Friday, May 19, 2006

Off Until Memorial Day!

Many moons ago, I boarded the Windjammer Cruiseline's "Polynesia", a four-masted wooden sailing ship out of St. Maarten, for what I figured to be a real-life adventure. Y'know...like in the commercial, where everyone pitches in to help sail? Yeah, right. The only part of the ad that lived up to its billing was the rustic accomodations. Like, rooms below the water level, for instance. And sailing? Well, when you turn on a motor to get from one place to the next, I don't call it sailing. In fact, neither did they. They called it "motor sailing."

Still...we visited some cool places that most cruiseships don't get to. Places like Anguilla, Nevis, and Saba. (Loved Saba!) Anyway, one day we were anchored off Anguilla, and to the portside was this tiny island--kinda like the one on the Windows wallpaper.

Cool, I thought. What a neat place to do some snorkeling. I mean, this spit of land was about the size of a couple of football fields. And so remote. Primitive.

Imagine the dismay when I got there and instantly ran into an American chick selling t-shirts... and took Mastercard as payment.

My point is that here I am, leaving tomorrow, and already I'm lamenting the pop culture events I'm gonna miss.

The Clippers playing game seven in Phoenix on Monday.
The Preakness on Saturday.
The Apprentice finale.
The American Idol finale.

And yet...how much you wanna wager I manage to somehow catch them onboard ship?

Sigh. It's really hard to get away from it all...but then, who really wants to?



Sidenote: Windjammer ships truly are a whole different experience. In the early 90's, the Fantome (sister ship to the Poly) went down with its captain and crew in a hurricane after getting the passengers to land in Guatemala.

(And, lest anyone misunderstand, no...I'm not cruising on a Windjammer this week.)

3 comments:

Brooke said...

Hurry home!!!!!!! We miss ya!!!!!!
Hope you are having a ball!

Carol Burnside aka Annie Rayburn said...

Hope you're having a great time. If you're tuned in on the ship - did you catch the Am. Idol finale? Pretty decent entertainment.

Randy said...

Grrr...I could've caught it, but I didn't. I was in the casino when I happened to look up at the television monitor in the bar, and heard the last couple of seconds before they announced Taylor. Since then, I've seen a few clips, and it looks like I missed some great duets. I DID however get to see the Ryan Seacrest interview with Taylor, Katherine, and Randy...it was interesting to hear them say that once you get to the final two, it's not so competitive because you both get virtually the same thing--the contracts, etc.