Diary

Once again, while cruising port-intensive itineraries, I get too distracted to post anything more than a photo or a couple of lines  on Facebook.

i had a wonderful first cruise going north from the St. Lawrence River up into Newfoundland, which I have been told by residents is pronounced  Noofin Land.  I have been practicing, but it doesn’t come easily.

I got a lot of chances to practice my French, but Quebecois was a different story.  Even Nancy, my travel companion, whose French is pretty close to perfect, was perplexed from time to time.  I don’t think I made myself understood once, except maybe Bonjour and Merci.

I had my first chance to try poutine, the famous fill-me-up of Quebec.  It is soft French fries, covered with brown gravy and sprinkled with cheese curds (Nancy added peas—see photo below for the whole glorious mess).  There must have been two dozen variations on the theme (chorizo and guacamole, anyone?), but all I can say about the classic is that it tasted exactly as I thought it would, and that if I had gone to college at McGill I would have lived on it. Now, once was enough.

 

We had one rough day at sea, which seemed monumentally bad to many but about a 7 to me. Waves about  4-5 meters with gale force winds  in the wee hours when we all were trying to be asleep, so we didn’t really know we were actually briefly in a hurricane when the wind peaked. Unless my cabin is underwater briefly as it dives into the waves, I am not impressed.  Thank goodness for scopolamine patches, however.  Slap one on as a neck decoration and  swagger around pretending to be immune.

The fall colors were just starting when I arrived (see picture below taken about a week ago in Montreal) and haven’t totally taken over yet, but on this second cruise we are seeing a lot more. I suspect the full orchestra of colors will play between when I go home on October 14 and return to Montreal on October 30 for the last cruise in the area, repositioning on Silver Wind to Florida, along with the geese and many of the human residents of Canada. I seem always to be told the best is past, or the best is coming when it comes to fall colors, but it looks pretty wonderful to me right now.

Today we are cruising very slowly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, required by maritime law to protect endangered right whales, who can be hit by ships going full speed.  Thus a fairly short journey becomes a sea day, but it is looking like one straight out of fall clothing catalogs—sparkling sunlight,  a little fall breeze to make the cheeks rosy and the scarfs and jackets I rarely get to wear just perfect for the occasion.

All for now…peace, blessings, and a sense of wonder be with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday morning, I went to the Toronto passport office just to make sure all my papers for my Canadian passport were in order before I mailed them. I waited about ten minutes for my number to come up and went to speak with a very pleasant woman behind the counter.  She said they could process it there, without my having to mail it, but I would have to be able to pick it up in person.   I told her that wouldn’t be possible because I was leaving Monday morning for Montreal. She  asked, “can you prove your travel plans ?”  I showed her my flight reservation on my phone calendar, and she said, “Well, I think that qualifies you for urgent processing of your passport. Can you come in tomorrow?”

Well, yes! I was in and out in about 40 minutes that day, with more than I had come for.  With a little bit of scrambling around, and the help of the people who served as my references, 24 hours later, after no wait and another round of pleasant people, one of whom took the photo here,  I have my Canadian passport.

Here’s another story.  When I was pickpocketed in Barcelona this spring,  my driver’s license was in my wallet.  I carry it for ID abroad, so I can leave my passport in the safe.  I tried to submit an application for a duplicate online, assuming that because the license wasn’t near expiring and I had no violations on my record, it would be simple. It wasn’t.  The online site told me I had to go into the DMV in person.  When I got home in July, there were no appointments for the next  two months anywhere in San Diego County.  The first available slot was after I left on another assignment, and the calendar had not yet opened up for any appointments in October, after I returned.

The solution, according to the DMV, was to go in without an appointment and wait in line  Here’s how well that works: Dan tried renewing his license that way last month, only to wait in line more than three hours until he had to leave for another appointment, without ever getting the license. The next time he got there at 6:30 in the morning, two hours before they opened, and there were still three dozen people in line. He waited for two hours then waited another hour inside, but managed to get the license.   That’s what you go through for routine renewal or replacement in the comparatively high-functioning State of California.

The moral here is that bureaucracies can work well.  The passport office in Toronto does.  Everyone smiles, the office is clean and well lit, and the service is quick.  The attitude seemed to be to do all they can for the client.  I got so much more than I came in expecting.

