8 am was painful. I spent a good part of the day fighting off sleep. Jet lag sucks.
It was rather windy out today. On deck the relative windspeed was over 45 mph. That made a nice walk an interesting exercise. They have this “Ship Shape” program where you earn a “Ship Shape Dollar” for every activity you participate in. At the end of the trip you can redeem your dollars for some schwag like a hat, t-shirt or bag. I suppose this is their response to anyone who’s got home after their cruise, weighed themselves and vowed never to go on a cruise again. In any case it’s not a bad thing and I’m sucker for collecting stuff, so I did the one-mile walk on the top deck for 1 SSD. (I think they should take back a dollar everytime you visit a late-night buffet though.)
While I was up there I thought I would take out the GPS and see where we were. We were a few miles North of Cuba and you could see it in the distance. I recorded a track log of my 6 laps around the track to complete a mile. It looks suspiciously straight.
While the food is free most of the time, drinks are not. At lunch they have lemonade and iced tea, so I’ve made a point to stock up on that. I grabbed some and brought it back to my room in case I was parched again that night.
The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. My Dad won $115 at a nickel slot machine. We played mini golf on the top deck. The wind was blowing so hard the ball would often roll on it’s own. I came in second to my Dad by one stroke after completely blowing it on the 3rd hole.
I was glad I brought some FRS radios. We used them quite a bit to keep track of each other on the ship.
We spent more time exploring all the decks. The lowest floor you can go to is two where they have the medical facility. I find myself wondering more and more about how this whole operation works. Where do all the staff eat? What are their quarters like? Apparently our dinner waitress has a room on deck zero. Considering the median age of the passengers here, there must be a morgue on the ship somewhere and I bet it gets used.