Barbara J. Hamby

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Ship Ahoy--Part One

We left our home early Friday morning, January 26th and drove as far as Weed, California, where we stopped to admire Mt. Shasta. We decided to spend our first night there. We had soup at a local deli and a conversation with the owners. The wife had recently taken a cruise similar to the one we are on, and told us how great--and hot--the weather was. Her husband mentioned they’d had a dusting of snow there in Weed the night before and it was quite cold that evening. When I awoke at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, I looked out to check that it wasn’t snowing. I turned up the heat and went back to bed for another four hours. I got up the second time and went to the window to see a white landscape and snow still falling.

After a hurried breakfast in our room, we packed up and left. With neither chains nor snow tires, we didn’t want to be caught in thick snow. The freeway was plowed and sanded, but snow continued to fall. We got down from the high elevation and out of the snow without difficulty. We continued on to Davis where we stayed Saturday night. It was cold there, also. The motel desk clerk, a young woman native to San Francisco, complained about being chilly.

A tall man with a diagonal slash on his forehead, who was waiting in the office, quoted a statement he attributed to Mark Twain: “The coldest winter I every spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Both people in the motel office warned us of the heavy traffic on Highway I-80 to the city, “even on a Sunday morning.”

When we moved the car from the office to our parking spot, I remarked to Al, “That guy looked like he just fell off a bar stool.” Al nodded agreement.

On Sunday we left Davis around 10:00 a.m. We had been told we could not board the ship until Noon, and that it would leave around 5:00 p.m. With the help of a Mapquest map, we found the parking garage in San Francisco we’d been assured was about two blocks from the pier where the Dawn Princess would be waiting for us. The walk to Pier 31 was actually about five blocks or more. We had to cross the very busy Embarcadero at a traffic light, and proceed to the terminal. We arrived at the garage just after eleven and were on the ship before 1:00 p.m. After we found our stateroom, we unpacked and rested a while before heading to the lunch buffet.

After a more-than-ample lunch, we looked around the ship and compared it to others we’d been on. We tried out our new digital camera while the ship traveled across the bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge. When we unpacked, we didn’t find the instruction booklet for the camera and assumed we’d left it home. I wasn’t sure how to see the pictures we had taken without deleting them. However, when I got my laptop out of its briefcase, the camera booklet was tucked in there. We were able to enjoy the snapshots in the camera after I read the appropriate page. Next, we’ll try loading them onto the laptop. Those instructions look a little more complicated, but between us, we may be able to manage.

Between lunch and dinner, we finished unpacking and attended a mandatory life jacket drill. Princess Cruise Lines gathers passengers in theaters and lounges to demonstrate the proper way to wear a life jacket and to leave the ship, if necessary. If it were an actual emergency, crew members would direct passengers to life boats or to abandon ship by stepping off, nose pinched shut with one hand. The other hand clutches the life jacket to keep it from sliding up when you hit the water. Naturally, we all hope that information will be superfluous.

After dinner in the buffet, we napped a while and attended the opening night show in the theater. The first act was a spectacular song and dance number with glistening silver costumes and lots of action. After that, it went downhill fast. The entertainment director introduced his staff, who all made promotional statements and, of course, in between he blabbed and blabbed. The alleged highlight of the evening was the magician-comedian. We found him neither magical nor funny. To be fair, he did have one piece of magic involving interlocking rings that was intriguing. His theme seemed to be audience participation and an audience of mostly middle age and senior travelers is not very high energy on the first night of a cruise. Most have used 98 per cent of their reserves getting to the ship and getting settled. Those who had been celebrating with more than one drink laughed heartily at his antics. Unfortunately for him, there were not enough of them.

After the show, we returned to our cabin and played one hand of cards. I felt exceptionally tired and begged off to get to bed. At 3:00 a.m. I awoke with severe diarrhea. When I didn’t feel better in half an hour or so, I called the Medical Office, as instructed in some of the literature about Norovirus we were given on board. On a cruise ship, doctors and nurses make house calls. They were in the room in a matter of minutes. The haz-mat twins arrived before the medical personnel and waited until Id been examined to sanitize our stateroom. The fellow who did the bathroom wore a white suit and they both wore white booties over their shoes. I was too sick to enjoy the excitement. I was given instructions about what to eat--from Room Service only--and to stay in our room for twenty-four hours after my symptoms abated. The nurse called twice on Monday to check on me, and the room was sanitized twice. Since I had been able to get to sleep about 5:00 a.m. on Monday, the nurse told me I would be free to leave the room after 5:00 a.m. Tuesday. I told her I probably wouldn’t get up for that. She laughed politely.