Contrast with the grimy and dilapidated DMV office in San Diego.  So many more services need to be done in person, yet it is in the same cramped space it has been for decades, with people spilling out the doors just to get to the point where they can get a number to begin their wait.  If you are lucky you will get a clerk in a good mood.  If not, be prepared to be treated like just another aggravation in his or her day.  With luck, you will get what you came for, but you will probably not go away feeling the clerk cared much either way.

Okay, maybe it’s a first world problem, compared to what most people have to deal with.  I’ll grant that.  But really, in this and other ways, I feel as if my country is barely clinging to status as a first world country.  We are a threatened democracy, we have crumbling infrastructure, dysfunctional government services,  no universal health care, young adults crippled with debt for schooling, environmental deregulations that are making some places uninhabitable, with many more to come.  Enough yet?  I could go on.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  My experience in Canada is evidence of this.  Yet little by little, Americans have come to expect less and less from their government.  I remember when I first came to work at San Diego City College, I quickly learned not to expect that the drinking fountains would work.  That’s how it starts.  You stop expecting even a basic level of function, then you start assuming things will go badly, then you realize, stunned, what many poor Americans, white or of color, have known forever—that to the powers that be, it is perfectly okay if people (certain kinds of people in particular) don’t get their needs met.  The solution is to adjust one’s expectations.  In other words, the motto for this coming American age may be”Welcome to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.  Please bring your own toilet paper.”

 

It’s flattering to be asked with what( I think) is envy more than astonishment how in the world little old me managed to get the retirement gig of the century, traveling the world lecturing on luxury ships.  I always respond by saying how utterly lucky I have been, but I do sense in the asking, at least sometimes, a feeling that behind the question is the perception that it isn’t that hard to do.  “I’ll have to figure out something I can lecture on,” some people say, while others give varying renditions of “not a bad return for a couple of lectures.”

These people (really only a small percentage of an overall appreciative clientele) have no idea what I look like right now, bleary eyed, unwashed, tongue tied, and staggering as I wrap up my work before leaving tomorrow for Montreal.  I am packed, but I don’t really know what my distracted and semi-functioning mind thought I would need.  I have checked the to-do’s off my list, but I have no idea how many things never got  on it that should have.

Since February I have been working with every minute of my time at home, and every chunk of private time on ships, to be ready for the Big One, which here means a five-month stint in Asia.   In the middle I had to take time out to prepare  new talks and revisions for the late-add Baltic assignment I did for Silversea.  Add to that, the prep I did from scratch last fall  for Alaska and several new and revised talks for Montreal, and the destination talks I did in the Med this summer and I am up to about 40 talks, maybe more,  I have developed either from scratch or significantly revised in the last year. That is one every nine days or so but that’s not how it works. It really means none for weeks on end, then a flurry when I have the time and means to work.

This morning I crossed a major hurdle. I finished Asia! For the last few months I had been wondering whether I would be able to get it done before I left for the first foliage cruise to Montreal, especially since my original goal of being done before Alaska had been unfulfilled.

Now I can breathe a sigh of relief because although I will keep revising and improving the talks before I give them, there is no hole in my preparation.  I still need to do a lot of work for the last piece of My Year of Living Travelly, crossing the Indian Ocean from Mumbai to Dubai then on to Athens through the Suez Canal, but that really, truly can wait a while.

Quiet the mind, relax the kinks…trying…..

….maybe ice cream will help.

 

 

The day after tomorrow I leave for Toronto to visit friends I met on a cruise a few years back, then it’s on to Montreal to meet up with a college friend and head out on the first of three fall foliage cruises on the St. Lawrence River to Newfoundland,  the Maritimes and New England.

Time to check in with myself  again.

This stay in San Diego was puzzling. I was in the city I have called home for more than half a century, staying with Dan  around the corner from my condo in the  same building, in a neighborhood I know intimately, doing things that are part of my routine, but there’s a disconnect.  It’s like I am visiting here, more than returning home.   Dan and I have had a lot of fun doing different things and just being together, so disconnect doesn’t mean discontent.  I have been happy in the present here, and that is what I most want to feel.

