Great Vacation Getaway – Day 7

What great and wondrous things would the final day of our vacation hold for us?  Only time would tell.

Well, time, and my eventual write-up of the day.

Like so many mornings, we rolled out of bed sevenish.  I used to think that my parents got up around 7 because they were old fogies.  Real people, ones with a wild life and hobbies and whatnot, stayed up late and got up at 8 or 9 or 10.  I used to tell myself that when I was a grown-up, I’d stay in bed until noon if I wanted to, and always on vacation.

But now that I’m older and wiser, I know the truth: they got up at 7 to pee.  In fact, if they were anything like me, they got up at 7 to pee for the second time.

We made our way to breakfast, and found the typical stuff on offer.  Cruise ship breakfast was starting to wear on me, to be honest with you.  I’d tried everything, and was starting to grow weary of the sugary stuff that permeated the breakfast buffet.  I missed my boiled eggs for breakfast.

Oh, sure, there are boiled eggs on the buffet.  I could have had them.  But I have boiled eggs all the time, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t touch them while I was on vacation.  See my problem?

We saw Mr. Grumpy, the first time in a while that we’d spotted him.  He seemed, well, kind of grumpy.  I heard his wife bawling at him, too, the first time I’ve seen her do anything other than just kind of follow him around.

That made me wonder: what nickname do other people have for Angela and me?  After a week at sea, I’ve come up with shorthand nicknames for almost everybody I meet on a routine basis.  There’s the ponytail drunk, the philosopher jackass, the Eskimo Japanese guy, Mr. Grumpy, and so on and so forth.

There’s even Mr. Fantastic, the mohawked sunglasses robe-wearing guy we saw strutting around like a professional wrestler.

I wonder what they call us?  The two doffuses?  Mr. Stupid Shirt?  The Newlyweds?

Whatever they call us, I’m sure it’s out of respect.

After breakfast it was off to the final round of Crazy Trivia.  I was chomping at the bit for this one, and fortunately enough for us, our typical team showed up for one last round of trivia.  I was really happy.  And we did pretty good, too, although I was pretty ticked off about missing the question about what the common name for calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is.

It’s chalk, by the way.  If you said limestone, you missed the part in the question about “common.”

We ended up with a score of 22, which is a totally respectable score and our highest total of the week.  And everybody in the team provided answers and support, so it was all good.  All in all, we finished up happy with our performance.

Once Crazy Trivia was over, we decided to take in one last game of bingo.  We hadn’t played since the first day, as I got ticked off by Angela winning the scratch-off lottery tickets and me not winning anything.  We joined our Aussie friends at Bingo, and just before the game started I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

Only, just as I arrived at the 13^th deck bathrooms I was preceded by the lady cleaning them.  Sigh.  So I went down to deck 12.  You know what deck 12 doesn’t have?  Bathrooms.

So I ran down to Deck 11.  Now, Deck 11 is a residential deck, so there are no public bathrooms there, either, but our room is on Deck 11, and quite close to where the stairwell is.  So I just dashed over there to use the bathroom and…

Found that our steward was cleaning the room.  Sigh.

So I went to Deck 10.  And 9.  And 8, and then 7.  It was like every bathroom was being cleaned at the same time!

I dashed through the ship to finally reach the public bathrooms on Deck 7, which is the main deck of the ship.  After using the facilities, I dashed back up the stairs to the bingo room, panting and out of breath, hurrying because-

Well, because of no reason, actually.  I discovered that everyone was still buying their bingo cards.

“Look!” Angela said. “I won $2 on scratch-off cards!”

“Gasp-pant-good-for-gasp-pant-you.”  I gasped and panted.

When Bingo started, we quickly didn’t win anything on the first bingo card, a typical straight-line pattern.

Then the second game started, which was railroad tracks, where you have to fill up the I and the G columns.  I’d never played this before, and I’d already marked my free space, because I am all about getting free stuff.  It’s why my house is full of Subway napkins and McDonald’s straws.

As the game wore on, I got more and more excited.  Soon, I was only one number away from Bingo.  One number!

“I hate you,” Angela said.  “I need like six numbers on every card, except for this one, where I need eleven.”

“You only need ten for a bingo,” I said.

“So you can see my problem.”

Then he called it:  I18!

“BINGO!” I yelled.  “WHOOO!”

I ran down, they played music, and I danced the boogie-woogie.  I am told that my underwear showed, but I don’t care: I won $140 playing Bingo!  It would have been more, but this other woman won bingo, too, so I had to split the pot.

Riding high on my wave of luck, I didn’t even care that I didn’t win the raffle or the third round of bingo.  After all, I’d won!

Although technically, if you sum up what I spent on bingo, and then subtract my winnings, I’m still in the hole to the ship.  So there’s your message: don’t gamble, kids.  It never pays.

We spent time after that eating and messing around, waiting for the trivia game that I was a veritable lock for: Historical Figure trivia.  I didn’t really care what the format was: pictures, descriptions, questions, whatever; I am a history nerd, so I was all over this like white on rice.

Come on, Historical Figure trivia!

