The Cast:

Irene and Isaac India
Janice and Jim Juliett
Kathy and Ken Kilo
Linda and Larry Lima
Mabel and Merle Mike

Day minus 1 : getting to Puerto Rico

Today, the Mikes and the Limas flew to Puerto Rico. They flew on the same flights. There was some difficulty because the Limas never seemed to notice the Mikes unless Mabel jumped up and down and shouted to the Limas. The Limas were embarrassed by this. Larry explained that he and Linda were both descended from an Irish clan – the O’Blivious.

As they got on the plane, Larry struggled to get Linda’s “carry-on” luggage in  the overhead bins. Larry was reminded of those huge TVs in the 60s that weighed a ton but had a stupid little handle on them so that you could call them “portable”. As Larry struggled, the luggage slipped a bit and there was a gasp that sounded like someone had just killed and eaten 6 babies. Larry peeked around the luggage and saw Merle who looked bemused.
Larry – “Did I get you?”
Merle – “Don’t worry about it. I was watching for it.”
Larry fretted on the way to Atlanta. Larry and Merle knew each other a little bit but not enough so that Larry could clock Merle and just shrug it off.
When they got to Atlanta, Larry apologized again but Merle said “You didn’t hit me. That gasp was from some hyper woman who didn’t know what was going on.
What Merle had said earlier meant “I was watching for it and it didn’t hit me” but Larry had thought it meant “I was watching for it so it didn’t hurt that badly when you clocked me. There’s hardly any blood.”

While the 4 of them were riding a taxi from the airport to the hotel, Mabel made a comment about having enough to do. Larry suggested “There’s always more champagne.”
Mabel said “That should be the theme for this trip: ‘There’s Always More Champagne.'”

The Limas found their hotel room to be clean but small. When the Mikes started talking about how spacious their room was, the Limas were understandably confused. When the Limas saw the Mikes’ rooms, it looked like the hotel had taken 2 of the itty-bitty rooms like the Limas had and jammed them together.
Mabel explained that she’d paid $8 for a room upgrade. “$8 well spent” was the consensus.

Day zero : Puerto Rico : Go Sports

The Limas and the Mikes explored San Juan. They even checked out some exotic food. Linda was taken aback when she realized that her prawns still had their eyes. Mike and Mabel explained that she only had to cut off the heads but that didn’t seem to mollify her. Linda did feel better when the prawns’ remains were given to the restaurant’s cat. This was possibly because it punished the prawns for looking so creepy.

The Julietts arrived mid dayish. They were shocked at how tiny their room was and how huge the Mikes room was.

It seems that most of the group are fascinated by a football rivalry between University of Michigan and Michigan State. They watched a game with these teams in the Mikes’ palatial hotel suite. With 10 seconds left in the game, everyone was convinced that State had lost. Isaac was at a wedding. Jim was in the powder room. Ken was still in flight to San Juan. Merle had left the suite for one reason or another. The only male in the group who was watching the game was Larry. He hadn’t watched a football game in 2 years and even then he was with the same group. There was a fumble by one team which allowed the other team to get a winning touchdown. The girls were very excited and Larry was quite surprised at how high they could jump as they screamed and carried on. The guys, except Larry, were agonized about what they’d missed. Larry asked if the player wasn’t supposed to have dropped the ball.

The Kilos arrived much later. Their first flight missed their connecting flight and they had to rebook.
They were shocked at how tiny their room was and how huge the Mikes room was.

There was champagne.

Day 1 : Puerto Rico : Schrödinger’s cat

We used our “Faster to the Fun” passes to board the ship around noon. We then spent the afternoon on the sun deck, occasionally using the water slide, and dipping into the pool.

There was champagne.

The Isaacs arrived around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. The group was complete.

The Carnival Liberty had a real martini bar (unlike last year when the ladies were forced to make their own martini bar out of some crappy wine bar) and the ladies were there every day at 7:00pm. It’s good to know that you can count on some things.

I’ve written before about the tradition of smuggling booze onto cruise ships. This is inspired by the cruise’s policy of first bleeding you dry with the cost of the cruise, then charging outrageous prices for drinks on the ship, and then telling you that you can’t bring you own booze onto the ship.
To get around this, folks have developed strategies for getting booze on the ship without getting caught. The most popular method seems to be getting bladders that can hold liquid, filling them with your favorite beverage, and hiding it amongst your clothes in your luggage.
This time, Merle got caught. The cruise folks x-ray luggage for contraband and the x-rays showed Merle’s contraband on their screens. Surprisingly, the contraband in question was an iron. Who knew that irons weren’t allowed on a ship? When they rooted thru Merle’s luggage for the offending iron, they found the bladders, too. Bastards. (At the end of the cruise, the iron was returned but not the booze. Bastards.)

