Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup

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Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup

Tomorrow I step off this here tugboat and into the unknown. It's really made me think.

I’m not afraid of it. I’ve allowed, even cultivated, that happening.

Yesterday on one of our onboard movie channels they were playing and replaying The Grapes of Wrath. It s such a fine film, just can’t be touched, why am I afraid there will soon be a cheap-ass remake on TNT or something sometime soon, something like “Calgon presents Chris Noth in The Grapes of Wrath, only on TNT…”

I digress.

I was watching this beautiful film, which I think was chosen with some sense of ironic humor, and over the course of the day I happened upon the same scene. It’s a small one but one that touches me the most. I think right now it has a particular resonance.

It’s nighttime, and the Joads are leaving for California the next morning. Ma Joad is sitting by a small fire, I think, and she has this tiny ceramic bulldog. Written on its back, it says “souvenir of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, 1904.” If I’m a little off on that wording, forgive me. Point is, she looks at this little knick-knack and you can just see the happiness that is past. Her time is done, and what’s left may just be remainder. She’s losing everything, her whole family is, and she has this and one or two other meaningless (to anyone else) trinkets she can fit into her pocket. That bulldog has no significance to anyone else.

I have many baubles from my travels overseas, and from shows I’ve done, and such. Everyone here does. Gifts for others, souvenirs for myself.

Will we all one day find ourselves sitting by the fire like Ma Joad, gazing at trinkets?

As I sit here, I am watching our GPS channel, and I find us at latitude 25 degrees 48:49, longitude 76 degrees 21:09. This morning I woke to land on the screen for the first time in days. I think I will sight land before long off my balcony, as we pass through the Bahamas.

We're nearly home.

On this world cruise alone, I have logged 34,147 nautical miles. Do your own conversion - I would but I have limited internet time and I can't buy another card because my accounts are closed. Yes, it's THAT close to time. I can't imagine how many miles I've logged on this ship altogether in my time here, but I'm going to venture probably 150,000 nautical miles might not be too far off.

Last night there was a really nice gala farewell party and show, sort of a "greatest hits" of the world cruise. We did a couple of numbers, the lounge acts did a few, there were readings by staff and officers of "world cruise memories..." and... A week ago in a bar onboard, we had a night where we jammed with the band as a sort of show for the night. It went really late and I was D-runk by the end, I will admit, but we had a great time. A couple of the other acts on board got involved, and we did this really fun on-the-fly version of "You've Lost The Lovin' Feelin'" where I was backed up by Joe and Nathaniel Reed, who does a cabaret act on board. Later we did "Proud Mary" with all of the singers on board making up their own backup parts. Both those went over so well that night Jamie asked us to do those for the farewell, and while we had a good time doing them again (and on the big stage as opposed to in the cabaret space in the Horizon lounge) we all agreed the songs themselves had been better after a few drinks. I came here to sing Bizet, and yet somehow two + years on, my final performance on the stage of the M/S Seven Seas Voyager was singing a bass line to "Proud Mary." Go figure.

As of tomorrow, I can be reached by phone once more....

Any minute now, my ship is coming in.

World Cruise Video

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some forever, not for better

Two years ago today I stepped aboard the Voyager for the first time. Little did I know that this ship would be my home for the better part of two years.

This time is coming to an end, and this experience has changed my life. Not necessarily just the ship, but the ship, this job, was the catalyst for much change. When I leave in a week, a week from today, it will be a different but (I think) stronger, better person than the one I was when I stepped aboard two years ago. I have been through some of the worst times of my life in the past two years... and some of the best.

Mostly, I have learned a great deal, even forgetting what I've earned due to the travel and seeing a great deal of the world.

In some areas of my life, "I'll still be out to sea," but in those that I believe matter most I know quite clearly what I want. This is a picture from the first evening aboard the ship, leaving Ft. Lauderdale for a crossing to Funchal, Madeira, on April 23, 2005.

Time, time, time; and it's time, time, time

twiddling thumbs

checking watch

packing a little more

looking at watch again

Thirteen from today I will be free from the ship and on US soil. The last few days have been revisiting sometimes bittersweet memories of old ports and eating a lot of Italian food. Other than the opportunity to play with monkeys in Gibraltar, there's not much of note between here and the finish of the contract. For example, today is Valencia. :P

He Ain't Heavy

A video from Jamie of the morning in Nice before I headed home last contract.
What else do you do in France?

