Ahhhh Alaska!

[Lurker]

is it true....a group of passengers aboard a luxury cruise liner this week were treated to a rare tour of the engine room by the Captain himself, a tour of the Captain's sleeping quarters, and then he took them to the Bridge, the wheelhouse office where the Captain mans the ship! One lucky customer was allowed to take a few spins at the wheel while the ship was doing the inside passage. Most of the the cruisers were along the rails of the decks or on their private balconies taking pictures of the magnificient glaciers, totally unaware that a fellow cruiser was at the controls, but totally enjoying the sights where no man had been before.

The ship has not been heard from for three days after a series of wrong turns, anybody knowing its whereabouts is asked to please call 1-800-Lost AtC.

[Syncopate]

Do they have any In-N-Outs in Alaska ?

[Vince P]

LOL!

Note: Tony - don't read, very long, tedious and boring.

Alaska is simply Amazing

Just when I thought I was about to be bored to death for 8 days, along comes the greatest of the 57 states - ALASKA. I was even able to see Russia from my boat without using binoculars. If and when I ever grow up, I’m moving to Alaska and opening a race track there.

Highlights/Seattle:
My daughter took my wife and me to hippie town Fremont which is a few miles from Seattle, to see giant s underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and some other artsy things. Very interesting, but the city was a replica of Buzzerkeley and you know how I feel about Buzzerkeley.

http://www.gonorthwest.com/washington/s ... remont.htm

Jimi Museum: I took my daughter to the Experience and Science Museums via monorail built for the 1977 World’s Fair held in Seattle. My daughter visited the Jimi floor with me for over an hour, listening to his music, playing guitar, drums, etc. I could tell she bonded with me and Jimi and now understands why he’s the greatest musician in history.

We also did the Pioneer Square/Pike Place Dancer Market and all that corny stuff for her that I had previously done. But we love Seattle and will go back every year as long as Emerald Downs holds that tournament for Vegas. Plus the joint we stayed in - The Camlin, is one of my favorite places to stay.

After spending 4 days in Seattle, we headed southeast and drove to Juneau, Alaska.

Lowlights: My dog sledding excursion was cancelled. So I called 50 million places and everyone said they stopped doing them a week ago because of lack of snow or some bulllove like that. They had dirt tours left, but Vince doesn’t do synthetic.

Highlights, Juneau:
Jumped on the Mount Roberts Tramway to visit poor broken down Eagle and love. Shopped and saw some Injun movie while daughter and BF took hike. Btw, someone actually shot this poor Eagle and she can only fly about 7 feet high. She now lives in a private cage where they can monitor and feed her vitamins. I don’t know how you feel about this, but what kind of satanic person shoots an Eagle? Probably from Berkeley. I’d electrocute and then feed that person alive to rats if I was President.

http://www.goldbelttours.com/travel/day ... /tram.html

Scagway:
Interesting little town. They have no doctors living there full time so townsfolk are all young like me and Triple Threat. If you have a major health problem you have to either visit AC and Scooter (2 hours away in Canada) or pay for an expensive plane/helicopter and fly to Juneau. Hence no old people live there.

Scagway Days of 98 Play: Again, corny, but we enjoyed it, sort of. Funny story. These two ladies in the play picked this guy named Bill out of audience and took him upstairs to dress him for some skit. He was gone for like 15-20 minutes and when he finally came down stairs, he was very worn out if you know what I mean. Not exactly sure what happened upstairs, but I was jealous. I ran into him a few days later and told him he was the luckiest guy on this planet. He laughed and told me he was a fireman in NY and one of the gals in that play would be playing on Broadway near his station next month so he’s going to go backstage and surprise her.

We also did the White Pass journey into Canada and it was an absolute blast. Tip: Don’t do the train from your boat - it would have cost $500 for the 4 of us (we had 4 in our group so I paid 4 times for everything). Just pay some dude $217.00 + tip and he’ll take you and your family in his van and make all kinds of fun stops along the way. The train is probably nicer and more scary, but it doesn’t stop. Van guy doing private tour was very knowledgeable, into nature and stuff. He stopped a bunch for scenic pictures, waterfalls, glaciers, walks, etc.

Also went into the infamous Red Dog Saloon - a former whorehouse in Scagway; took this tour and yada, yada, yada. Fun stuff. But I was really tired afterwards especially after I paid the tour “guide” to have her “picture” with me. My wife even got a kick out of it. I’ll have to link that picture as soon as I figure out how to.

