatement to say we were in the lap of luxury. The interior of the ship looked like a luxury hotel. There was an atrium with glass elevators, real art on the stairways, and beautiful views of the ocean. I often am able to find the darkness in light, but I must say, this ship was beautiful. It had ten decks for the customers, and another 2 or 3 decks for the crew. We went to dinner in a beautiful dining room called the Empire Room. It was quite elegant. Our table was on the first floor of the dining room and was number 114. We sat with two other couples at table 114 for dinner each night of the cruise, one from Virginia, and one from Wisconsin. The couple from Virginia, Norm and Elaine, were actually transplants from New York, and they had the accents to prove it too. The couple from Wisconsin, Bill and Gail, were not transplants, and they had the Wisconsin accent to prove that. No doubt they said the same about us. Our waiters were Isabel (a man) and Nick. Isabel was from Honduras, and Nick was from Italy. They were great! And a lot of fun. The first night our bar waitress came by and asked me and Norm if we wanted something from the bar. Both of us answered no. She went to the next table when Bill started yelling across the room �Ma�am, ma�am, I want a beer.� Yes, he was yelling. She came back, apologized, and took his order. That was the last time I saw Bill without his trusty Coors Light until the last morning of the cruise when the bar was closed. Also the first night on board the crew had a welcome aboard show in the Pharoah�s Room which is a theater with two levels of balconies. A theater on a ship? Who woulda thought it? Well, not me anyway. We didn�t go to the show the first night, because of the trying day we�d had up to that point. We went to sleep early, and slept surprisingly well.

Day Two - Monday January 19

All Day at Sea

Monday morning we awoke to a view of some land off the starbord side of the ship. I turned on the TV in our room, and found that one of the channels was actually a kind of tracking system that showed exactly where the ship was on a map. I learned that the land I could see was Cuba. I have wanted to visit Cuba since I started learning Spanish from Cuban exiles back in 1961, but never have. Here I was in a ship within sight of Cuba�s shore. At least, I�ve seen it now. We spent all day sailing alongside Cuba, heading toward the island of Hispaniola shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The Goddess also had something to excite her. There was a section of the ship on deck 3 called Fashion Boulevard where she spent considerable time, and money. In fact, deck 3 turned out to be her favorite. She has the final statement from our �Sail and Sign� card to prove it.

Monday morning after breakfast, I spent some time by the swimming pool on the Lido Deck. There were 3 swimming pools on the Spirit, one for kids, one for adults, and one for both. I was sitting at a table by the swimming pool for both. It�s not often that one can claim to have had an epiphany, because they are so strikingly and unexpectedly true. I think I had an epiphany even if it wasn�t the first time I had had inklings in this direction. Put simply - human beings look absolutely ludicrous! Consider all the other fauna on the planet; you can easily see how their bodies agree in some fundamental way with what they do. Humans? Puh-leeze! We have these big heads that totter on a top-heavy body with what looks to be spindly legs for support. Think about it! Most of our weight is from the waist up. You could say the same is true for dogs, but at least the dog has four legs on the ground! I�ve heard it said that human walking is just a form of controlled falling, we just keep putting one leg out to break the fall. Just try looking around a cruise ship and you�ll see what I mean. Okay, it might be that the specimens on a cruise ship are somewhat defective, but I�ve never seen a less graceful more physically inept group anywhere! The people in the cruise line business say that the people who take cruises are �the newly wed, the overfed, and the almost dead.� I�m here to tell ya, ya can say that again! Maybe is was just our cruise, but there was a definite lack of the newly wed - leaving...well you know who�s left. I would wager that there weren�t more than 4 passengers on the whole ship that could have climbed the stairs from deck one to deck 10. That�s why there were at least 11 elevators for us to use! They only had one ship�s physician, for God�s sake, it would be plain unsafe for most of us to walk more than one floor at a time!