Tonight's picture was taken on July 27 of 2008. Five years ago today, or four days after he was diagnosed with cancer. As you can see here, Mattie was doing one of his favorite things on our deck..... playing in his frog sandbox. Mattie fell in love with sand in preschool, he most certainly did not love it as a toddler! This sandbox is still with us today and it sits in front of our deck door and contains many of Mattie's toys inside. Children who live in our complex come visit and play in Mattie's frog sandbox. This sometimes catches me by surprise, because when children our outside our deck door, I can hear them from inside our home.
Fun Fact of the Day: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~ Mark Twain
Bon Voyage Southampton as we are on our way to Barcelona! We started the day checking out of the Grant Hotel in Southampton after eating a light breakfast and packing up for the short trip to the cruise terminal to embark the Crown Princess. Anyone who has traveled on cruises knows the special and intense chaos of a “turn-around day”, which is the day when a cruise comes to an end, all the existing passengers disembark, the ship is clean, provisioned and then a few hours later, a brand new round of passengers embark and start their vacations. It is especially hard on the crew who has to say goodbye to the passengers they were caring for, prepare the ship for another journey, and then put on a happy face and greet the next batch of passengers matching their fresh enthusiasm. It’s also not that easy to pack-up at the hotel, check out, take a car to the terminal, direct the baggage, check in, walk the gangway, get on the ship and migrate up to our rooms, but we managed. Having taken almost a dozen cruises now, we are starting the get the hang of it, and the Princess Cruise people go to great lengths to make the whole process as smooth and as idiot proof as possible, which is much appreciated!
Also, this is Peter writing the blog, not Vicki. I know it has been some time (perhaps a few years now) since I last wrote, but I wanted to give Vicki a little break from the daily postings in the hope it will help her a little with the headaches. Our plan is to split up the blogs during the trip with Vicki taking most of the in-port days, and me taking the seven at-sea days (as not a lot typically happens on these days). So that is our plan and we’ll see how it works out!
Once we boarded the ship this afternoon, we were waiting for our bags to be brought up to the room. Mind you, when one arrives at the cruise terminal, the dock staff immediately take your bags from you, which are tagged with your name and cabin information. While you are checking in and walking the gangway onto the ship, a process that can only be described as ballet done on forklifts by longshoreman transpires. It is amazing to watch these workmen coordinate heavy cages filled with luggage, supplies, and other items to be loaded onto the ship, with all the skills and expertise of prima ballerinas and all while operating heavy machinery! It is like watching a beehive or a colony of ants all working together for a common good. The net result is that your bags magically appear at the door of your cabin an hour or two since leaving them on the pier.
So while Vicki was unpacking, I went topside and took several pictures of several common areas of the ship. If you have not been on a large cruise ship you cannot quite appreciate the sheer size, scale and height of these ocean-going behemoths. Vicki says it is amazing the ship can even float, and I agree! The Crown Princess was built in 2006 and is part of Princess’s Grand Class of sailing ships. I will share more specifics about the ship on another day, but you can see in the pictures just how big this ship of 3,000 passengers and 110,000 tons really is!
Just before we set sail, a voice came on the loudspeaker and was making cryptic announcements about a “A-class on deck 10 in sector B” and some other gibberish. We naturally registered this somewhat strange announcement, but it was unclear what it was all about, so we dismissed it. Ten minutes later we went to exit our cabin and our cabin steward Art told us to please clear the hallway as a medical team needed to come down the hallway right past our door. Needless to say we were alarmed, but we quickly put two and two together and figured out that the cryptic announcement we heard ten minutes prior was actually code words for a medical emergency on deck ten (our cabin in on deck ten) just down the hallway. Using the spyglass in the door, Vicki was able to see a young girl in her 20s being rolled past on a stretcher, with an IV and an ice pack being trailed by what appeared to be a sister and a parent. All this was happening about 60 minutes before sailing!
We were glad to see this girl had been stabilized, but it was clear that she and her family were being taken off the ship, and most likely canceling their vacation. Although Vicki and I did not say anything to each other about it at the time, I think we both felt terrible for this girl and her family, in that in one minute everything was wonderful and full of life and excitement, with a pending cruise and the promise of exotic destinations, only to have it all crushed in an instant when a member of their family comes down ill unexpectedly. It reminded me of our situation with Mattie when we were happy and felt like the luckiest people in life, only to have our entire world and life be crushed with a single sentence: “Your child has cancer”. We wish this girl a speedy recovery and her family all the best as their focus turns from cruises and pleasure trips to a hospital and a medical condition. It is amazing how life can change on you in an instant.
Anyway, we set sail at approximately 4:00pm from Southampton under gray skies and a light breeze. We are now passing the Isle of Wight heading towards the English Channel where we are steaming south-southwest to head towards the Bay of Biscay off the coast of France. The captain came on the ship’s speaker system and provided us with several updates regarding our planned course, and already he has warned us of swells and waves once we enter the Bay of Biscay, so that should be interesting to say the least. As Vicki says, “let the rocking and rolling begin!” Fortunately, Vicki has already taken her Dramamine so she has can prevent her seasickness from developing, which explains her somewhat cavalier statement about the waves. As many of you know well, Vicki does not handle motion very well, so I give her a lot of credit for being a real trooper and putting up with airplane flights and fourteen days of sailing the high seas.
So hopefully this blog post was bearable and that our hundreds of faithful readers will tolerate the guest writer interspersed over the next fourteen days. On a closing note, I have two pictures of Mattie posted in the room, which is something I always do when I travel as a reminder that although Mattie is no longer with us physically, he is always remembered and with us in our hearts and minds no matter where we go.
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