Some of the ladies explained Larry’s blog to Kathy and how Larry had posted riveting and hilarious stories about other cruises. Kathy asked how she could see these posts. The ladies explained that Larry posted links to the posts on Facebook.
“Why don’t I see his posts now?”
“You’re not his Facebook friend. You need to become his Facebook friend to see the posts.”
“Why would I want to do that? I don’t want to be his friend” said Kathy, a trifle more indignantly than Larry thought necessary.
Larry said “You probably can see the posts if Linda ‘likes’ them. Unfortunately, Linda doesn’t often ‘like’ my posts.”
It occurs to the author that Kathy may never read this.

Cruise ships usually have a “muster drill” on the first day. This is where they drag everyone away from their champagne, make them stand in their designated spots by the lifeboats and pretend that we weren’t going to die if the ship sank.
While we were standing around, Janice chatted with our assigned drowning-preventer whom she’d made friends with earlier in the day. Then Janice made friends with a group of people behind her who were from the same big city that Janice knew.

There was champagne.

Day 2 : St. Thomas : None Shall Pass

Linda had been to visit St. Thomas 10 years ago and fell in love with an isolated beach on the far side of the island. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember the name of the beach or how to get there. When she got to the dock, she spoke with Charles who knew about the beach but regretted to inform Linda that the beach had been overdeveloped in the last 10 years and was no longer the paradise that she remembered.
Fortunately, Charles knew of another isolated beach that we’d probably enjoy: Secret Harbor.
We all piled into Charles’ white van and went to inspect it.
For reasons known only to themselves, the women insisted that only the men inspect the beach. The men suspected a trap but resigned themselves to their fate.
The men gave the beach a thumbs up and everyone enjoyed a fun afternoon of sun, sand, swimming, and snorkeling. Larry, who’d had such difficulty with snorkeling before, found that snorkeling was much easier with a mask that didn’t leak like a sieve.
At the appointed hour, Charles picked us up in a blue van (apparently, it had always been blue) and got us back to the ship.

There was champagne.

Day 3 : Dominica : Clark’s House of Disguise

We all went river tubing. Larry was first to go tush over teakettle into the river and fell in 2 more times to keep his rank on the agility scale. The staff pointed out that Larry’s left knee was bleeding. They called this a memory mark.

Not to be outdone, Linda also fell out of her tube but that was the fault of the staff and not Linda’s fault at all. Linda got a scratch on her arm and everyone agreed that it was much worse than Larry’s.

After everyone gathered at the martini bar, the men started walking to the sports bar in the casino. Kathy called to Larry: “Larry! What’re you going to do in a sports bar in a casino? You don’t drink or gamble.”

Larry answered: “I don’t do sports either” and joined the guys.

At dinner, Larry had braised ox tongue for an appetizer. He vaguely remembered having it as a kid in the old country but he’d forgotten any details. He enjoyed the taste and texture despite the moans and gagging sounds from the rest of the group. He considered explaining that the ox tongue had the taste and texture of liver pâté but figured that wouldn’t reduce the moans and gagging.

Day 4 : Barbados : Les Despicables

We went on a pirate party ship. We all had t-shirts with the sleeves cut off (we looked very butch), eye patches, and hoop earrings. Larry also had a rasta hat with its own dreadlocks and a plastic hook.
There was snorkeling over a sunken ex-ship and then more snorkeling where there were fish and sea turtles to be seen. There was even a plank that folks were forced to walk. Larry was initially giving the snorkeling a miss but Jim talked him into it. Larry isn’t usually one to give a <bad word> about fishes or any kind of turtle but found that he was having a really good time anyway. He’d forgotten that the key to a good time is to let folks talk you into it.
There was no champagne on the ship but there was an awful lot of rum.

The subject of Larry’s blog came up again during dinner. Larry was known to write about the group’s cruises in his blog with a captivating narrative style that made you wish that his stories never ended. For one reason or another, Larry used aliases instead of folks’ real names in these posts. Mabel wasn’t happy with Larry’s previous choices for her alias.
Mabel said “I want to pick my own alias. I want to be… Monique.”
Larry said “I cannot do that without compromising my journalistic integrity. Without my journalistic integrity, I’m nothing. I’m sorry, Monique.”