Maybe it’s my concept  of home that is changing.  Home, it appears, is wherever I am.  “Home,” as a t-shirt I bought somewhere says,” is where the anchor drops.” In San Diego during My Year of Living Travelly, nothing I own is in a drawer.  Clothes I don’t need stay in my suitcases, and what I might use is in a box in the bedroom.  The rest is in my storage locker in the basement. There is really almost no difference between the way I live in San Diego these days, and the way I live on ships, or between cruises in places I visit. It’s all suitcases and storage. I am totally  comfortable with that, and miss only fleetingly anything that is part of my more settled life.

But here is what is most different this time: I didn’t play tennis or golf even once.  I didn’t go to minyan at the synagogue. When Dan and I walked in the park, I didn’t pick up trash on the path, as I always have.  Those things are all part of my San Diego identity. It’s not as if I made a conscious choice not to do familiar things, it simply did not occur to me  until maybe two days ago, that I wasn’t doing them.

Am I just a visitor here now, in the place  I have called home since I was fourteen? Time will tell.  I will be back for two more short stays before I leave for five months in Asia.  I am not making even the slightest effort to project how my outlook will alter over time. Maybe I will come back  gladder than ever to have this wonderful city to live in. Maybe I will come back a hopeless vagabond. Maybe ( and the November elections will play a role in this) I may decide I don’t want to live here anymore.  I guess I will just have to wait and see.

 

 

 

I may have talked about this before, but I am feeling too much in the moment to go back to check. One of the things I love about this cruising life is the opportunity it offers me to more fully inhabit the present.

This might sound weird from someone who spent time on this assignment in Alaska working on talks for Hong Kong and Singapore that I won’t give until next February, but the truth is that although I have to force myself to stay on track to be ready for what’s ahead, my head simply wants to be here now.

Today I went on a Zodiac in Alert Bay, British Columbia. The sky was bright, the water was sparkling, the seals and a Minke whale were doing their thing patrolling the bay. A dozen or more bald eagles watched the show, which of course includes us in our bright orange life jackets. As we moved slowly at the edge of a kelp bed looking for otters (no luck), I had one of those moments in which I said to myself “there is no place on earth I would rather be than right here right now.”

It is a joyous feeling to be just right exactly where you are. I came back to the ship ready to appreciate that the hot chocolate waiting for us was the only perfect thing for the moment, and that everything else was exactly right as it was.

i often get reflective on the last day of a cruise (I fly to San Diego tomorrow from Vancouver), and today was no exception.  Looking back, I have a number of regrets about what I didn’t do or see.  Those all pull me out of the present  I am pulled out of the present by looking forward too, and  since I feel as if I haven’t taken advantage of this  opportunity nearly enough, I plan to request to come back here in 2020, if the fates decree.

Staying in the present is rewarding, but so is looking back and saying, “wow!”  And so is looking forward and realizing how quickly (less than two weeks) until my adventure continues. Today I saw the first signs of fall in the turning leaves on the banks of the islands in Alert Bay.  Soon it is on to Montreal for me, where the nip in the air and the blazing beauty of the passing of one season and the arrival of another reminds me so acutely that the present isn’t just now, but contains all that has happened and all that is to come. Goodbye, British Columbia!  Thanks for the sunset ( below). Glad to have been present for it

 

 

 

 

A number of years ago, I took several trips in connection with research for my novels that took me to places where it was cold and rainy. I remember making a vow that the next trip I took would involve a bathing suit and a Zodiac.

All this time I had assumed that when the time came, the Zodiac and the bathing suit would go together. I envisioned coming ashore on the sand of a South Seas island, or the rocky Galapagos coast , or something exotic like that.

Instead I took a number of trips where Zodiacs were as unlikely to be seen as a Metro would be here in coastal Alaska.  As for the bathing suit part,  I have had many opportunities to go to places where bathing suits were the preferred attire, from the pool deck of a ship to Mediterranean and Caribbean beaches.  The thing is, I have decided I honestly don’t like swimming—or even getting wet— all that much, and one of the nice things about getting older is that I don’t care whether I should feel differently.  I don’t, and I don’t have to.  I have gone, since I made my vow, to plenty of places warm enough for other people to be out tanning or splashing around in their swimwear, and that’s good enough for me.

However, in all my travels, I have never set foot on a Zodiac.  Until today, that is, in Misty Fjords, Rudyerd Bay, Alaska.  Misty Fjords is appropriately named, as the photo below shows. The water is glassy and the glacier-carved cliffs tower over insignificant beings like us.  We motored along, stopping to admire waterfalls and bald eagles, before heading back to mulled wine and dry clothing.