It started, and the format was that they showed us pictures of historical figures and we had to say who they were.  And, sure enough, I knew most of them.  Not all – I didn’t get Sir Francis Drake, for example.  But I knew 16 out of 21, which I felt pretty confident about. 

What you do is, you switch sheets with somebody else to get it scored.  And then the lady says “did anybody get more than ten?  More than fifteen?” and so on and so forth.

Well, this one team got EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM RIGHT!

I’m not gonna say that they cheated and scored their own paper, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.  Cheating weasels.

Now, you might be asking yourself: why have you been playing all these games, and subjecting your wife to trivia stuff, when you know it’s not her favorite activity?

Because of the Activity Cards, that’s why.  Every time we participated, we got signatures.  And if you get all 20 boxes signed off, on the last day, you can trade them in for…something.  And this was the last day.  And I had 20 signatures.  And so did Angela.  So whatever the something was, we would get two of them!

I was hoping for a life boat.  They’ve got tons of them, after all, and they hardly ever get used.

So we marched over to the bowling alley to trade in our cards.

“Think we can get a ball?” I asked.  “Or maybe some pins?  Or a rivet from the hull?  Oh!  Perhaps we’ll get a free cruise!”

“Calm down,” Angela said.  “It’ll probably be like a coffee cup or something.”

“I’ll bet it’s an official jacket!  Or a lapel pin!  Or maybe a steering wheel!”

“I’ll bet it’s a T-Shirt,” she said.

We got up to the desk, me eager and her somewhat more jaded, and spied the prize list.  It looked like this:

CHINTZY PIECE OF JUNK – 5

SOME OTHER CHINTZY PIECE OF JUNK – 8

SOMETHING YOU DON’T WANT – 10

SOMETHING YOU PROBABLY DON’T WANT – 15

SOMETHING YOU ALREADY HAVE – 20

Okay, so the only reason we had the T-Shirt was because we were famous and awesome.  But still, we certainly didn’t need to trade in the card for something we already owned.  So we ended up getting a coffee cup and two decks of cards.

“I told you,” Angela said as I sobbed in disappointment.

Next up we visited Victoria, British Columbia. 

Never have I been so glad that the shore excursion was so short.

It’s not that it’s not a nice town – it is, except for the foul-mouthed teenagers.  And it’s not that it’s not full of kind Canadian people – it is, particularly our bus driver, who seemed to be a clone of Barney Fife, only Canadian.  It’s just that after a week of visiting places a lot like this, only where they used the proper currency and nobody spoke French, this is getting to be old hat.  And I’ve already seen all of these souvenir stores.

Oh, and I have pictures of stuff already, too.  But I still took more.

And Angela and I ate in a McDonald’s, just to be able to eat something that wasn’t ship food.  Not that the ship food is bad, it’s just that, well, the same problem has manifested itself at dinner as at breakfast, and I’ve already discovered I don’t like Tabouli.

Conveniently enough, we finished visiting Victoria BC once it started raining, so we returned to the boat.  We finished packing up our stuff, and then Angela changed into her jammies to go to bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.  “I’m tired.”

“No you’re not,” I said. “There’s one last piece of cruise fun to be had.”

“What is it?” she asked me.  “It’s not more bear puns, is it?”

“No,” I said.  “It’s a game show called The Perfect Couple.  I figured we could go reprise our role as the perfect couple.  It’s practically made for us!”

She sighed.  “Are you gonna screw up the answers again?”

“No, no, this time I’ve got it,” I said.  “I’m good.”

“Okay,” she said as she began to change.  “But you owe me.”

I was pretty excited when we settled in for the game show.  Not a lot of couples were here, probably because they were out getting rained on and trying to buy maple syrup.  And when the guy asked for volunteers to stand up, only six couples stood.  Hoo-ah!

“We’re going to ask for people to audition,” he said.  “What I want you all to do is to give each other a passionate kiss.  Go!”

I did the only thing that logic dictated: I swept Angela back off her feet, planted a big kiss on her mouth, and groped her just for good measure.

When I dropped her back off the couch, the dude immediately picked us for the show.  He knows a good thing when he sees it, after all.  I immediately ran up and sat down, leaving Angela to pick herself up and come join me.

“You owe me!” she said as she sat down.

“I can bear-ly see why!”

“The will never ever find your body,” she said.  “I’m not kidding.”

This game show was a little bit different than the other game shows we’d seen, though.  Instead of questions, or trivia, or something like that, this game show was full of physical challenges.  Specifically, it was full of physical challenges for the wives to do.  The husband’s part was pretty much just standing there.

The first one was to put a lemon up one pants leg and down the other one.  Simple enough, except that the lemon was frozen.  Okay, cold and uncomfortable, but no big deal.

The second challenge was this apple thing that I screwed up in about ten seconds, causing us to get DQ’d.  Okay, no big deal.

The third challenge was fairly lewd and difficult to describe, but Angela did a great job and only jabbed me once.  No big deal.

It was the fourth challenge that was a problem.  In this one, the woman had to put a balloon between her knees, waddle across stage, and then pop it against the man.

On the up side, Angela does this all the time in the pool and could hustle with the balloon.

