Great Vacation Getaway - Day 1

Every year I dread May.  It’s because May is home to the Bataan Death March of holidays for me: first there’s Angela’s birthday, then there’s Mother’s Day, and finally, our anniversary.  It’s not that I don’t love this three-week celebration of the Joy of Angela in our lives.  It’s just that I can’t really think of one gift on any regular basis, much less three.

And you’d think that the children might be responsible for Mother’s Day, but you’d think wrong.  If they screw it up, do you know who pays?  That’s right: dad.

But this year is different.  This year is an anniversary divided by 5.  That means that it’s a special year!  Hooray!  And this year, for our big anniversary trip, we booked a cruise to Alaska.  Hooray!

(this gives you some insight into how good I am at presents: I can come up with a good one every five years)

In the run-up to the vacation, I spent my time daydreaming of how wonderful our trip would be, and how awesome it would be to be away from work, and how much I was looking forward to just relaxing and doing whatever I wanted to and not worrying about kids or work or whatever.

Angela spent it fretting.

Finally the big day came.  Grandma and Grandpa came to take care of the kids, we had everything packed (and re-packed and checked and post-repacked and post-repack checked).  After turning around three times to get “one last thing” we were off.  Yee-haw!  One brief drive to Salt Lake City later, followed by a room rented in a tiny hotel near the airport, followed by dinner at Outback, and our “regular life” was left behind.  It was time for: VACATION!

The morning of Vacation Day 1 started pretty good.  We slept in until almost 7:15, which is pretty good if you consider that normally our weekend days start at 5:27 when William comes in and says “Can I get up yet and read some? I can’t sleep any more!”

Awoken and refreshed, I decided to do something that I never, ever do on vacation: I tried to save money.  Lest you think this is normal, you have to understand that I like to vacation like a Turkish Prince.  No extravagance is too far beyond my reach once I am vacationing.  More grapes?  Wine? Bring them on!  Chop, chop!

(Angela, on the other hand, likes to be frugal no matter what she does, like when she wanted to save money visiting the Outer Banks by renting a house in Pennsylvania)

But I’d seen the cost to park at the airport in Salt Lake, and I decided to try one of the “Park-n-Fly” places located around the airport in an attempt to save money.  After much research, I found out what the difference is: $0.25 per day.  That’s it.

Forget that: Turkish Prince, activated!

Once we’d gotten up, we had to decide where to go to breakfast.

“How about McDonald’s?” I asked.  “I saw one on the way in.”

“Sounds good,” Angela said.  “Let’s do it.”

So we packed up the car and headed down to the main drag of restaurants near the airport.  Now, you probably believe that no matter where you go, there’s a McDonald’s, right?  Especially if there’s a Burger King, Arby’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and every other fast food restaurant imaginable nearby.

You’d be wrong.

So we started Day 1 eating breakfast at Burger King.  And I guess it wasn’t too bad, all things considered, but it was like Burger King always is: not too good, either.

Oh, well.  I was still on vacation.  Excelsior!

Next we forged ahead to the airport, determined to salvage our vacation morning as best we could.  I’d spent considerable time checking in online, so I was confident that we’d be in and out of the airport line and through security toot-suite.

Yeah, not so much.  If Delta ever asks you to “check in” online, promising that you’ll “save time”, just ignore it.  I had to do exactly the same thing at the kiosk in the airport that I always did, and it took exactly as much time.  But no matter.  Soon our bags were checked, we were through security, and we’d reached our gate.  The vacation was about to commence!

The first problem I noticed was that our flight, in Gate C11, left at 11:15.  The flight to Las Vegas at gate C9 left at 11:18.

“That’s gonna be an issue,” I said to Angela as we surveyed the giant throng of dead-eyed gamblers waiting to go squander time and money in Vegas.  “That’s gonna be a big issue.”

You know what was an even bigger issue?  That our plane was late.  So at about 10:30, they started trying to de-plane our flight while loading up the Las Vegas flight.  Needless to say, despite several announcements about “Please make a path” the whole thing looked like cows trying to go into a feedlot processing plant.

Only stupider.

