Our Wander Years

PCL2 Day 1: Embarkation

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Sparky

Carl and I spent Friday night as guests of his friend Tom in Ft Lauderdale. Tom has a lovely mid-century house in a quiet neighborhood and a lovely new Mercedes S580 in the garage. He gave us a tour of Ft Lauderdale Saturday morning, which gave me a better sense of the city than my combined experience from all previous trips. It also gave me a severe case of auto jealousy as his high-tech automobile was larger, quieter and WAY more sophisticated than my lowly Toyota. I offered to swap cars, straight up, but he declined.

So the basic embarkation plan was to drive to the cruise terminal, drop off Carl and the luggage, take the car to the long-term parking lot, take the shuttle back to the terminal, then accompany Carl through security and check-in. We got to the terminal right on schedule at 12:30pm and everything else went pretty much according to plan, except that Carl didn’t wait for me and went through security and check-in by himself. But the whole process was amazingly swift and efficient and I boarded the ship at 1:17pm – less than 45 minutes from start to finish. Compare that to the more than 4 hours that it took for me to complete the embarkation process for MSC1. I was pretty thrilled. Quick and painless is always thrilling.

Carl and I checked out the cabin – very nice, with an unexpectedly spacious feel to it. Then we went up to the Lido Deck for some lunch. My first impression of the ship: very elegant, very tastefully decorated. After lunch we sat in the grand atrium and listened to two very fine violinists playing some popular tunes. I also had my first cup of Americano coffee from the international cafe there – a place that Jett would have loved. A cute barista that she would have loved too. The coffee was less expensive than on the MSC cruise and the pastries were delicious and free. Gotta love things that are delicious and free.

One quirky feature of the ship that I discovered while on the Lido Deck (on the 16th story of the ship): There are sections of the floor that are made of (hopefully very strong) glass that you can walk on and look straight down at the ocean about 100 feet below. A bit scary, but interesting.

We jumped right into the activities on board, going to the trivia contest at 5:15pm (which we won, though it was more due to our inability to score correctly than to outsmart the small number of other contestants), then to the Solo group (singles on board) at 6:30. Met some nice people at the singles group, but no future wives.

We had dinner in Estrella, one of the two open dining rooms (the third was closed because the ship sailed with about 2,000 passengers – 50% of capacity). I had a very tasty shrimp-and-scallop fettuccine. The dining room was also elegant and very tastefully decorated. Overall, I think the Sky Princess is much nicer than the MSC Meraviglia.

We ended the day at a comedy show that was mediocre. I actually dozed off for a bit. Hopefully future shows will be better.

I was concerned about getting access to the internet so that I can post to the blog – because I know that my readers wait impatiently for every new post. On that score I got four pleasant surprises. The first was price. Because Carl is an “elite” Princess customer, I got the internet package for half price – about $50 for the entire week. Cheap. The second surprise was that the “one device” plan, while allowing just one device at a time to connect, could easily be switched between devices. So I could carry my phone and have access to the internet while walking around the ship but could also switch to the laptop to do these posts. Very convenient. The third pleasant surprise was that the internet access had no data limit. On previous cruises I had to buy a package of maybe 100 minutes and carefully monitor my usage. No such constraint here. A lovely surprise indeed. The final surprise: the Princess internet is AWESOME. On previous cruises the connection was slow and balky. On the Sky Princess the internet is arguably faster than my internet connection at my home in Ft Myers. This is due, apparently, to Princess using communication satellites that are in a much lower orbit than the geosynchronous ones.

We got a very nice sunset as we left Ft Lauderdale. A good start what I expect will be a very nice cruise.

Categories: FL, PCL2, Places | Leave a comment

PCL2 preparation

Posted on December 5, 2021 by Sparky

I don’t normally highlight the preparation needed for a cruise because, frankly, very little preparation is generally needed. Pay the fare, provide the documents, get on board. Simple. With PCL2 it wasn’t quite so simple. Why? Two things: COVID and the Medallion app.

I don’t have to explain COVID to you, I hope. But Princess had a requirement that all adult passengers be fully vaccinated (check – 2 doses and a booster) AND produce a negative COVID test taken no more than 48 hours prior to embarkation. Normal COVID tests – the PCR tests – normally take 24 to 48 hours to produce a result. That would be cutting it very close, which for me was a recipe for high stress. So my strategy was to schedule 2 tests on Thursday, 2 days before embarkation: a PCR test and a rapid response (antigen) test. That way I would be sure of getting a result within the 48 hours and if the antigen test – which is less reliable – produced a false positive, I would have the (presumably negative) PCR test as a backup.