On the down side, she hates balloons.  She hates popping them.  And she was beginning to not be such a big fan of me, either.

So the first one gets popped belly-to-belly, the second one sitting, the third one belly-to-back, and the fourth one the guy lays down and then the woman lays on him and pops the balloon between them.

Angela proceeds through the first two with no problem, but she can’t pop the third one no matter what she does.  She tries and tries and tries, but it won’t pop!  Finally, it bursts, and she’s ready to pop the fourth one.  I’m laying down, and she comes up, and puts it on me, and then, suddenly, she’s channeling Leaping Lenny Poppov.

Up and up she goes, to the top of the turnbuckle!  She’s in the air!  Oh no, it’s the flying leap of death!  Down she comes, crashing to the ground!   Oh dear god!  I realize I’m laying on a hard wood dance floor, and Angela, having seen that the third balloon was reluctant to pop, has decided to make sure that there is no misunderstanding with this fourth balloon.

BOOOM!

The balloon is utterly destroyed on the first attempt.  Thankfully, I am uninjured, but I did have the wind knocked out of them.

I was a little miffed – was that really necessary? – until I see the last couple go, and spend about two minutes writhing on the floor trying to pop their balloon. 

“Good job,” I finally say to Angela.

“You told me to win,” she says.  “So I went for it.  I figured you wouldn’t mind a few broken ribs.”

“I’m okay,” I said. 

“Why don’t you lay down and let me jump again, then?”

“Not a fan of the game show, eh?”

“You owe me so big,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I said.  “Give me some time to bear down and work on some totem of my appreciation to seal the deal.”

“I am not kidding,” she said.  “I will push you off the boat.  Right now.  I’ll make it look like an accident, too.”

After that, we decided to turn in and go to bed.  Well, after eating some dessert.  Three, to be exact.  I mean, I had three.  I’m not sure how many Angela had, or if she had any at all.  All I know is, I never get tired of the dessert buffet.

We put our luggage outside the door to be taken away, or stolen, or whatever it is they do with it.  Theoretically, we pick it up tomorrow on the pier, but we’ll see.  We put up the “Do Not Disturb” sign, lay down, and went to sleep on our last night on ship.

Tomorrow, we begin…the Bee!

Great Vacation Getaway – Day 6

I figured that I would wake up with a monster headache, an after-effect of my efforts to try to get the most bang for my buck the night before.  Thankfully, I didn’t.

Not quite as thankfully, I was awoken at about 3:37 AM by Angela.

“Get out of bed!” she said as she kicked me to the floor.  “The boat is docking soon and I want to get MAXIMUM ENJOYMENT out of our time in Ketchikan.”

“Then you’re out of luck,” I said.  “Ketchikan was like three days ago.  Today we’re in Skagway.”

I crawled back into bed.  About ten seconds later, a cold pail of seawater was thrown on me.

“GET UP!” she said.  “We’re going to go have an exciting, fun-filled, action-packed day out in Ketchikan!”

“Can I take a shower?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Can I shave?”

“If you must,” she said.

“Can I go back to bed?”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

It was off to the shower for me, then.  This was a little strange: normally, I’m the plan-plan-plan on vacation guy, the one who wants to get maximum fun for our vacation dollar, and she’s the go-along get-along touristy type.  So to see her eager to get going was a big change.

Once I’d showered, and shaved, and been kicked out of bed about three more times, it was off to breakfast.  It wasn’t even 7:00 yet, but the place was already filled with eager, bright-eyed vacationers eager to make the most of our brief stop in Ketchikan.

After we’d eaten, Angela chivvied me off the boat like I was a suspect in the Kennedy assassination and then frog-marched me up the dock.  Then she turned and looked at me.

“Well?” she said.

Uh, had I missed something?  Dimly, I tried to remember what we were supposed to do today.  Did I promise something?  Had we agreed upon some kind of trip or something?

Then it slowly came back to me:  all she wanted to do in Ketchikan was go see the totem poles.  Panicked, I looked around the dock for something I could pass off as a totem pole: a light post, a trash can, a homeless guy, anything.

Failing that, I looked for every tourist’s fondest hope: a tour company.  Thankfully, there was one, a gap-toothed guy selling tickets for a “Saxman Village City, Wildlife, and Totem Pole Tour.”

“Does this go to Saxman Village?” I asked.

“Of course!”

“Do we get to walk around and see the totem poles?” Angela asked.

“Of course!” he said.

“Then I’ll take two tickets.”

“There may not be wildlife,” he said.

“What?”

“There might not be wildlife,” he said.  “There’s no guarantees.”

I exchanged a confused look with Angela.  “What wildlife?”

“I don’t know if you’ll see any wildlife,” he insisted.  “You know, because they’re wild.  They might not show up.”

I frowned.  “You mean at the totem poles?”

“Oh, no, there’s no wildlife there.”

“Okay, then,” I said.  “I just need two tickets.”

“But you understand that there might not be any wildlife.”

Again, I was confused.  He was the one who brought the wildlife up – I certainly hadn’t mentioned it.  Does he really get a storm of angry passengers coming back and insisting on refunds because they didn’t see any wildlife?