So now, at least a decade later, I can say I did it  I have taken a trip involving a bathing suit and a Zodiac, just not the same trip.  Since I didn’t even pack a swimsuit this time, I can’t jump in the Jacuzzi in a feeble attempt to make that claim.  Oh well—two trips (or in my case many) are better than one.  But I still am holding out for the arrival on that sandy beach some day.  I might even put on a swimsuit and get wet for that!

 

Well, the  long stretch of perfect health In  My Year of Living Travelly came to a screeching halt after five months.

I gave a lecture two days ago despite a sore and scratchy throat and  figured I would shake it off, as I usually do. This cold virus had other plans for me.

Since then, I had to beg out of hosting a dinner table and being a panelist on Liars Club, which I love doing. I missed out on a  zodiac adventure yesterday and a shore excursion I really wanted to do today, and have  been holed up listlessly in my room, venturing out only for a cup of tea or something to nibble on with no enthusiasm.

Those of you who have known me from my leaching days are probably aware that a few years back I developed chronic inflammation and swelling of the supporting structure for my vocal cords, which causes  them not to line up the way they should  to produce a strong voice.  It was a severe enough problem that I had to give up my full-time teaching jobs several years before I planned to, since I simply cannot project my voice well, or for very long.

Cruise lecturing is fine because I have a headset mike planted right next to my mouth and I don’t have to speak for more than 45 minutes a couple of times a week.  The hardest part for me has always been dinner at large tables, since  projecting my voice enough to converse feels similar to the strain of yelling with a healthy voice.   I often go back to my room quite hoarse after dinner, but I have generally recovered by morning.

But not when a cold makes things worse.  If I talk at all in the early stages, I set myself up for the almost  dead certainty of a couple of days  with total laryngitis.  I’m hiding out now not just because I feel like crap, but because I don’t want to have to use my voice at all for the chit chat that is part of life on a ship.

So far so good.  I sound like a frog, but I am not down to a squeak. This self-imposed quarantine has also been good for the other passengers as well, since ships have often been called floating petri dishes, and hopefully I won’t spread this around.

This cold came on so soon after the start of the second cruise that I have met almost no one.  No dinners, no shore excursions, no team trivia after the first two days.  This is a weird one so far,  but since the cruise is a full two weeks, I will still have some time to be my usual self and have fun with the folks on board.

The good news is that I don’t have a lecture for two more days, nor another table to host for three. The bad news is that I am missing Alaska!  Lucky for me I saw a lot on the leg from Vancouver to Seward, and  the new ports are at the end in British Columbia, when presumably I will be my old self again.

One of my unanswered questions about My Year of  Living Travelly was if getting sick would put a damper on my enthusiasm and make me wish I could go home. I now have my answer, at least for something as minor as a cold: If you have to crawl into a cave for a few days, why not do it in  a bed with fantastic linens and fluffy pillows, a cabin steward, and room service? Sure, being sick is no fun, but my life is as good as ever.

 

Wow! I just realized I didn’t post once during the first Alaska cruise.  Maybe that’s a good sign that I really switched gears, but it’s more honestly the result of a busy schedule and poor satellite internet.

i am in Seward, Alaska, between my first and second cruises.  This evening we head back in the direction of Vancouver, from where I will fly back to San Diego briefly before heading off to Montreal for the fall season—can the first falling leaves be on the horizon so soon?

So now it’s transition time. Dan left for the airport a few minutes ago, and after a goodbye at his bus, I went back on board a ship that most guests rarely see.  The cabin stewards look as if they are in the starting blocks for a sprint, which in a way they are. In a few hours the ship will be pristine again and ready for the new passengers.  But right now, the hallways are filled with piles of sheets and towels, and staff are coming through to remove copious quantities of half-empty liquor and wine bottles. A real bonanza if I drank the hard stuff—I’d never come out of my room!  I did go through a massive pile of soda cans and discovered diet tonic water, which I didn’t know they had. Score!  I guess they remove all the stuff in the fridges, even if unopened, then put it all back in later—maybe wiped down?  I will have to ask.

So now, I am doing my laundry—the one time you can be sure the machines won’t be in use—and spreading out to fill all the closets and drawers in the room.  It is so comforting and fun to have Dan aboard, and it would be great to be looking forward to having a friend join me (illness recovery prevented my buddy Sharon from coming along), but I do have to admit, there is something special about calling 100% of the shots about time, space and activities.

