Broken Cruise and Fireballs in the Sky

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.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity

I went to the gym today. It was Friday and I try to make it there on Fridays along with Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm working on making these treks a habit. Hopefully it's working. It's not my most favorite activity but it's one that I know is important. So I soldier on...

So I'm at the gym and trudging along on the ol' treadmill, bumping up the speed from time to time to make sure I'm not getting lazy, eyes half-way watching the TV that was in front of me and tuned to the Weather Channel. There was the usual pair of commentators in front of the camera, a guy and a girl, pointing to the weather map. I noticed that the lady half of the pair was wearing boots. I wondered about that, knowing that there was probably a zero chance of any snow or slush in the studio. But perhaps her wardrobe choice might have been dictated by the big story of the day.

Yes, as you may have guessed, the story of the day, this day, was the big snowstorm beginning to pound the northeast.
It's name was Nemo.

As an aside, when did they start naming winter storms? Wait a minute while I google that...

OK gang, here's the scoop. Naming winter storms is apparently a marketing ploy by the aforementioned Weather Channel! The National Weather Service is not happy about this new practice and has advised it's forecasters NOT to follow along, but their admonition is apparently falling on mainly deaf ears. The media has latched onto the practice and is promoting it. So... This storm is named Nemo.

If you haven't pictured a little orange-and-black animated fish by now you must have been living in a cave for the last decade.

Anyhow, so I'm plugging along on the treadmill, watching the weather lady in her shiny black boots pointing to the giant mass of blue and green grinding its way north by northeast on the map behind her. Interspersed from time to time the channel would go to a remote shot somewhere in the soon-to-be affected area and there was the mobile troops from the Weather Channel out there, wearing their logo-emblazoned parkas and yammering about the upcoming cataclysm. At least that is what they seemed to be implying – I wasn't really listening. Good old Jim Cantore, the erstwhile franchise symbol and point man for the channel was there, of course. Seems he's always out there in the thick of things where the weather's the worst and wind's the fiercest. Unfortunately, while I was watching, the snow was yet to arrive and Jim was being forced to point to a yardstick which was poked into the ground and indicate how high they were expecting the snow to accumulate. It was actually a bit laughable watching their ace reporter pointing to a stick.

Poor Jim.

As I'm watching this almost comical charade play itself out on the television, I'm also listening to my mp3 player. I'm a hell of a multi-tasker! I've loaded down a number of rousing classic rock songs to help me forget my efforts at the gym and to help me keep moving. And don't ya know it, the next song that rolls into my earphones is “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac.

And the song, along with the soon-to-be-blizzard on the TV, almost made me stumble on the treadmill. For you see, that song, a really good single from the 1976 album “Rumors” and vocalized by Stevie Nicks had, in my mind, taken me back to ANOTHER blizzard a long time ago.

Let me explain.

My wife and I had married in 1972 and moved into a brand-new mobile home. This mobile home was planted in a park about 8 miles east of the town where I grew up in and where we both worked. We'd been married about 6-and-a-half years when January 26, 1978 rolled around.

We both drove to work that day, her to an office at a manufacturing facility on the west side of our home town and me to an insurance office headquarters in the north part of town. The news that morning was ominous and warning of a heavy snow storm bearing down on us. We were starting to become a bit concerned. Later that day when the wind really started to blow and the snow started coming down in earnest, both of our employers dismissed their staffs early. We'd made some contingency plans earlier and had decided that, if the weather got really bad, instead of trying to make the 8-mile trip back to our trailer, we'd make the one-mile trip to my dad's house and see how the storm progressed from there. He had several spare bedrooms and I knew he could put us up if we couldn't make it home that evening.

The news called that storm “The White Hurricane”. The winds gusted to 80 miles per hour and the barometer crashed to record lows. The snow came down like a vertical avalanche and then the winds took it and piled it in ever increasing drifts. It buried cars, blew out power and killed 51 Ohioans. It was probably the strongest and worst winter storm to ever hit Ohio. It was eventually categorized “a severe blizzard”, something that rarely if ever occurs in these parts.

My wife and I made it to my dad's house, but not easily. I've never ever driven in anything like that, either before or since. Visibility out the windshield was close to zero with the snow absolutely pelting down and the wind howling and carrying it sideways. And what I remember as the weirdest part, the day started out quite warm for January, creepily warm and very still, as if the weather gods were holding their breaths before blasting out the blizzard. The temperature dropped 30 or more degrees within an hour and the storm was then upon us.

We were extremely glad to be in my dad's sturdy brick ranch and watching the howling blast out the windows and not out in it.

We eventually ended up spending 4 days or so out there. I remember about the second or third day my brother talking himself out of a traffic ticket for riding his snowmobile right through our city's downtown. He was on a grocery-and-cigarettes run for those of us stranded in the house and decided, since everything was snow-covered, to take a detour through the middle of town to “check things out”. Luckily the police had more pressing matters to take care of, so a quick warning was all they gave him.

So there we were for four days, hunkered down, waiting for the plows to come through, waiting for the weather to clear up a bit, waiting, waiting. And while we waited, we played games, talked, watched TV and listened to music.

My brother had his 8-track stereo outfit in the family room in the basement, so we ended up down there a lot of the time. Yes all my young readers, an 8-track. That was the pinnacle of music technology at that time, so don't sneer.

His selection of music seemed to be somewhat limited for some reason, but the one cartridge that he really liked listening to was that doggone “Rumors”. So we must ended up having listened to that one 15 to 20 times. Or more! It got so I could almost hear the music while I was asleep. Maybe I even could! He might have been playing it even then!

Anyhow, our exile at my dad's house finally came to an end and we all went back to living our lives again. Our trailer was still there, albeit dangerously low in fuel oil. Dad and I had to cart some diesel fuel from a nearby truck stop to keep us going until our fuel oil delivery man could get through the drifts to our park. We lost all our house plants to the cold, but we survived and went on with our lives relatively unscathed.

So here I was again watching another blizzard tearing into the country and again listening to Stevie Nicks singing the 1977 hit “Go Your Own Way”.

And I realized that everything is cyclical. Everything that goes around, comes around if you wait long enough.

But this time it was someone else who would have to hunker down, who would have to watch the howling snow out their windows and bide their time until they could emerge from their refuges and blink at the newly-fallen snow.

So I hummed the Fleetwood Mac song on the way to work this afternoon, remembering, remembering, thinking of the past all those many, many years ago and thanking my lucky stars that the blizzard was over there this time and not over here.

“Loving you

Isn't the right thing to do

How can I

Ever change things that I feel?

If I could

Maybe I'd give you my world...”