Does that really happen?

“Okay,” I said.  “Whether or not I see Yogi, and whether or not he steals my pic-a-nic basket, I will hold you blameless.”

“That’ll be ninety dollars,” he said.

“Great,” I said as I paid the man.  As soon as I had the tickets in hand, I turned to Angela.  “He promised me we’d see bears eating sea lions!”

Yes, I was in a mood.

Once we’d boarded the bus, I was pleasantly surprised to find we had complementary binoculars.  We also had the whole front half of the bus filed with totem statues of elderly Japanese tourists.

“Ew,” Angela said.  “I smell mold.”

“I think it’s them,” I whispered.  “Try to be nice.”

Finally our last two tourists boarded.

“We’re going that way to the totem poles, right?” one said belligerently.

“We’re going to Saxman village,” the bus driver said.

“Oh, no!” the guy insisted.  “I want to see some totem poles!”

“That’s where they are,” the driver said.  “In Saxman village.”

“I want to see the totem poles here!” the guy insisted.

This went on for a few minutes.  I tried to get a chant started: “Fight!  Fight!  Fight!” but neither Angela nor the elderly Japanese were up for it.  Finally the guy settled down and the bus ride started.

We went all of ten feet to another dock to pick up some more passengers.  Then another ten feet to pick up some more.  Then, we circled all the way back to the front of the dock line to pick up a few more.

“This is where we started from!” the angry belligerent man said.

After some confusion (including a lady who got on, announced the bus full, and then stood and glared at us for no reason like we were the problem) we got everyone into seats and got the tour started.

It began with a very boring tour through a very boring part of Ketchikan filled with boring houses about which the guide related boring stories while driving boringly.

But I might have spruced that up a little bit too much.

As we were driving, a bus alarm went off.  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

“Don’t be nervous,” he said.  “That’s a faulty alarm on my bus.  I checked it this morning and I can assure you everything is okay with the bus.”

Then he continued to mutter “oh no, not again.”  I had the vague feeling that either the bus always malfunctioned, or it was about to explode and kill us all.  Either way, I began scratching out my will on a gum wrapper.

And having flashbacks to our drive down to Abu Simbel five years ago, but that’s a whole different story.

Finally we arrived at the first wildlife viewing area, where we saw three eagles and a big eagle’s nest.

After that, we drove through some more boring areas, and arrived at the second wildlife viewing area, a tidal flat near a sawmill.  During the drive the guide regaled us with tales all about fish sex and the decomposition of salmon after they die.

He made the joke that “unlike people, salmon sponge off their parents even after they’re dead” proving that he’s never seen relatives fight when somebody dies intestate.

So he says that this second area is the best place to view a bear, as there are two female bears and five cubs that live right around this tidal flat.

“Do you know why the bears choose to live here?” I asked Angela.

“No, why?”

“Because it has the bear necessities.”

She groaned.

“I can bear-ly wait to see it,” I said to Angela.  “I sure hope it will bear up under scrutiny.”  Then I paused a moment as we pulled up.  “It’ll probably take me a minute to get my bear-ings once we get off the bus!”

There was nothing but groaning and eye-rolling all around.

“Does anybody wanna switch seats?” Angela asked.  There were no takers.

I kept it up after we got off the bus:  “I can bear-ly see anything.  I can’t bear just standing here and waiting.  Do you think they’re off hunting bear-ries?”

More groans, more eye rolling.

“Seriously, I’ll give anybody like ten bucks to switch seats.”

“Don’t do that!” I said.  “I can’t bear to be parted with you!  You’d leave my life bear of all meaning!”

“Twenty?” she asks.

Needless to say, no bears arrived.  I did, however, see three more eagles.

As we boarded the bus again, I looked down at Angela (who was in our seat).  “Do you know what that alarm that keeps going off is for?”

“No,” she asked.  “What?”

“Bad Bear-ings.”

“Okay, fifty bucks, people, just to switch seats,” she said.  “Are you guys sure there’s no takers?”

Then it was off to Saxman village.  Now, Saxman village is named for a schoolteacher who disappeared while helping the tribe look for a good location for a village.  But that was supposed to be a good omen.  I guess because when you send troublemakers out on busy work, you’re always glad they don’t come back.

But I confess that I might not have been paying good enough attention.

When we got to Saxman, I was struck by two things:

-Our guide’s admission that his tour operator was too cheap to pay for the whole tour

-How few totem poles there actually were

Also, I am sure that the totem poles do tell a story, but so far as I can tell the story they’re trying to impart is how the carver doesn’t feel the need to do any decoration at all between the thing on the bottom and the thing on the top.

I mean, I guess the totem poles were okay, but I couldn’t help but feel that I did almost as good a job back in Boy Scouts this one time, and if I’d had paint, I could have done something worthy of display in the Saxman Village (of course, space was apparently limited, since this massive congregation of totem poles was only about fifteen specimens).  But I guess they’re big, so they’ve got that going for them.

Once we got back on the bus after that, I leaned over to Angela.

“There were bear-ly any in there,” I said.

“That was last stop,” she said.