So I first scheduled the PCR test at CVS to be done at 2:30pm on Thursday. No problem. Then I tried to schedule an antigen test at CVS to immediately follow. Nope. CVS would not let me schedule two COVID tests on the same day. So I went to the Walgreens website and successfully scheduled an antigen test for 3:15pm Thursday. Problem solved.

Well, not quite.

I got the PCR test at CVS without a problem, then drove to Walgreens, arriving at 3:05pm. But there was a sign on the pharmacy drive-thru window: “Pharmacy closed.” Huh? Walgreens pharmacy closed? WTF?

I went inside for an explanation. No pharmacist on duty. And they can’t legally open the pharmacy without a certified pharmacist. I pleaded, to no avail. They suggested, not very helpfully, that another Walgreens might be able to give me the test. But all tests are scheduled online and the earliest I could schedule another Walgreens test was Friday morning at 11am. I scheduled it, but was very uncomfortable cutting it that close (I was schedule to drop Rusty off at 2pm). So what was my Plan B?

Well, I remembered seeing a trailer at the Edison Mall that claimed to provide “walk-in COVID testing.” So I drove to the mall and parked at the crappy little trailer where these tests were purported to be given. I went to the door, which was locked, and read the sign on the door: “Stay in your vehicle. Someone will be with you shortly.” But the trailer looked deserted.

I did indeed return to my car, but with no real hope of seeing anyone. As I was mulling over Plan C, the door opened and a woman in a lab coat came out. She took my driver’s license and had me fill out a trivial form (name, DOB, phone number, email) and then swabbed my nose twice (because they did both PCR and antigen tests) and told me to wait 10 minutes. By 3:45pm I had my antigen test result: negative. They promised to send the formal notice of the result to me via email. I waited on pins and needles until the result arrived, which didn’t happen until about 6pm. I then breathed a sigh of relief and canceled my Friday Walgreen’s appointment.

The second (trailer) PCR test result arrived Friday night: also negative. I still haven’t received the first CVS test result, which would have been a disaster, if I had relied on that.

Princess, not surprisingly, had a rapid result test booth set up at the cruise terminal, for people who couldn’t get a test prior to check-in. I guess that would have been Plan C.

Now the other “adventure”: the Princess Medallion app. This is a smartphone app that provides all kinds of useful information while onboard: deck maps, dinner menus, events, etc. But it also is used to provide Princess with some critical information needed for checkin (e.g., passport information). I thought it was unwise for Princess to rely on a sophisticated smartphone app when many of their passengers were too old to be technologically savvy. But in my case it all would have been fine if the app had worked.

It didn’t.

Case in point: the passport information. The preferred method of providing this information was to use the phone to scan the ID page of the passport. That feature didn’t work. The backup mechanism – manual entry – worked, but just barely. Entering the passport number was simple. Entering the expiration date required scrolling through pop-up monthly calendars until I got to 2028. A PITA. Entering my DOB had the same problem – I had to scroll through more than 1,000 months to get to 1949. Took me 10 minutes and gave my index finger a cramp. Stupid, stupid user interface. Idiotic, really. When I next spoke to Princess (which I did 3 times in total, for a total phone wait time of over 2 hours) I gave them a piece of my mind. “Worst app EVER” was my candid assessment. They admitted that the app had a lot of problems. To say the least.

Another case in point: I found 3 places in princess.com and the Medallion app where my gender was recorded. The values in those 3 locations: “male”, “female” and “undisclosed”. Humorous, I suppose. Maybe I will laugh someday.

The bottom line was that I jumped through the hoops that I needed to jump through to get on board, but it wasn’t easy. And it certainly wasn’t fun.

Categories: Adventures, PCL2, Preparation/Planning | Leave a comment

A Jett-less cruise: PCL2

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Sparky

In case you haven’t noticed, I will tell you that cruise vacations right now are CHEAP. A vacation that cost roughly $2000 two years ago (like the MSC1 cruise that Jett and I took in February 2020) can now be had for about half that much. What that means is that a solo cruise now is about the same price as a cruise for 2 then. It was hard to resist that price.