Day 5 : St. Lucia : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

St. Lucia was a full day excursion. We visited a banana plantation and had bananas fresh from the tree, tasted other local cuisine, relaxed on a beach, had a mud bath with almost scalding mud, washed off the mud under a waterfall, and ate some more.
We were having a great time but getting awfully tired of riding in a van with all of these hills and hairpin turns.
During one of the rides, Isaac complained that the loose seat belt buckle was giving him an anal rub. At the waterfall, Irene slipped and fell on her tailbone. Irene’s injury was much worse than Isaac’s.

During dinner, Monique asked that for tomorrow, Larry use a shirt that was easy to decipher. Larry had been wearing t-shirts with weird/geeky jokes on them. Since most of the group weren’t weird geeks, they’d some difficulty understanding them.
Larry said “Well, I’ve got a blank one.”
Curiously enough, Larry wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He only had two t-shirts left. One was blank and the other was a joke about Unix command syntax. The Unix joke wouldn’t be easy to decypher.

Also during dinner, the ladies revealed the big surprise for St. Maarten. We’d already known that the plan was to go on some kind of treasure hunt thru downtown. The surprise was that we wouldn’t be teamed with our spouses. The husbands were to draw lots to select a female other than their wife.
The resultant pairings were:
Irene and Ken
Janice and Mike
Kathy and Jim
Linda and Isaac
Monique and Larry
Larry assumed that some couples didn’t compete well together and figured that mixing things up would reduce that tension.

Day 6 : St. Maarten : There’s No Place Like ~/

During breakfast, Linda and Larry chatted with another couple, let’s call them the Oscars, who described the one time that they changed their assigned dinner seating. This was several years ago. A woman at the Oscars’ table in her mid-seventies, let’s say Nancy, was talking about her sexual exploits at the assisted living center where she lived. Nancy also talked about how she was working her way through as many men as possible on the cruise and was dropping strong hints to the Oscars that she’d consider adding Mister Oscar to the list.
This inspired Linda to discuss the pairings for today’s scavenger hunt and how some folks were calling that “wife swapping”.
As Linda and Larry left the restaurant, they walked right past the Mikes again. Monique jumped up and down and shouted and got the Limas’ attention. The Limas walked back, apologized again, and chatted with the Mikes.
At this point, the Oscars came out, saw the Limas chatting with the Mikes, and asked if the Mikes were some of the swappers.

When the group got together, Larry explained the Unix joke on his shirt. Someone asked why Larry wasn’t wearing a blank shirt that Monique could understand.
Larry – “I said I’d do that but I didn’t wanna keep…”
Monique – “Insulting me?”
Larry – “Yeah. That was it.”

When we got to St. Maarten, we separated into teams with our pseudo-spouses. Monique said that she’d have an advantage because Larry was supposed to be the studious one. Larry had his doubts because he’d been showing his O’Blivious roots all week.
Irene and Ken came in first. Linda and Isaac came in second by only one point. Monique and Larry came in dead last.
Monique said that Irene and Isaac are both really competitive so that helped them win. Larry also has a competitive streak but it was a nasty spiteful thing that was better left buried. If Monique had a competitive streak, Larry didn’t see it. Then again, he has O’Blivious roots.

Another tradition on Carnival is to sing “Happy Birthday” when presenting birthday cake during dinner. Usually, it is sung by folks who have no familiarity with western musical keys. Larry was aware that he couldn’t find a musical key with a map and compass so he kept his own counsel during these songs. However, Irene could sing on key, or at least better that the rest of the choir, and sometimes ran over and joined the singers.
Tonight, a nearby table got their cake and song. Janice insisted that it was the birthday of one of her new friends, a little old lady at another table despite the little old lady’s protests that her birthday was in February. The little old lady also got a cake and a song.

Day 7 : San Juan, Puerto Rico again

Since the Limas had an early flight, they had to get up very early to get off the ship. They set the alarm for 5:30am. Ugh. It didn’t help that a number of folks were celebrating their last night on ship by shouting and slamming doors until 2:30am just outside of the Limas stateroom.
The Limas caught their flights on time but had a very long layover in Miami. They had another stop in Chicago where they caught up with the Julietts who had that same flight from Chicago to Grand Rapids. The Julietts had later first flights so they stayed on the ship until the cruise folks kicked them off.

At Grand Rapids we said our farewells and went back to our real lives.