Somehow, they got Vegas loaded and our plan emptied, and then cleaned, and then they finally called for boarding for our 11:15 flight at 11:10.  Up first: a big dude in a hoverchair.  I mean, a big dude.  And just so you know, hoverchairs don’t hover.  Oh, they move slow, but they for sure don’t hover.  After they’d gotten him loaded, and the other two wheelchairs loaded, and they guy with the IV attached to him (no kidding!), it was general boarding, and so on and so forth, until finally the whole plane was loaded up.

At 11:45.

Then the pilot begins to taxi around and around and around.  Just at the moment we began to wonder if he was planning on driving to Seattle, he stopped, and said “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, but the towers in Las Vegas weren’t communicating with each other, so we came in a little bit late.  We’re going to take off in a few minutes, and we’ll try to make up some time in the air.”

Then he sat there for about fifteen minutes, and then he finally took off, at about 12:15.  Or, if you’re keeping track, an hour later than we were supposed to.  To make matters worse, Angela didn’t feel too swell, so she was pretty much ready for this whole flight thing to be over, and we hadn’t eaten any lunch, so I felt like punching somebody.

Now here’s the weird part: we landed at 12:35 Seattle time, about ten minutes late.  How does that work?  If you take off an hour late, you should land about an hour late, right?  Do they normally fly a lot slower?  Take a longer route?  Land at a different airport?

If you can always do it in that time, why don’t you do it in that time? 

“Okay,” I said to a slightly greenish Angela, “Now we’re on vacation.  Woo!”

“I need water,” she said.

“Great!  We’re headed for a boat!”

I dragged her through the airport towards baggage claim, eager to be on my vacation for real.  While we waited for our bags, I saw a lady walking around with a clipboard.

“Over here!” I yelled.

“Are you with Holland Cruise Lines?” she asked.

“I sure am!” I said.  “Where’s the bus?  Where’s the cruise? Where’s my My Tai?”

“Honey,” Angela said.  “That’s-“

“Hush!  I’m trying to get us on the boat!” I said.  “Where’s my free hat?  Is the pool open yet?”

“Sir-“ The lady said.

“Kurt-“ Angela said.

“Can I get early check-in?  Is my room ready?”  I jabbed my papers at the woman while kicking Angela in the shin.  “Can I reserve the captain’s table yet?  Are there any whales to see?  Are the bilges full?”

“HEY!” Angela yelled.  “We’re not with Holland, doofus.  We’re with Norwegian.”

I looked from one to the other, crushed and hurt and disappointed.  “Do you know where Norwegian is?” I asked.

“Over there,” the lady seemed relieved not to have to deal with me any more.

“Great,” I asked.  “Do you know if their pool is open?  What about-“

“Come on,” Angela dragged me away now.  I did notice that she looked better, though.  It’s like being mad at me gave her strength, like the Incredible Hulk.

Soon enough, we’d signed up and turned our luggage over to the cruise people and we were waiting for our bus, Bus A, to come and take us away.  And that’s when we saw…him.

The grim specter of unhappiness.

In form, he looks a lot like a 65-year-old man who has had more than his fair share of hamburgers and beer.  He slumps over, as if defeated by life, and his brows are furrowed in a perpetual scowl of misunderstanding and suspicion.  He wears his baseball hat high atop his head, like a trucker from the seventies, and for some reason has suspenders on over his T-Shirt, perhaps to keep his mighty belly from pushing his pants floorwards.

Training him is a group of family that doubtless languishes in perpetual misery: a long-suffering (and perhaps not-all-there) wife, some children, and some unhappy-looking grandchildren with metallic bits and bobs punched through their facial orifices.

We were just finishing with the nice lady at the transfer desk when He arrived.

“WHERE’S MY BUS?” he bellowed.  Yes, he speaks in all caps.

“I’m sorry, sir, which bus where you on?”

“I WAS ON A BUS!” he bellowed again.  “BUT IT NEVER CAME!  WHERE IS IT?”

“Which bus was it, sir?”

“THIS ONE!” he waved a ticket back and forth.  I saw it was green.

“Oh, please, let him be on another cruise line,” Angela said.  “Please, God, please!”

“That was bus C, sir. If you’ll give that to me, I’ll give you a transfer for A, because Bus C is already gone.”

“HOW’D I MISS IT?  WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?”