“Good point,” I said.  “But after pole-ing the bus, I learned that they wanted more bear puns.”

She just sighed.  Twenty years with no chance for time off for good behavior.

So by now we’d spent about 2 ½ hours with this guy, driving all over Ketchikan and looking at boring things and listening to boring stories.  And he pulls out of the parking lot of the Saxman Village, and I’m expecting us to have to listen to another hour of boring stories as we drive back across to Ketchikan.  But he turns right, instead of left, and in about ten seconds we find ourselves in Ketchikan proper right next to the boat docks.

What the heck?  If I’d know Saxman was this close, I’d have just walked up here and saved ninety bucks and Angela wouldn’t have had to listen to sixty thousand bear puns.

I could bear-ly stand it, I tell you!

The first chance we got to jump off the bus, we took it.  As he pulled up to a stop, Angela looked out in the water.

“Check it out!” she said.  “Harbor seal!”

Sure enough, out in the water there was a mottled gray-and-white heat of a seal sticking up out of the water.

“Look!”  She announced.  “Harbor seal!”

Here is exactly what the dude said:  “Meh.”

As he drove off in a huff, Angela looks at me.  “What was his problem?”

“You were seal-ing his thunder,” I said.  “He couldn’t bear to think about it.  He knew he was low man on the totem pole.”

“I swear to God I will push you off the boat,” she said.  “So help me, I’m going to buy one of those Ulu knives and-“

“Okay, okay, I got it,” I said.  “No more puns.”

“You should have been a comedian!” a woman who also got off the boat laughed.

“Please don’t encourage him,” Angela said.  “Please.”

“Hey!  Weren’t you two on the game show?” somebody asked.

“Come on,” Angela dragged me away before I could begin talking to my public.  “Let’s go look around.”

Do you know what the only thing more boring than a bus-guided tour of Ketchikan is?  A walking tour of Ketchikan.  That’s what.  Once you get into your head that they have thirteen feet of rainfall a year, it’s all boring after that.

Once we’d seen and shopped all we wanted, it was time to go back to the ship.  We reboarded, and who did we run into but our drunken acquaintance?

“Hey!” she slurred, barely holding up her wineglass.  “How are you two?”

“Fantastic,” I said.

“Great,” Angela said.

Then she said something, mostly intelligible, and caught her elevator.  I stopped to talk to a few more fans, and then it was off to our room to catch some rest.

At 2:45, eager for vengeance, we headed back down to the trivia room for a game of “Where is This?”   We’d played this yesterday and gotten horribly skunked, so I was confident that today we’d do better.  And who did we run into but our Aussie friends from last night, who were eager to join our team.

And thank goodness they did, as my only contribution to any answer whatsoever was to tell them Angela was wrong and City #12 was not New Orleans.  When the answers came around, sure enough, it was New Orleans, proving that any trivia game involving photographs of stuff is one I need to be kept as far away from as possible.

Somehow, though, our team won, meaning that I’m three signatures away from a full activity card.  What that means, I don’t know, but I do know that since I see twenty boxes, I want them filled, because that is the definition of success.

Later on, we participated in a “Songs of the 90’s” trivia game.  On the face of it, this seems like a good thing.  Angela and I were 17 when the 90’s started, and 27 when it ended.  Prime music-listening age, right?

Well, sort of.  Angela has had a steady job since she was 10, and I got out of college in 1995.  What this means is that anything in the latter half of the decade we stand a good chance of not knowing, since that’s when we transitioned to adulthood and didn’t have time for all that tomfoolery any more.

Even worse, Angela was not at all in a good mood heading into the trivia game.

“I don’t see why it has to be 90’s music,” she complained all the way down there.  “Why can’t it be eighties music?  Or 70’s music?  I mean, last night it was 50’s and 60’s music.  Why does it have to be 90’s music now?  Where is my 80’s music? I would rock 80’s music.  I don’t know this 90’s crap.  It’s going to be all Britney Spears and some other harlots.”

And on and on, and so forth and so on.  I did, however, like how she used the fancy word from the Red Onion, which made me think of the best lunch ever.

Unlike Angela, I had a plan.  See, I was strategizing how to win this thing.  I figured we had the early 90’s covered, so all we needed was the late 90’s.  So what we were looking for was somebody in their 20’s who could help us.

And glory of glories, who should sit down next to us: not one, but two males ages 22 to 27, both who described themselves as avid listeners of music.

“Let’s team up,” I said, taking away their score sheet so they had no choice.  “Between your knowledge of late 90’s music and my cupidity, I’m sure to get the signatures I need to fill up my activity card!”

They looked at me blankly, not understanding my inexplicable use of cupidity (which means greed, by the way), and I knew that they were more malleable than half-chewed play-do in the hands of a particularly vigorous toddler.

Or, insert your own metaphor here if you don’t like that one.

The game started.  The first few songs we did okay – we at least all recognized them, and I think we even got a title or two.  And then it started.  Not only did not one of the four of us recognize the next song, we didn’t know the song after that, or the song after that, either.  Here is an actual excerpt from our answer sheet:

4)  THESE

5)  SONGS

6)  SUCK

Later on, these answers would be joined by “Groovy Disco-Like Tune” and “Mariachi Lady Screeching.”  Trust me, that was as close as I was ever going to come.  I could pull exactly two awesome answers out of the air, and one of them was Tub Thumping, which is embarrassing even to know.