Tracy Arm Fjord
Our favorite and probably everyone’s if they’ve been to Alaska. Our boat just drove around like in circles to show us different views of this area. Remarkable - this glacier is about 177,000,000 years old, no exaggeration. The ice water that forms it is pure Dodger Blue - natural water from billions of years ago. You have to see it live to appreciate it. Viewing this glacier was worth the price of admission for this trip - it was that spectacular. There were also a bunch of icebergs in the water. But I figuratively froze to death and even fell on my ass when I tried to take pictures from the top deck.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... e&resnum=6

Ketchikan
Another little town we stopped at for a few hours. We did a Trolley tour thing and the lady driving the ey made a bunch of stops. The best was stopping to see Eagles in their natural environment - even getting up close and personal - say 20-30 feet or so to take pictures. Besides Lions, Eagles are my favorite animals. We also visited this Injun village that had these giant telephone poles with pictures and carvings on them. Strange.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26227978@N00/3838378665/

Boat highlights:

The people, atmosphere, amenities, bars, massage parlors, food, etc, were everything and then some. I tried my best to eat vegetables and fruits so I would stay in riding shape when I got back to GoldenGatebytheBay. But I ate more in those 8 days on that boat than I have all year. It’s funny, one night I wanted a Diet Coke with my Rack of Lamb at the fancy restaurant and the dude goes, “That’ll be $30.00 on your room card.” I go, “WTF, I want a diet coke, like a soda, not a loving gram of coke.” Then the dude explains that the $30.00 covers coke for the whole trip. So I charged the $30 to my room and then gave my daughter the card so her and her friend could buy as many motherlessloving diet cokes they wanted for free. I think they wound up using it like a 100 times. My wife and daughter also bought wine and love like that but since they didn’t finish the bottle the dude saved it for them. Weird.

Btw, is it my imagination or are all employees on a boat really this nice? I don’t get it. It’s like you’re in DisneyLand or Heaven or something. Everyone is so freaking nice, I couldn’t stand it. Be mean once in a while, do something wrong so I can feel like I’m at the track. Also, I think it’s mandatory that boat employees are, well you know - on the other team, so to speak, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Very nice staff. I was super impressed.

I also couldn’t sleep, just like in Seattle, often getting up at 3 or 4am and going to the Gentleman’s Club, which was really a Cigar Bar with TVs that had ESPN on 24/7.
This joint had all this sports memorabilia on their walls including a bunch of cuzin Joe Dimaggio’s stuff. I watched SportsCenter/Dodger highlights every morning and then went swimming at 6am sharp. People eating at the buffet looked at me like I was insane, especially when I had to swim through the “waves” and it was like 37 degrees outside. But I love swimming and swim everyday to cure my headache problems. I also rode the jock exercise bike every night to make sure I stayed at a solid 117lbs.

But there were a couple of humiliating things that happened on board.

1. My daughter signed me up to Line Dance with her. I don’t know about you but cuzin Vinnie just can’t dance. Me dancing is like Tony the Pony or JB gambling on football games or Juan Pierre swimming. It’s just doesn’t work. I have no buoyancy or whatever it’s called. Here’s the problem: I think I have AD & D. I could barely remember the first step they taught us, but then they showed steps 2, 3 and 4. Fogettaboutit. After step 1, I was completely lost, and watching other people. That just doesn’t work in front of a crowd. It was a disaster and to boot - the boat showed me on their highlight show that night.

2. She also signed me up for “Peer Factor” - a version of TVs Fear Factor but with no eating, etc. My task was to make pizza. After about a 5 second training session, they put me in front of 700 people to make pizza from scratch. Admittedly, I should have known how because I’m from Naples, but I choked under pressure - beating my pizza to death and tossing it so high, it landed on a girl on my team’s head. Funny stuff, but I was humiliated.

Good News
I came in 2nd in the basketball shooting contest - hitting my 3s, but missing a couple of easy 10 footers. I actually lost to a high school kid, but he was really, really good - looked and shot like Reggie Miller. Maybe it was Reggie, not sure.

I also won two Ping-Pong tournaments - but really only one of them legitimately. There were 3 tournaments, two single tournaments and one doubles match. The first tournament, very first game, I got n-out, 11-5 by a guy named Dan who I met earlier in the week in Seattle at my hotel. I consider myself an excellent Ping-Pong player but Dan was like really good - he lived in LA and plays weekly in a Ping-Pong league. He wound up winning the Championship that day.

