[Worldtrippers home] [Cruise lecture home]
Yesterday afternoon at 5:00 pm, Gail got a phone call from Sammi, our Cruise Director. (Russell was taking a nap.) Sammi was confirming the dates for our last two lectures. In addition, Sammi wondered if we could give one additional lecture.
Even with stretching and rewriting, we only had five “Adventure of a Lifetime” lectures. So the six and final lecture would have to be on one of Russell’s original science/history topics. Gail had seen his drafts of “Crossword Puzzles” and “Longitude,” and thought that “Crossword Puzzles” was the stronger presentation.
After meeting with Simon, our latest schedule looks like this:
Yesterday afternoon, we also started hitting rougher waters, with swells as high as 2.5 meters. It was a rocky night, and by Thursday, May 25, the day of our lecture, it was even worse. We heard from a lot of passengers that they weren’t feeling well. We saw a lot of passengers sitting very quietly and still in chairs at the lowest midship points possible. We heard from Karin Luppes, the Housekeeping General Manager, that many people were staying in their cabins and ordering room service.
Rough waters
In the crew section of the ship we met Shona, the HR manager (left). She told us that one of the most important people to know on the ship was Karin, the Housekeeping General Manager. So we made a point to meet her as well (right).
Fortunately, our lecture would not be until 3:00 in the afternoon. Also fortunately, neither Russell nor Gail was feeling sick. (We had learned some preventative measures from a previous cruise, where we had both become very seasick.)
Preceding the lecture in the Cabaret Lounge was the Princess@Sea Fashion Show. Along with a dozen other ladies, Gail had volunteered to model two outfits. (Gail didn’t like the original ones proposed by the onboard shopkeeper, and ended up picking out her own outfits.) Gail got to walk the runway twice, as all of the ladies struggled to keep their balance on what is one of the rockiest spots on the ship.
Gail at the "Princess Style at Sea Runway Fashion Show”
Our lecture went well. Despite the rough seas, we got another strong turnout of about 50 people, some of whom left their sickbeds specifically to see us. We talked more about building our mountain house. While Part 2 was not as side-splittingly funny as Part 1 (with its Topsider disaster stories), we concentrated on entertaining stories about fighting bats, fixing leaks and building stairs. We got feedback that our back-and-forth banter is getting smoother.
As usual, we tried to leave the audience with a cliffhanger for the next lecture. We talked about how three years after our final inspection, our property would be involved in the seventh-worst wildfire in California history. (There were audible gasps from the audience.)
(The best news is that we finally succeeded at video recording the entire lecture. Gail had borrowed our son Cameron’s video camera to record every lecture. For the last two lectures, she successfully turned the camera on, but neglected to push the “record” button.)
We are building a strong, positive reputation all over the ship. At last night’s mainstage show (a Motown Revue), Sammi even highlighted one of upcoming day’s activities as “Russell and Gail have another lecture.”
Sammi also had some advice for us. She said that the Home Office doesn’t like it if you become so popular that you overshadow other activities and events aboard ship. So we have a fine line to walk if we want to be considered for future cruises.
Lecture No. 4. Two more to go!