But I didn’t have to pay the solo price as I was invited to share a cabin on the Sky Princess with Carl, a very nice octogenarian who, like me, lost his wife last year. He was married nearly 50 years, has sailed about 25 times (compared to my 13) and has some health issues which could make his next cruise his last. We met in a grief support group and discovered that we both enjoyed cruising. He suggested a 1-week trip and I agreed. So I leave Friday for a cruise to the Bahamas, St Thomas and St Maarten. It will be strange to take a Jett-less cruise, but it will be a test to see if I still like cruising.

Jett and I cruised with Princess once before, about 10 years ago, before I started blogging. But since this is my second Princess cruise, I will designate the trip as “PCL2” – the second cruise on Princess Cruise Line.

I really have no idea what to expect. How full will the ship be? How will they handle the buffet? I have to provide both proof of COVID vaccination and a negative COVID test taken no more than 48 hours prior to embarkation (I am taking that test tomorrow). But I expect there to be other changes as well, I just don’t know what they will be. So this is a bit of an adventure.

Rusty is booked with a family through Rover.com. I have met them and they seem very nice. I think Rusty will be fine. The key selling point: they will allow Rusty on the furniture and he may sleep with the teen daughter. He will like that.

I am looking forward to the cruise. I am feeling a bit guilty, even with the cheap prices, as it is really an unnecessary expense. I had resolved to have reduced expenses this season in Ft Myers and this violates that resolution. But… what the hey.

Categories: Adventures, PCL2, Preparation/Planning | Leave a comment

Sparky and Son, movers

Posted on November 25, 2021 by Sparky

I helped my son empty out his storage unit in Ocala last week and move it all to his new rented house in North Fort Myers – a 3-hour trip each way. Add in about 3 hours of loading and unloading the U-Haul truck and what you have is a very long, exhausting day. His sectional sofa and king-size mattress were particularly heavy. It was bad enough getting them from the storage unit into the truck, but it was far worse getting them out of the truck and into the house as we had to navigate 7 steps. Not fun.

I had the “honor” of driving the one-way U-Haul rental from Ocala to North Fort Myers. I have to say that the truck ran very well and had more acceleration than I expected. It also got fewer mile per gallon than I expected – just about 9. About the same as my truck when hauling my much heavier 5th wheel.

The truck was rented from a feed store that doubled as a U-Haul rental place. For those of you who don’t trust the COVID vaccines but think that ingesting an animal de-wormer is safer… they have Ivermectin in stock.

Categories: Adventures, Family, FL, Places | Leave a comment

“Sundays at Tiffany’s” by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet

Posted on November 13, 2021 by Sparky

I don’t normally review audiobooks because I feel that listening to a book while I drive both avoids the effort of actually reading the book and allows my mind to wander, so I don’t get the full experience intended by the author. In addition, the version I listened to in this case was abridged so I don’t know what I missed.

But I am going to review this one because I want to warn you to stay far, far away from one of the most ridiculous and God-awful books I have ever encountered.

I am grateful that it was an abridgment as the full book would have been just that much more misery.

The first clue that I was in for drivel was here: “written by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet.” Any time you get a book attributed to “<famous author> and <unknown author>” you know damn well that it was written by <unknown author> and <famous author> is just along for the ride, to lend his name and collect some royalties without doing any real writing. James Patterson, though not my favorite author, is a talented writer who is capable of penning a good story. He should be ashamed to have sold his name to be attached to this crap.

The protagonist in this book is Jane Margaux who, as a child, had an imaginary friend – a grown man named Michael. We learn, early on, that Imaginary Friend is a real profession, populated by beings who can be seen by the children but are invisible to adults. An inviolate rule of the Imaginary Friend profession is that you must leave when the child turns 9. The child will have no recollection of this friend and the friend will eventually have no recollection of the child, though it seems that the memory of the Imaginary Friend exceeds that of the child. Why? I have no clue.

Still with me?

With Jane and Michael, this inviolate “forget all” rule was violated and they don’t forget. Why? I have no clue. They meet again 23 years later and fall in love. Yes, Michael is still wandering the world creepily being an Imaginary Friend to young kids. But between assignments he lives a mostly-real life and is visible to adults. Why? I have no clue. Except that he isn’t exactly human. He never gets sick, never ages, never has to worry about where his money is coming from – he just snaps his fingers and money fills his pockets. One of his superpowers. He can also, with the snap of his fingers, summon a cab. While on these between-child sabbaticals he even has sex. Inquiring minds want to know: is he able, with the snap of his fingers, to summon a massive instant erection? Now THERE is a superpower that men would kill for.