But it could be worse: I could be the band that performed it.

Once the scores were all tallied up, we had 8 points left.

“Stupid songs,” I said.

“Why couldn’t it have been 80’s music?” Angela wailed.  “I rock at 80’s music!”

“You missed the 80’s music,” one of the dudes said.  “That was the other day.”

“Yeah,” the second one said.  “That was the other day.”

Whereupon Angela grabbed the cruise person doing the trivia and hurled her down the bowling alley for a well-placed strike.  “I WANT MY 80’S MUSIC!”

“That was some good freestyle bowling,” I said. “Let’s beat it before the security heavies come looking for you.”

Scampering off, we managed to find a nice, quiet restaurant that was completely empty.  It’s the place we ate at Sunday night, and I have to tell you, it’s the best-kept secret on the boat.  It’s probably because they serve what’s called Comfort Food, which can be translated as “Food that people actually want to eat.”

As opposed to Le Bistro, which serves “French-inspired crap that you look cool eating but which tastes like crud.”

We sat, dining happily, when Angela suddenly jumped up.  “Look!” she said.  “Dolphins!”

Sure enough, out the window of the restaurant, we spotted a pod of…something.  Doubt, however, began to plague us soon enough.  Do dolphins live in these waters?  Was it porpoises (porpii? Porpeople?).  It seemed like they were too small to be whales, and they definitely had blowholes and dorsal fins, so I think dolphins.

Either that, or mermen riding orca fighting with a giant squid.

With dinner out of the way, we decided to go looking for somebody we recognized so we could brag about seeing dolphins.  Unfortunately, it was the only time all day that we didn’t run into somebody that we knew, or who recognized us from the Newlywed Game.  I even prompted people by loudly saying things like:

“So, seen anything good on TV?”

They just hurried off.

Disconsolate, we headed up to the café to get some dessert and some coffee.  Angela had a glass of water and a small sliver of chocolate cheesecake.

I had a cup of coffee, a piece of Pumpkin Spice Pie, a cube of Chocolate Mousse Cake, and a wedge of Raspberry Huckleberry Chocolate Cake (or something).  They all kind of tasted the same, actually, and were essentially variations on a crappy theme.

“I might have to get some ice cream,” Angela said.

“Mmmm, ice cream.”

I started to stand up to go get ice cream when I saw it: a flock of birds out on the water.  And next to the birds:

“Whaaale!” I yelled.  “A white whale!”

Sure enough, there it surfaced, its yellow eye regarding the boat with cold dread, a skeleton lashed to its side, held only in place by a harpoon.  Moby Dick, big as life!

Okay, maybe not.  But what I did see was a humpback whale surfacing, and then another, and then another.  A crowd gathered around us, congratulating us on our find.  The whale surfaced, and then splayed out its tale as if posing for the gathered onlookers.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” somebody said.

“It’s gorgeous!” Another person said.

“This is fantastic!” said a third.

“Everybody who paid for whale watching wasted their money,” I said.

That kind of killed the mood and the crowd broke up.

Having seen seals, whales, a mystery pod of blowholed animals, and more eagles than you could shake a stick at, and having made 8,742 puns, I was pretty tired and ready for bed.  Angela, having spent yet another day with me, also said she was exhausted (or at least she said she was tired of me), so we turned in, another day of our vacation seized.

As we lay in bed, it was my turn to grumble.

“How come all the trivia games are some stupid song or name this photograph crap?  Why can’t we have a trivia game about history?  I’d kick some serious butt at that.”

Indeed.

Great Vacation Getaway – Day 5

Fame is beginning to sit heavily upon Angela’s shoulders. 

Everywhere we go, it’s the same thing: we run into people who say “You’re the people from TV!”  I always preen and strut and offer to sign autographs and tell stories and whatnot.  Angela just cringes and hides in the background, hoping that the people will go away. 

I like to think that it’s my dashing, movie-star quality good looks, or my awesome comedic timing, that attracts attention.  But I think it’s mostly because the TV has three channels: fire safety drills, reruns of things taped during the cruise (which so far is that game show and our first-day fire safety drill), and a channel called “Upcoming Fire Safety Drills: what you need to know.”

Oh, and the shopping channel.

Out here at sea, there’s not really anything else to watch.  I’m actually thinking of hosting a showing of the Newlywed Game, perhaps have people dress up as their favorite couple, kind of like Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Maybe they can throw things at the screen, too, and boo every time I get an answer wrong.

This morning was our couple’s massage, part of the romantic getaway for two package that I’d bought.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, since I’d never had a massage before, and since Angela didn’t just want the short massage but rather the whole magilla massage.

But first, we had to eat, so we forged our way up to the restaurant for breakfast.  We’re in Glacier Bay today, so it’s a full day on the boat, so there were tons of people around and lots of pushing and shoving and whatnot.  We managed to find a table (spotting both our good friend the alcoholic and Mr. Grumpy, who was sitting alone and scowling) and proceeded to eat.  Once we’d both finished, we decided that we were in the mood for another cup of coffee (me) and another chocolate bun (me, but also Angela). 