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Been around the world and I, I, I

...continue that Lisa Stansfield lyric, exchanging the masculine pronoun references for female.

Anyway, funniness that has recently come across my desk...

Go to google.

Click on maps.

Click on get directions.

Enter "New York, New York" to "Paris, France."

Read line #23.


UPDATED: Kurt Vonnegut has passed away at 84. I suppose this means we will never meet. :(

Born In Arizona, Moved to Babylonia

My song lyric post headings have apparently stumped some of you. Ha.

Okay, jeez-o-pete, I am in frickin' EGYPT and today I saw the frickin' PYRAMIDS and KING TUT'S TREASURES and MUMMIES and the SPHINX and I rode a CAMEL and I sat outside and smoked a shisha, ... I can't even begin to express how amazing today was. No photos were allowed inside the Egyptian museum, unfortunately. While I'm here at this hotel and have some good internet speeds I want to upload the photos.

23 days more until the USA!

This is the side of the Great Pyramid.
This is a photo that is in perfect focus... it's out the bus window at a mosque we were passing, we drove through a mighty sandstorm. The wind was fierce all day and I had so much sand everywhere it was... well, it wasn't pretty.
This is a fauxbelisk, as I termed it, outside the place where our Nile River Dinner Cruise departed from tonight. VERY cheesy and touristy, thank god it was free for us. Food was good, though.
This is actually from yesterday in Sharm-El-Sheikh, which is basically Cozumel meets Egypt. I bought a lovely shisha of my own, though. Today we also enjoyed this popular local pastime... you really have to try this to understand it.
A tomb wall at Giza.

In front of the 2nd pyramid, the only one with some of the limestone facing still intact around the top.
The Eiffel Tower.
This is my camel. I named him Osteoporosis, for the Egyptian goddess of bone decay. He was friendly, did not bite or spit, and was quite an effervescent conversationalist.
This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. This is one happy camel.

I have a photo series from yesterday in S-E-S that basically details the extremities of the internationalism of its booming tourist trade - eight different types of "national food" restaurants (Italian, Chinese, etc.) within a block of each other. For now, though, I close... it has been a long, long day. This morning we could not reach the pier safely, so they chanced tendering us in to the pier. It was a rough ride and we made it, then two hours inland... tomorrow, Memphis and Sakara, the Alexandria, and we meet the ship. Woof.

LONG days. Amazing days. Still, one thing could make them all that much better. . .

It's barbaric, but hey, it's home

So. Oman.

This man was ANGRY. You see, he was responsible for bullying every one of the drivers of the inactive taxis in the photo below into asking $100/US per person for a RIDE INTO TOWN from the port of Salalah, Oman. I figured a way to get into town and back for $10 Omani Real, which is abour $26. What a "great deal."
Anyway, not only was Salalah less exciting, beautiful, and hospitible than Muscat, but the ride into town was far more interesting than the town itself. I did, however, find this incongruous place that sold candy by the case cheaply. I bought Snickers, these Arabian chocolate cake things, and a traditional local candy called "Zombie Chewy Pops." They also had a case or two or a candy that's called "Launching Missile Candy toy" which is basically a little army guy with an anti-aircraft missile launcher, and the missile is the candy. You load it, and apparently launch it into your mouth or across the room. Yeah. You can imagine the myriad of reasons that disturbed me. I wish I'd bought it.
I did, however, buy a traditional local coffee pot and this exciting Mosque shaped alarm clock that sounds like all hell is breaking loose with authentic calls to prayer.

This is the pass we had to wear when leaving the ship.
This is the majesty of the Sultan's Palace in Muscat, and some dopey guy trying to look like a photojournalist or something.
I wandered off by myself into the night of Muscat, and I can't say enough about what a great place it was. Man, I loved it... this is the entrance to the old souq (market) with the moon above.
Recognize the pulltab above? Yeah, we did away with those something like 20 years ago, or more. 30 maybe. Here, they're everywhere...
This is a shot across the harbor in Muscat of the watchtower, which I have beautiful daytime photos of as well. One interesting fact is that this is the watchtower Jimi Hendrix was talking about.