I found myself wondering about the Imaginary Friend organization. Who runs it? Who makes the kid/friend assignments? How does the Imaginary Friend get to a new assignment? How is an Imaginary Friend created? How is one destroyed? Do they receive annual performance reviews? Do they get cost-of-living raises (i.e., more cash on a finger snap)? Are taxes paid on their instant income? And, most importantly, are the sperm produced by an Imaginary Friend real or imaginary? If he impregnated a woman would the child be half real and half imaginary?

Those are interesting questions and drilling down on them might result in an interesting sci-fi story. But what we have here is dreck.

This book actually gets good reviews on Amazon. The most charitable explanation I can concoct is that it is similar to Pinnochio – the puppet who became a boy. But that is a fairy tale. This is passed off as adult literature.

It ain’t literature, folks. It is dreck.

By the way, Tiffany’s appears in the book exactly once. Why the title? Again, I have no clue. This book is the product of authors who had no clue.

1 out of 10.

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“Licosa” by Nick Goulding

Posted on November 13, 2021 by Sparky

Full disclosure: the author is my nephew.

Nick Goulding is one of the finest young men that I have ever known – a charming husband, dedicated father and a talented and successful chef and entrepreneur. Now I have to add “skilled author.” The man is going to be impossible. His head may explode if I pay him any more compliments.

And yet I must. With Licosa he has spun a unique tale of political intrigue, fortune hunting and murder, all set in the sunny seaside town of Saraceni, Italy. He writes so vividly about the town and the nearby lighthouse on Isola Licosa (hence the name) that I had to find them on the map. And got confused because while Italy has at least two towns named Saraceni, neither is on the coast. Perhaps it isn’t a real town – an author is permitted to make stuff up in a novel – but the other settings are vividly real so why not the main one? Puzzling.

A quick synopsis. The protagonist is an American journalist named Martin Bass who takes a sabbatical from writing to go off in search of sunken treasure near Saraceni. He succeeds, but in the course of becoming rich – and a local celebrity – stumbles across an event that embroils him in local Italian politics, circa 1962. Politics in Italy is a contact sport and people start turning up dead. He runs afoul of the law – apparently due to something he saw while diving – and is offered a chance to gracefully exit the scene. Take the money and run? Nope. The journalist in Bass takes over. He has to get the story.

Without giving the plot away I will tell you that he gets the story and it is both larger and smaller than you can possibly imagine.

This book is filled with interesting characters, violence, suspense and car chases. Someone could write a good screenplay based on this. Kudos to Goulding for a first novel of great depth, charm, style and character.

And yet…

Those few of you who have read my previous book reviews might recall my review of The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille. Licosa reminds me of The Cuban Affair. I hope my nephew will be flattered by a comparison to a wildly popular author. But the point of similarity is that both stories, though very well-written and packed with interesting characters and plot twists, ultimately end by disappointing me as a reader. In both books I am denied a satisfactory conclusion. My reaction to both: that was a lot of action for no good purpose.

So Licosa is a very good read, but read it for the characters, the settings and the politics. The finish, while shocking, was, to me, disappointing.

7 out of 10.

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The blog about nothing

Posted on November 6, 2021 by Sparky

With apologies to Seinfeld – the “show about nothing.”

Well, a lot of people seemed to like the nothingness of that show, so I will list a few of the “nothing” things that I have done in my first month at my home base in Ft Myers:

I got Rusty professionally groomed. He no longer looks like a ragamuffin.
I finished scanning the (hopefully) last batch of Jett’s photos – the 1,500 photos that I discovered under the bed.
I have tried (without much success so far) to get the truck’s rear quarter-panel damage repaired. Seems that finding parts for a 17-year-old truck is difficult.
I have searched for a part-time job. Again, without success. I have applied for two and have received not even the courtesy of a response.
I have tried to resurrect Jett’s old laptop. It seems mostly functional (though old) and pretty lightly-used, so if I can get it to work reliably (it is crashing) then I could donate it to a worthy cause. I hate to discard potentially useful electronics.
I finished posting, to findagrave.com, the batch of about 100 headstone photos that I took in Athol MA before I headed south.
I have given some serious consideration to going to OR for Thanksgiving and TX for Christmas. Right now OR looks unlikely but TX is likely.
I am seriously thinking of going on a solo cruise in January. They are cheap – hard to resist.
I have started another round of updates on my genealogical research, starting with Jett’s family tree (which is more interesting than mine). I am thinking of producing a series of PDFs documenting her immigrant ancestors. The PDF form is better than the original email form for including supplementary documents – photos, maps, etc. And the PDFs won’t get lost when the disk crashes, as was the fate of my email posts.
I have tried to help my son through a rough patch. ‘Nuff said.

