Broken
Cruise and Fireballs from the Sky
So let's take a peek and
see what's been happening recently in the news, shall we?
First, I guess, and the
item that concerned my wife and I more directly than a lot of what's
been going on, was the saga of the good ship Carnival Triumph and its
fire and engine problems of last week. I know that I, along with
many others, surely watched with interest as the multimillion dollar
ship with over 4,000 souls on board spent the better part of four
days bobbing around in and eventually being towed halfway across the
Gulf of Mexico. The stories reaching us from the ship after the
power failure were sketchy early on and seemed to be of the
panicky-sounding variety. Little power. Sanitation almost
non-existent. Pooping in bags and peeing in showers. Bread and
ketchup sandwiches. Horrible smells. Sewage on the floor and
running down the walls. Ship listing. Sleeping on deck chairs and
on the casino floor. Slot machines were too tight. Moby Dick
attacking the ship almost hourly! (Naw, not really the case in the
last two examples.)
Pretty much the antitheses
of a cruise vacation.
Communications with the
passengers from the shore was limited to quick cell phone contacts
when other ships were close enough that their telephone connections
could be used. Obviously there are no cell towers in the center of
the Gulf and few, if any of the passengers had sat-phones.
As the situation
deteriorated there were eventually two tugboats dispatched which
eventually arrived and slowly towed the ship to Mobile, Alabama. It
was originally intended for them to haul the boat to Progresso,
Mexico, but the ship had drifted so far north by the time the tugs
got there it was smarter to pull it north to the U.S.
Besides, the Gulf current
ran in that direction.
And there was also the
fact that around 900 of the cruise passengers did not have U.
S. Passports. Docking in Mexico would have entailed mucho
paperwork for those passengers to return to the U. S. by air or in
some fashion other than that of the ship they had been cruising in.
The cruise line does not require you to have a passport for a
cruise that is returning to the same port it left, but it strongly
recommends that you do so, specifically for situations like that.
It would have been a total nightmare for those non-passport folks
trying to return home from Mexico.
The cruise left Galveston
on Thursday for a 4-day cruise to Cozumel, Mexico. It should have
returned there Monday, but, instead, ended up late on the following
Thursday docking in Mobile, Alabama. I found myself, for some
reason, humming the chorus from the theme song of Gilligan's Island:
“...three hour cruise.”
It was not a “fun”
cruise on one of Carnival's “Fun” ships. Not even close.
But in every report I've
heard, the crew of the ship was praised for their incredible
dedication in doing their best for their passengers and for their
above-and-beyond work ethics. I've heard NO negative reports on the
crew's performance of their duties. None. And, after having cruised
and seen how hard the staff worked on a normal cruise, I expected to
see none. Obviously, gigantic kudos to each and every one of them!
So, taking all this
excitement in consideration, I ask myself, “Will I cruise again?”
Perhaps the question ought
to be, “What are the odds that something of this sort will happen
on our cruise, should we elect to take one?”
The answer, of course, is
a number so small as to be almost insignificant. Probably in the
ballpark of getting hit by lightning at the same time as getting hit
by a car.
Definitely worth the
“gamble”.
But would I ride on the
Triumph?
Ah, another interesting
question. The answer is probably not if there were another option
available. Not that I believe that the Triumph will have a similar
problem in the foreseeable future, but... Hell. Why take even that
chance?
But, when all is said and
done, life is a gamble that you'll never win. You just try to pick
the circumstances that'll give you the best odds for the longest run.
So expect to see another
cruise blog from yours truly and his esposa sometime down the road.
Aren't you excited? I am!
&&&
Looking at another piece
of news that occurred recently, did you get a chance to check out the
stories about the meteor bombardment that happened over in Russia?
Wasn't that interesting. And did you happen to view some of
the videos on Youtube that were taken of the event?
Holy
crap-in-your-pants-and-call-your-mama-Sheera, Batman! That was some
of the most terrifying footage that was NOT done by CG I've
ever seen! You'd have SWORN those videos were hacked together
by some sci-fi-loving computer geeks or were trailers for some
upcoming end-of-the-world horror movie.
They were absolutely
incredible!
But maybe the most
fascinating part of those videos was the reactions of the Russians
who were filming them. Or should I say non-reactions? I do not
speak Russian, so I can't positively state what was said during and
after the fireballs tore through their sky, the sonic booms burst
windows for miles and miles around and the rocks themselves thundered
into the ground just down the road, but it seemed like they didn't
seem too terribly concerned.
Not even a little!
Either they were pretty
drunk from too much vodka, or they just didn't give a damn!
A lot of the videos were
taken from dash cams on cars, so you can actually see those immense
fiery trails from the howling incoming meteors, then the white-hot
fireball screamed overhead and the video flashed a solid white as the
camera was overloaded with the glare. Then the doggone thing
shrieked to a thunderous landing somewhere just out of sight. A few
seconds later the tremendous sonic boom shakes the car and landscape
all around them like an earthquake.
And the Russians in their
cars keep yammering on and on as if the cataclysmic event happening
just over their heads were something inconsequential that they
experienced every day!
I can just imagine what
some of my friends and fellow countrymen might have done in that
situation! How poorly we'd have handled it. How quickly the
conspiracy theorists would have grabbed onto the event and started
pointing fingers at the government. Or to the aliens that just had
to have something to do with it.
And I thought about how
the Russians just continued on with their conversations as to where
they were going to eat lunch, whether it would be blintz's or borscht
and black bread that day and wasn't that last bottle of vodka we
drank a bit more watered down than usual?
They probably thought it
was just Putin screwing around.
It's certainly a wild and
crazy world.
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