I ran and got them, knocking over three old ladies, two maids a-dancing, and a partridge in a pear tree, and just as I sat down I asked the guy next to me what time it was.

“It’s five to eight,” he said.

“Oh, then we gotta go,” I said.  “Sorry, hon.”

“You gonna eat those chocolate buns?” he asked.

“No, you have them.”

“You gonna drink that milk?” he asked.

“No, you can have it.”

“You gonna drink that coffee?” he asked.

“No, you can have it,” I said.

Then Angela and I hurried off, having served the guy his second course.  Halfway to the spa, I began to smell a trap, and decided if it wasn’t eight when we got there I was going to go punch that guy in the head.

Alas, it was eight, and soon enough we found ourselves in the massage chamber.  And I was left to wonder: did Enya set out to record the world’s greatest massage CD, or did it just turn out that what she recorded was the world’s greatest massage CD?

The massage went just about like massages always go (I guess), although the heated table made me feel somewhat like one of those hot dogs in a Quickie Mart on the roller things.  After they’d finished they tried to sell us all sorts of ointments and unguents and what have you, while you sit there in a towel covered with grease.  I don’t know what that does for other people, but it doesn’t put me in a buying mood.

Soon enough, we were done with the whole “couple’s massage” thing and ready to go watch some glaciers.

Sometime over the last few days, our boat was boarded by a gaggle of rangers from Glacier National Park, a breathless group of ninnies who get overexcited about large sheets of ice that move at literally seven feet per day.  No, really.  Here’s a sample of the dialog:

“Over on the right you can see the Mumbledyfordicus Glacier, which is eight hundred and nonnety-doo feet long and sixty-whompus feet wide.  Its base extends all the way to the ground, and it’s moving so slowly that sometimes parts of it fall off, but other times, they don’t.  Perhaps we’ll hear some white thunder from it when pieces of it fall into the highly corrosive salt water.”

On and on this woman droned, in a voice of breathless wonder that you typically reserve for babies’ first poopy. 

It’s not like we saw a bear wrestling an alligator or anything, either.  It was just big chunks of ice, with some dirt.  Or, if you like, bit wads of dirt held together by ice. 

Yes, yes, I get it, glaciers are big.  And cold.  But I still didn’t quite get why everyone crowded the railing and elbowed old women in the face to snap picture after picture of large chunks of crud that you could, if you really wanted to, assemble in a biggish freezer.

Perhaps my life in the frozen wasteland of Wyoming has jaded me to such an event.

The biggest thrill of the whole time came when I lost Angela.  I went upstairs to see if I could get a better picture of the big chunk of ice, and when I turned around she was gone.  I searched the entire sun deck for her, but didn’t find her.  I began to get worried, since I had watched the angry crowd swirl enough to know that it was fully possible somebody jettisoned her to get a better view of yet another sandy beach, pointed out by the amazing breathless idiot for the thousandth time.

Thankfully, she reappeared, in the cutest moose toboggan you ever saw.

“My ears are freezing,” she said.

“Great.  Let’s go in.”

“Not yet,” she said.  “I want to see the glacier.”

“We’ll swing by the ice machine,” I said.  “I’ve got some crud on my shoes and I’ll build you model glacier there.”

Alas, she didn’t accept that as a reasonable substitute.

Once we were done glacier watching, we went to grab second breakfast in the greatest of hobbit traditions.  Unfortunately, we discovered that there were no more chocolate biscuits.  Argh!  The clever SOB had taken the last ones from us, and we didn’t even know!

Second breakfast out of the way (I had sausages, rice, bacon, a biscuit, a piece of fruit, and two cups of coffee; Angela had chagrin), we went to…THE TRIVIA GAME.

I was spoiling for a rematch.  There were two trivia things back-to-back, and I was ready to kick some major butt at it.

First up: landmark trivia.  Name these great natural landmarks.  No problem, right?

Well, it’s kind of a problem if their idea of “landmark” is either:

-Something in Australia

-A photo of a part of the earth from space

That’s it.  Nothing else.  Really?

Despite this, Angela and I managed to score 8 out of 20.  Far from the best, but respectable amongst the other teams.

After that, though, it was another “Crazy Trivia” game.  And joy of joys, our teammates from the other day showed up!

Well, not the drunk lady, which was okay.  Angela took the pencil, he started reading the questions, and we were off.

Up first:  “How many academy award nominations did Avatar receive, and how many did it win?”

Ugh.  Movie trivia.  I suck at movie trivia.

Question two:  “What won best picture in 2010?”

Oh dear God!  Was it going to be all movie trivia?  I was prepared to leave – there’s nothing worse for me than movie trivia, unless maybe it’s music trivia from the 50’s and 60’s (which is tonight, which I’m not going to).

Question three:  “What is the element Sn on the periodic table?”

My heart leapt for joy.  If this was gonna be hard-core nerd trivia, then my bacon was saved!

