Cruise: Part Uno
03/18/04

So we all went on this big family outing with Denny, Georgia, Pam, Steph and Dwayne. Planned a couple months ago, and GENEROUSLY provided by Denny and Georgia, we were to head down to New Orleans on Thursday, hop a big boat to Mexico, dock at Cozumel for a Saturday of snorkeling and ruin climbing, then head back to the Big Easy for Monday. Simple? Yes... but there's a hitch in every plan.

So apart from needing new tires on the Saturn and a mad dash to pick up my dry-cleaning at the 6am opening, we got on the road by 7 or so.


Here we are huddling in the cold. Steph hadn't been to bed yet, Pam and I were anxious and barely slept.


Squeek wasn't too happy about us leaving him to his own devices.


When we got to New Orleans, we got lost and separated on our way to the port. Upon arrival we learned that our ship was still limping in from the gulf. Evidently they had suffered a major power outage and were listing from a rudder problem. It was kinda exciting to me, as I like it when things are a bit weird, but it delayed our boarding for several hours. Steph called Coy and they decided to wander off together, so the rest of us worked our way around New Orleans to pass the time till boarding.


Here we are with our big frozen drinks drifting down Bourbon Street.


I love this city... I got all kinds of wonderful new memories in it.


Denny and Georgia lit a candle for Dawn, while the heathens stood outside and sucked our gogo juice.


Street tumbling... we missed it all but the screams of the crowd.


Watching through the windows at Cafe Du Monde at the Beignet maker.


It was so much fun watching him throw them in the grease, I had to make a movie of it(8.2M)!


Check out the sugar all over the ground where people eat them!


You can even see some on the ground in front of us where we had ours.
We were snowing on the people around us!


Back to the boat! It's in dock!


This was our view for the next 4 hours. Waiting... and waiting... and waiting... for the people to disembark and for them to call our boarding number. Dwayne brought us some beer, so it wasn't all that bad. In fact, at times, it was fun. There's something special about being someplace unpleasant and making the best of it. Dawn and I used to laugh all the time about how we could have fun anywhere, not matter what the situation... and sitting with Dwayne, Pam, Georgia and Denny, I remembered what that was like. We giggled, cracked jokes, and I made an LJ post on Dwayne's cell phone. Good times, bad times... who needs adjectives when you are with good friends.


YAY! We made it on board! And it's only 11 at night!


Look! Up in the sky! It's my plummeting sobriety!


Get a few drinks in me, gimme a shower, and it's off to the night club! I had been shopping for some good clothes, and was bound-and-determined to get some booty shakin' in on this vacation! I was very lucky. There was a really nice crowd of people on the ship who ended up being my buddies for most of the surprisingly short nights that we got. And I met most of them on the first night!


This is Maria, she's a mortgage broker and a mother of two! She calls herself a dork, and every time we would run into each other, we'd point fingers at either ourself or the other and scream out, "DORK!"


From left to right, That's Becky on the side, me playing the piano?, James playing cool, Franko busting some movies, and Paul getting summoned onto the dance floor by Kaitlin.


Tim and Maria hooked up quick, convincing everyone they were getting married on the deck at 2pm the next day.


Sweet Kaitlin was from Yorkshire and living in Vermont. She called everyone out onto the dance floor, and was a wonderful spirit to meet the first night there. Sadly, I never saw her again.


Here's the whole crowd from Thursday Night, including the wonderful Dwayne who I couldn't have survived the weekend without. It was time for bed then... and now...

A good start, but there's more!
Onward to the Next Page