Went on the Alaska Cruise with the wife. The forecast said cloudy and rain every day. Just what we wanted when we booked this trip for June. We figured it would have been over 100 degrees for a month in Arizona by then.
We figured wrong.
It was cool and cloudy in Phoenix all through April and May. It hardly got over 90, and the nights were in the 60’s. I never even flipped on the air conditioner before we escaped to the gray rain of the great northwest.
Surprise, surprise, surprise… it was sunny and “warm” (in the 60’s).
That wasn’t the only surprise. Everybody talked about the food on a cruise. “It’s great,” one of the Savages said. “You’ll gain a bunch of weight.”
Surprise number 2? The food was “meh”. It was obvious most of it came out of a can or straight from a freezer. The food was about as exciting as Wonder Bread.
Surprise number 3? I knew the average age on a cruise is going to be somewhere between medicare eligible and grim death… but goddamnit I felt like I was stuck at the kids’ table for a week. Ohh sure, there were a few people under 50 — the crew, the entertainers, the kids or grandchildren of the people who paid.
I’d be willing to bet that if they did an age graph of the people who actually bought their own tickets, the wife and I would be in the youngest percentile.
At least we were young enough to get our feet out from under the god damn scooters these geezers were steering around the buffet on the “Lido deck.”
Pick food on the right, keep moving in the “fast lane” on the left. No fucking stopping and U-turns in the left lane assholes… Most of them never got that memo. Ok I’m a fat ass too, but the first requirement of buying a scooter must be a 60-inch waist.
The sun and warmth were never more surprising than when we landed in Sitka. We had a day of kayaking planned. I didn’t bring a hat.
Four hours later, I had to be the only person from south of Seattle, who got sunburned in Sitka. Even the locals didn’t pick up any color.
The kayak guide was a ghostly girl who grew up in Sitka. She came out of the boat the same color she went in.
But my god damn pigment impairment left my forehead on fire and my lips raw and red.
Ahh well. A few days with the hat and in the ship and I was fine.
Burning in Sitka for April Fools
Speaking of burning, the ghostly girl told us the best April Fool’s of all time. Some guy named Porky filled the local volcano with 70 tires.
He had to wait 3 years for the sun to come out, then he rented a helicopter — flew up and set the tires on fire.
Coast Guard got scared and called in an eruption warning. The whole town of Sitka thought they were going to be the modern-day Pompeii until somebody flew another helicopter up and all they found was a stinking tire fire.
You get get all the gory details on Porky’s April Fool’s tire fire here.
Got home and gained 10 pounds too. I guess the food was “better” than I thought. If you need me, I’ll be on Amazon picking out my future scooter and planning the next cruise — it was pretty good for me.
PS — See I told you fuckers I could spread some Sunshine... that’s right a story about sunburn is all the Sunshine I got.
Was this a Princess cruise? Older patrons are kind of a dead giveaway. Lobster and I wanted to take that one. We took the more local one to Ensenada. Alaska was going to be next.
Holland America. Worth doing. Might think about just flying into Sitka and do hiking, fishing, paddling trip. Would get all the cool Alaska experience without the ship shit.