There is nothing in that list that, by itself, is blog-worthy. But I haven’t been sitting around eating bon-bons.

Just wanted you to know that.

Categories: Blogging, Family, Genealogy | Leave a comment

One year gone

Posted on October 16, 2021 by Sparky

Yesterday was the first anniversary of Jett’s death. I knew it was going to be a difficult day so I didn’t make any plans (except for the 6-month cataract surgery checkup – all good – which happened to fall on the same day). But I wanted to keep busy and, coincidentally, the task next on my To Do list was digitizing the last batch of Jett’s photos, found under my bed this summer.

Another 1,700 photos, raising the total number of Jett’s photos digitized to over 7,500.

Last night, after the digitizing was finished, I called her sons and siblings, to catch up, to commiserate and to get their current addresses. I will send thumb drives with those photos to each of them.

An appropriate, if sad, anniversary.

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My $553 faucet

Posted on October 7, 2021 by Sparky

I think I have mentioned that both of my bathroom faucets were useless for the entire 51 days of the TS7. The upper bathroom faucet was useless even longer – it was reduced to a dribble mid-summer. So my first RV maintenance priority when I got to Ft Myers was to fix the faucet problem.

Which I did. For $553.

Yes, that is expensive for replacement of two faucets. And it doesn’t include the cost of the replacement faucets (about $130), so the total cost was close to $700. But it does include a $130 remote service call charge. And the bulk of the 2.5 hours of labor (at $120 per hour) was to get and install in-line cutoff valves on the four faucet lines (2 hot, 2 cold) and the upstairs toilet. I figured that it would be worth the cost to put cutoffs on the lines. I know why they weren’t there when I bought the RV – Heartland wanted to save a few bucks on the construction cost – but needing to shut off the water supply to the entire RV every time some fixture needed to be changed was just stupid.

The cost also included an hour for the repair guy to run to Home Depot to get the right cutoff valves. I had tried to get them myself, based on his description, but utterly failed. I got two different types but they were both wrong. So chalk up $120 to my incompetence.

So, a pricey repair. But it feels damn good to have running water in my bathroom sinks again. I now go into a bathroom occasionally, just to see the water run. A cheap thrill that wasn’t so cheap.

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TS7 wrapup

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Sparky

First, the numbers:

4,188 tow miles (the 4th-longest trip I have taken, after the GTW, STE and STW).
5,911 truck miles
51 nights
20 hops (shortest: 64 miles, longest: 367 miles)
$2,453 in campground fees ($48.10 per night)
644.7 gallons of diesel fuel consumed for a total fuel expenditure of $1,989 ($3.09 per gallon average price)
Average MPG: 9.2

Highlights:

Finding my brother in Ellsworth ME.
Seeing high school friends in Madison WI.
Viewing the battlefield at Vicksburg MS.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton OH.
The Escapees Chapter 3 rally at Hermon ME.

Lowlights:

The two truck breakdowns (Hermon ME and Lowman NY. Both turned out to be minor problems but they caused me a lot of stress. The Lowman breakdown, which was at the end of a very stressful hop where I encountered a closed road and had to scramble to find a 25-mile detour) was particularly stressful. Arguably the worst day of RV travel that I have experienced in my 9 years on the road.
Hurricane Henri in New York.
PetSmart’s refusal to groom Rusty in Iowa.

But, overall, not a bad trip. Other than the hurricane the weather was good and, other than the tows, the truck ran great. I suppose both of those fall into the “Besides that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” category. But the possibility of making the grand tour of all 30 MLB parks next summer remains alive.

Plan vs actual maps:

The only major change in TS7-1 was dropping the Vermont stop.

There were a lot of changes to campgrounds in TS7-2 but the only major route change was dropping Omaha.

Again, there were a lot of campground changes and two major route changes: dropping the stops near New Orleans due to the area still cleaning up from Hurricane Ida and adding an Ocala stop to deal with some family matters.

Categories: Routes, TS7 | 2 Comments