We’re back, and I have news that’ll be so obvious that I probably should state it. But here goes: Being a passenger on a cruise ship is ordinally better than being a crew member. There, I said it. Like Brent Musberger describing the way-obvious antics of the players in a football game.
The fact is that I started as a passenger. When I played with the Modernaires we got booked on the Viking Serenade on its winter repositioning from Vancouver to Los Angeles. We got passage for two, plane tickets from LAX to Vancouver for two, and no money, but we in turn got free passage for two in return for two shows on the sixth day of the seven-day cruise, one for each seating. When we arrived at the ship, the agent (Jay Gredon’s father Joe) had a proposition for us. “Uh-oh,” I thought, leaning on my memories of working on the Azure Seas. “here we go . . .”
Joe asked us if we’d do a dance set for a hundred, cash. Sure, we all said.
A little further up the road Jan and I booked a handful of cruises on her vacation periods, all in the Caribbean, one with Carnival out of New Orleans, the other out of Galveston just after 9/11, which was the best deal ever on a cruise. I had a “real” job then, and scheduled a vacation with Jan, who tends to have hard and fast schedules depending on the passage of the semesters across the calendar.
I will miss our cabin steward. I will miss having all my food prepared for me and served with great flourish by our Portugese waiter. Did you know that, here on land, you are required to PAY for food? There’s no salmon at the breakfast buffet either.
How I adjust to this reentry is anyone’s guess.
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