And of course, it is time for a mental recap and a new set of promises to myself, as follows:

1) I will skip breakfast except on tour mornings

2) I will cheat less on my rules at lunch, and will skip the buffet in favor of ordering from a menu at the pool or restaurant most days.  Easier to know how much I have eaten.

3)  I will drink more water and less wine at dinner.  I no longer have wine at lunch at all, except if I just finished a lecture

4). I will walk briskly at least an hour a day, on treadmill or in port

5). I will get over my dislike of small hotel-style gyms and give my upper body something to cheer about.

6) I will do more of my work in the beautiful public spaces on the ship, rather than holed up in my room.

7) I will not order room service just because I don’t have a concrete dinner plan.  Something always works out.

8) I will go on more strenuous shore excursions.  There were reasons to be more sedentary this time around (Dan’s broken toe and my need to get familiar with the ports), but there’s no excuse this time!

9)….And on that note, I will kayak at least once  I don’t know why I have it so built up in my mind that I will be a spaz at it and end up in the icy water, but that’s the vision I have.

I am repeating a mantra that I wish I followed a little better:  Being afraid of something is a good reason to do it.   Since this Year of Living Travelly is in large part about expanding my comfort zone, I will do my best to become the Kayak Queeen, and Solo Traveler extraordinaire!

And since ten resolutions has more resonance than nine, I will add my ongoing one:  never let even one day pass without remembering to be grateful for this beautiful life

Time to move clothes into the dryer.  Then into town for that hour of walking—and no, poking around the shopping street doesn’t count!

 

It seems as if most of the time I arrive a day too late or leave a day too early to see a city make a big splash, but in Vancouver I was just right, and I didn’t even know it until the excitement was  on my  doorstep—literally.

Many months ago, Dan and I made reservations to come to Vancouver a couple of days before starting a cruise, to give us a chance to look around a little more.  Since arriving it has been one surprise after another.  First, the hotel we booked, The Sylvia,  turns out to be a historic beauty right on the waterfront of English Bay. Second it has been sunny and warm, the water sparkling, and the locals  out in droves on bikes and on foot, enjoying the utter happiness of this beautiful place they call home. With Dan’s broken toe we haven’t been able walk very far to dinnner, and voila, the hotel restaurant turned out to be first rate.

”There are fireworks tomorrow tonight, “ our cab driver said. “You’ll be able to see them from your hotel.”  That was the first big understatement of our trip.  The fireworks were a lollapalooza, part of an International Fireworks Festival, spanning several weeks, in which countries compete for who can impress Vancouver the most with a  25-minute display choreographed to music. The festival has been going on nearly three decades, and I had to shake my head in wonderment that a city could get other countries to come and entertain it like this, for no  reward that I could discern except the bragging rights of winning.  I wonder what would happen if I tried to persuade top chefs to come compete at my place, and then I would clap one of them on the back and say, “Congratulations!  Your truffle-infused duck fat potato confit with persillade and pea sprout garnish wins the prize!  Thanks for coming!  Bye!””

It didn’t take us long to determine that another surprise was in store this weekend, when we started seeing all the costumes and an extraordinary spirit of fun and frivolity everywhere.  Not only was there a comic convention going on downtown, but it was a Pride Weekend and there would be a huge parade passing  by —you guessed it—one block from our hotel.  Drums,  rainbow floats, lots of random marchers and proud onlookers.  Thanks, Universe —I needed a reminder that even though so much seems dark and threatening now at home,  there  has been great progress in my lifetime on this and other social fronts I care about.

I  am feeling like royalty!  I mean, how many visitors get fireworks and a parade?  And then, to top it off, I discovered wines from the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.  I had been there once with my late husband, who grew up on the shores of Lake Okenagan, and while there we tried the wine and weren’t very impressed. With my penchant for trying local when I travel, I decided to give it another chance, and yum!  I was, of course, inspired by that to give local peach wheat beer a try at lunch in Stanley Park yesterday. Yum too!    So of course I had to confirm my experiment by trying Okanagan wine again today at lunch.  Even better than the first one!  The photo below is included to show what great lengths I will go to to boost the British Columbia economy by drinking their best!  Cheers!