With nothing but sea days ahead of me until I reached
Florida, I realized I would have to make a serious change in my approach to the
cruising situation. There would be no moret ports to visit and the facilities on
the ship weren’t going to change, so I’d have to up my efforts in searching for
some people to hang out with who wouldn’t assume I’m staff and try to tip me
for talking to them.
My initial sleuthing for conversations turned up some
promising results in unexpected places, mainly my dinner table. The brash
American couple turned out to be just one brash American drowning out an
interesting one. In the odd moments when the wife wasn’t bragging about how
great her children are, how refined her musical tastes are, or how well she lies to her high
school students, the husband was able to sneak in the odd great story.
It turns out that he was a veteran who has served two full tours
of duty in the Korean War. During one of his leaves in Japan, he and a buddy
went to bar that GIs generally didn’t patronize and they turned out
to be the only foreigners in the place. A man from a large group of local
Japanese came over, picked up a shot glass with some chopsticks, and threw back
a bit of sake. There was a complete language barrier, but the man was able to
communicate a sort of “can you do that?” Now my American dinner-mate had been
taught by his father how to use chopsticks (not a common thing for a white
American family in the ‘40s, I’d imagine) so he confidently grabbed his own
sake with a pair of chopsticks and downed a hefty dose of sake. Immediately he became a
celebrity and his money was no longer any good at that bar, but his new friends
made sure that sake flowed all night. Now that’s a story! Just as he was about to
start another one, he was silenced by his wife who had to impart some haughty
information about her greatness.
My greatest find for more friends on board, however, came
when I stumbled across Shannon and John who were also pretty young (I’m
guessing 38-45) and suffering from the age gap-induced boredom. Not only did we
have that in common, but it turned out they had also been hassled by the same
neo-Nostradamus prophet loon back in Tauranga. They too had been innocently
strolling through town when the bearded bicyclist magically appeared and began
haranguing them with his predictions about the pope and why Putin was going to
launch the nukes. It may have taken me a year to get around this world, but it’s
still small enough for me to meet some people on a boat in the middle of the
Atlantic who had met the same prophesier in a small town in New Zealand.
In addition to sharing experiences, Shannon and John also
shared a passion for travel. In fact, they made me look like a travelling
rookie. Not only had Shannon previously moved her way from China to America
(she thought she’d never have to work again when she arrived and that the
streets would be lined with gold, but then she found herself working at
Walmart) but they were currently 2 years into 4 years of travel. After selling
their home and everything in it, they’d managed to trot the globe and find some
cheap housing by pet-sitting. They’d even found free accommodation by looking after
and bottle-feeding baby kangaroos in Australia. How did I not hear of this
until my trip was almost over!
They also let me in on the gossip that by the mid-Atlantic,
at least 3 people on the ship had died. With the advanced average age of the passengers,
combined with the increased stress of a rocking boat, I guess it’s a fairly
normal occurrence on a transatlantic cruise. I remember my roommate Peter
pointing out at one of our ports of call that there was an ambulance waiting
for one, or several, of our fellow cruisers, but I suppose ambulances are
luxuries reserved for landlubbers. If you go at sea, they must just through you
on ice in the bottom of the ship until the ride is over.
My last major source of camaraderie had died on the
ship himself, but only on the inside. An Australian fellow had quit his lucrative
personal training position in Sydney to come work on this cruise ship, only to
discover it was the worst decision he had ever made. He was able to be
completely candid with me because he was hoping that he would get fired as soon
as possible. His sole source of income was from selling supplements and fitness
equipment to passengers, and since retired folks generally don’t slam back
massive protein shakes after crushing the bench press, his two months of work
had earned him about $64. It wasn’t like he was being particularly challenged,
either. “Most of the time passengers just ask me why their headphones aren’t
working,” he lamented, “or they look into the rubbish bin, see rubbish, and
then ask me if it’s a rubbish bin. I used to be a semi-professional athlete!”
His biggest challenge came from finding ways of taking long extended breaks
without being noticed, and he seemed to be tackling that problem with ease.
“It could be worse,” he admitted “I could be working almost
any other job on board.” He had a relatively cushy job reserved for citizens of
developed countries, whereas almost every other crew member was from a poor
nation and had to be on duty for at least 13 hours every day without any days
off. The cabin stewards only had a 3 hour break at lunch and a 6 hour break at
night. I hope they’re fine operating on just 5 hours of sleep, forever. For
some reason, they change the sheets on the beds twice a day. Can’t we be
satisfied with heavily soiling our sheets just once every day to allow these
workers an extra hour of slumber?
I got into the routine of cruising eventually, hanging out with
my new buddies and eating reasonable amounts of the incredible culinary treats
(several passengers on board had decided upon the unreasonable approach and around
the pool I saw many distended guts topped off with navels that had been thrust
from innies into outies). I had even taken the extra time available on board to
floss my teeth, something I had probably done 6 times in the previous 11
months. As I stared at the chunks the floss had flung onto the mirror, I had a
terrible realization: real life and responsibility was approaching. My trip
would soon be over and I would need to worry about things like jobs, paying
rent, and even buying Windex to clean off the bits of food I would eventually
spatter against a mirror.
I made my way to the top deck to reflect on my coming integration back into society, and spotted several lights poking over the horizon; the marine traffic was beginning to increase as we approached the shores of civilization. The glow from distant Bahamian towns lighting up the night sky were definite signals of my imminent arrival in the USA. Only one more country was now between me and Windex levels of responsibility.
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