DAY 4–THIRD FULL SEA DAY

by The Don · April 15, 2023

Day 4 started with more rain. No pickle ball. No outside activities. No problem. Just more time to make new friends.

Don’t judge us, but we slept until 11 am (really 9 am, but the clock has now sprung forward twice!). We skipped breakfast for the second day, well, technically breakfast was already over when we exited our cabin, so maybe breakfast skipped us? Just meant that we started the day with lunch.

We shared a table with a couple who are sure to become our fast friends, Chuck and Barbara from Miami. Chuck and Barbara are a little senior to us in time on Earth, but we will have to hustle to keep up with them. We love them! Chuck is a semi-retired attorney and Barbara works as a therapist in the women’s prison system. They have the most awesome stories. Chuck’s kids just talked him into giving up the Maserati. We swapped trial battle stories. Chuck has handled litigation involving major cruise lines, organized crime, and lots of things in between. We had to do some selfies with our new friends. They are at the bottom of the page.

Then we met another fun couple, Diane and Bill, from Jupiter, FL. Bill is retired law enforcement and at one time worked the Port of New York, with a license to board any ship he wanted to board! Diane ran her own private pre-school. We are on a ship with only 9 child passengers. She is as happy about that as we are. Bill gave me the first noteworthy quote of the week: “perfect financial planning is spending your last dollar on the day you pass away and making sure your check to the undertaker bounces!” He bought and brought his own scooter to get around the ship and it is quite a bit speedier than the rental models. If I am ever in the market for such a thing, I will follow his lead. Watching Diane shake her head as Bill peeled off to show me how fast the scooter is was priceless.

Next, we chatted with Micki, from South Carolina, whom we recognized because on Day 1 we shared an elevator with her, wherein Melissa noted her Buc-ees tee shirt and let her know how much we love Buc-ees. If you don’t know what Buc-ees is, check it out online. It is a chain of country store travel centers with 100+ gas pumps, homemade food and snacks, the cleanest bathrooms that have flat screen televisions. Anyway, Micki and I compared notes on memorializing our travels. She does a scrap book that she updates every day. There is a photo below. It is so creative!

We headed to the Ocean Bar where Melissa had a Fashionista. Photo below. We met 2 new couples there. Peter and Debbie from Bonita Springs and Dave and Shari from Key West. Peter insists he is not retired as Debbie contends he is unemployable. That gave me a good laugh. Shari is an artist who sells her wares to Key West tourists, but only when she feels like it. Another couple living the dream. We made plans to meet again for drinks on Wednesday.

Next up, we shared a table in the dining room with 2 fun couples. Alexis and James are both Brits who lived in Virginia for 4 decades. He worked for the Washington Post years ago and I picked his brain about Tony Kornheiser (not an enjoyable guy), Michael Wilbon (is an enjoyable guy) and John Feinstein (great writer and even better at authoring books). We would meet up with them again later in the evening in the Piano Bar.

The second couple were John and Nancy from Fort Myers. John is old enough to be my father, but looks young enough to be my older brother. They wrote a book on their experience living in Italy entitled Not In A Tuscan Villa. It sold more than 20,000 copies. Color me impressed. After dinner we headed to the Piano Bar where we met up with Alexis and James and shared another table. The piano players played most of our requests. The highlight was a medley combining Stairway to Heaven and Hotel California. Melissa and I then headed to the Rolling Stone Rock Room and stayed until the band played its last number. We lose another hour’s sleep tonight. I predict a very late wake up