(It’s Tin, by the way; I’ve always remembered it by calling it Snubnium)

When it was all said and done, we tied for first with 16 points, with every member of our team having contributed some knowledge along the way.  What a team!

Having finished with that, it was time for lunch (Trivia makes me hungry).  Back up to the restaurant we go, and I quickly claimed a table when Angela went to get her food.  As I sat, an elderly Japanese man dressed like an Eskimo asked if he could share our table; I said okay, whereupon his wife arrived and began yelling at him in Japanese. 

“She already has a table,” he said.

“You want to sit here anyways?” I asked as she yelled at him.

He did, but didn’t want to say so, so off they went to sit together.

Eventually Angela returned, and I went off to get lunch.  I found all sorts of delicious things, including stuff on a stick, but when I came back I discovered that Angela wasn’t alone: she was with our lunch companions from Monday, the two elderly ladies.

Or at least, one of them.  The one that’s not quite all there.

I mean, she’s a nice lady, but she must have asked us three times if our trip got cancelled, and what did we win for being on the game show, and all sorts of other things.  It made for kind of a long lunch.

When social propriety allowed (along with a full belly), we made a run for it.  On the way out I had to stop to talk to several more adoring fans, including the woman who was watching the door. 

Finally tearing myself away from my throng of adoring fans, I was off to my next adventure.  Given the high-action, high-octane individual that I am, that adventure turned out to be a nap.

You know, not for me, but more for Angela, who is now forty.

Once the nap was out of the way, it was time for us to go to our romantic dinner.  I’d paid for this, along with the massage and some other stuff, as part of our “Romantic Holiday” package.  Oooh-lah-laah!

The free dinner that came with the package was at Le Bistro, the fancy French restaurant.  As anybody knows, having spent many years over in Europe, I was quite certain that we didn’t like French food.  In fact, it’s fair to say that of the major countries that can be identified with food, only Yemen ranks lower for Angela on the food scale.

So I’d come up with a daring plan to get Angela to the French restaurant:  I didn’t tell her.  Whenever she ask, our dialog went something like this:

“Where’s our special dinner?”

“Somewhere special.”

“But what is it?”

“Special.”

“Never mind.”

See what I did there?

When we came into the restaurant, I knew immediately that there was going to be trouble.  You know how in fancy restaurants they always have some kind of bread that comes along with the meal while you wait?

Well, in this one, it was sourdough fish-oil bread with salmon paste spread that you put on with a knife made out of a fish, all served on a fish plate with fish water to wash it down with.  The only thing that Angela hates more than fish is Yemeni food.

“I don’t see anything I can eat,” Angela says.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I say.  “After dinner, if you don’t find anything you like, I’ll take you up to the café.”

“Oh, boy.  Thanks.”

“No problem!” I said cheerily.  “Happy to help.”

“Hello, sir and madam,” the waitress said.  “As part of your romance package tonight, you have a choice of red or white wine.  Would you like-“

“Red,” I said.

“But-“

“Red,” I repeated.  “Bring us red wine.”

She looked at Angela, like I need her permission or something, but when Angela only shrugged the waitress brought us a bottle of red wine, a merlot from Chile.

You know how they say after you’ve been married for a long time you start to resemble each other?  I always thought that was bunk.  But tonight, I learned something important: I have come to resemble Angela in some ways.

Specifically, in her cheapness.

When the waitress opened the bottle of Merlot, the one that we received free with the dinner, I decided that it would really be a waste to drink only one glass.  And seeing as how the waitress poured us two glasses (one each), and I made a big show of being able to taste it, I figured that I’d just drink both Angela’s glass and my glass to keep from wasting any wine.

But then, after I’d polished off Angela’s glass and two refills on my glass, something weird happened: the boat got hit by the most enormous waves you ever saw in your life.  It was just rocking back and forth!  Boom!  Crash!  Pow!  I almost fell out of my seat.  It was all I could do to polish off another glass of wine.

After I’d managed to drink ¾ of the bottle, Angela finally cut me off, giving the waiter the bottle and telling him to take it as far away from me as possible.  By then I was singing “will you call me sweetheart” and dancing, and I’d not only eaten my asparagus and her asparagus but the asparagus from the plate of the guy across the aisle from us who recognized us from the newlywed game (I think I also signed his napkin, but I’m not so sure).

We had chocolate fondue, too, which was delicious.

Even worse, she spent the whole dinner telling me how it looked like I was having an allergic reaction to the wine and that my eyes were swelling up.  “Uh-oh,” she’d say.  “Looks like you’re getting puffy!”

As I staggered out of the restaurant, the boat tossed and turned by the terrible storm raging outside, we encountered our good ozzie friends from Bingo the other night, and sat down to have a nice chat with them. 

Most interestingly, we watched the totally bombed guy sleeping it off at the bar.  “At least I’m better than him,” I said.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Angela said.  “Your eyes are all red and puffy.”

“Aargh!”

We told jokes and laughed and had a good time, until finally it was late enough that we needed to toddle off to bed. 

But I’m still worried about how much the ship is rocking and rolling.  Angela assures me that it’s okay, but just as a precaution, I’m sleeping in a life jacket.