And that line of complaint went on and on and on, but we left it behind.

“He’s going on our boat!” Angela cried.  “I hope he’s not in our group!  I hope we never see him again!”

“How could we see him?” I asked.  “The boat’s got like three or four thousand people on it.  We don’t have to see his unhappy face ever again unless we want to.”

She just sighed, and shook her head, and looked doubtful.

The rest of the wait was uneventful.  We did meet a nice couple who were also coming in from Salt Lake, and we chatted with them about what to expect, and every once in a while Mr. Grump would grump, but eventually the nice lady with the sign arrived and announced that Bus A was departing.

After a brief drive (narrated by the bus driver, and which seemed full of anecdotes about homeless people) we were at the pier.  Our boat awaited!  Ah, what joy!  What rapture!  What…

A line of people waiting to check in.  Oy, vey.  After about an hour of waiting in line we were checked in, and by now, I was really hungry.  I mean, really really hungry.  Hungry hungry hippos hungry.

But we persevered, even with the Miserable Family behind us grumbling the whole time, and got ourselves checked in and up the gangway and on the boat.  Huzzah!  Vacation had begun!

In our stateroom, we found champagne and roses and chocolate strawberries awaiting us for our anniversary, a very delightful start to our vacation.  I’d sucked the strawberries down when Angela, also famished, pointed out that she might like some of the chocolate.

“Uh, I might have left some on the stem,” I said.

“Never mind,” she said.  “We’ll just go get a snack at the-“

BONG!  “This is a drill!  Please report to emergency stations.”

“I am not pleased at how this is starting out,” she said.  “Not pleased at all!”

One emergency drill later, we were finally ready to go find some food.  And find it we did, at the big going away barbecue, which was not at all too bad.  Once we’d both eaten (in the company of the nice couple from the airport, because they’d found a table) we were ready to explore the ship.

“I DON’T KNOW WHY ALL THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO BE UP HERE!” Mr. Grumpy was saying as he came in while we left.

I snickered.  “That’ll be the last time we see his sour face,” I said.

Left with time to kill, we decided to play that classic cruise line game: shuffleboard.  It’s worth nothing that I pretty much kicked Angela’s butt, racing out to a 7-0 lead, which I held until the very last shuffle of the game, when I landed in the -10 space and went back to zero, thus earning a tie between us.

Dad-gummit.

After that, we decided to take in a show.  Although we were 15 minutes early, most of the good seats were claimed, but thanks to Angela’s eagle eye we spotted a seat pretty much dead center of the theater with nobody in front of it.

“Great job!” I complemented her as we sat down.

I noted that there were lots of servers around, hanging on people hoping to convince them to give a tip for good service.  Because we don’t dress particularly well and look like we have no money, they were largely ignoring us, so we just happily chatted.  Until…

“I DON’T KNOW WHY WE HAVE TO COME HERE!” I heard a sour voice, like nails on chalkboard, behind me.  Turning, I saw Mr. Grumpy and his wife sitting down in the row behind us.  He proceeded to grump and complain for a while, until a server (who I really think must have vision problems) latched onto him like a leech and started chatting him up.

Mr. Grumpy looked so unhappy.  It was hilarious.  Funniest thing I’d seen all day.

“Why is he following us?” Angela hissed. “I’m going to push him overboard!”

“He’s not following us,” I said.  “It’s just that we have good taste and better timing.”

“I’m still gonna push him overboard,” she said.

“So long as there aren’t cameras around, go ahead,” I suggested.

The show was good.  It started out with some dancers who make Up with People look lethargic and depressed, and finished with a really funny comedian.  In between there was also a tribute band to Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, which was much better than I anticipated.  I never knew how much of their music I was familiar with!

But all good things come to an end, and after that we went to rustle up some dinner.  We ate in a really nice little restaurant looking out over the sea, one that was almost empty for no apparent reason.  And then we retired to go to bed, exhausted from what turned out to be a pretty good day.

As we sat in the cabin, sailing along, I looked over at Angela and I said “You know what?  You can hardly tell you’re on a boat.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said.  “The sea is really calm.  I guess the ship is so big you can’t feel it. I’m going to take off my seasickness bands and not worry about overnight.”

And so we fell asleep, happy and content.