Three days later they had another singles tournament. I think there were like 16 or 32 people signed up and I coasted to the championship game while Dan took his bracket, beating two very good Chinese players along the way. It’s funny, the cruise organizer wouldn’t let the Chinese guys use their own paddles they brought. Anyways, in the championship game, Dan played lackadaisical and allowed me to win in OT, 14-12. So I received my medal.

Then came the Doubles Tournament on the next to final day. Dan was looking for me all day to partner up. We finally met right before the start of Doubles. Needless to say, we romped through everyone. That was fun because we beat some very good teams. The hardest part for me was getting used to the doubles format, i.e, taking my whack, then stepping aside so Dan could slam the living love out of the ball. The funny thing imo, is that Doubles is more mental than physical - you have to know each other’s skills. We were a prefect team. Coincidentally, Dan is from LA and a huge Dodger fan, so that helped a bunch with team chemistry.

But the rooms, the people we met, the crew, everything was absolutely 117% perfect. It’s funny, I met some guy and his wife at dinner who, although he wasn’t a degenerate gambler like youz all in here, was from London and attended those ritzy Keeneland sales with his business partner. He told me he was at the sale when Seattle Dancer was sold about 20 years ago and some other sales. My wife and I also met several people from all over the world at various dinners and functions. Great memories, and I also have about 17,000 pictures we took.

We even saw some “off-broadway” plays on the ship - the Motown one far and away being the best with dancers, oldies, etc. I was hoping Jimi would be part of this thingy, but they told me Jimi wasn’t really Motown.

I also went to a talk show hosted by the first woman to win the Iditarod - Libby Riddles who jumped aboard the ship in Juneau. She was absolutely fantastic. Amazing woman with a golden soul. I was like, I wanna take my own dogs and do this Iditarod thing, but I guess they don’t allow that.

We also saw the “Newlywed” game. It’s funny, one of the questions asked was, “Where was the strangest place you made Whooppie?”

Some guy answered, “In the dressing room at WalMart.” His bride got it right too.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve had sex in the dressing room at Nordstrom’s and even did it while waiting in line at In ‘N Out, but WalMart? Freaking WalMart???????

I would never have admitted that if I were him.

Anyways, if you get a chance, go to Alaska - it’s the best.

Vince P

[Lurker]

Great trip report Vince, thanks for sharing.

Sorry to hear about the dogsled being cancelled.

[LuckyDuck]

Vince, it sounds like you and your family had a fantastic time. My wife and I, along with her sister and her hubby have a trip booked for next August.
I'm sure some of your tips will come in handy. Thanks for sharing Jeff

[Joel]

Do they have any In-N-Outs in Alaska ?

No, but they do have Inuit-N-Outs..

[JDinSD77]

First things first, Joel, that was the best and smartest joke ever posted in these parts. Second, Vince, loved the trip report and glad you and family enjoyed it so much. Would love to see up north someday, before it's gone. I was also glad to hear no stomach illness because that seems to be all one hears about cruises any more. Couldn't help but think of the show Northern Exposure while reading your post, especially the part about no doctor. Thanks for sharing the good times!

[Vince P]

First things first, Joel, that was the best and smartest joke ever posted in these parts. Second, Vince, loved the trip report and glad you and family enjoyed it so much. Would love to see up north someday, before it's gone. I was also glad to hear no stomach illness because that seems to be all one hears about cruises any more. Couldn't help but think of the show Northern Exposure while reading your post, especially the part about no doctor. Thanks for sharing the good times!

JD,

"Before it's gone" lol.

When we were circulating the glacier in Tracy Arm Fjord, Tom Durkin, or whoever it was announcing, mentioned that that glacier used to be 27 miles long and is now only 26 miles long. He then told us to read some books, do some handicapping and come to your own conclusions as to why.

As far as the stomach problems on board, my daughter had a few but not sure if that was caused by the boat or it was a girl thing. I think she used Dramamine. Others wore those silly patches on their necks.

Fortunately, I suffer from headaches, but the boat rocking and rolling doesn't bother me one bit. I guess it's all those In 'N Out burgers and milkshakes have actually solidified my stomach over the years.

The funny thing is that on the worst nights of turbulence, I slept best, while the rest of my party was up all night when the waves crashed into us. It was the smooth nights that I would wake up at 3:17am and couldn't get back to sleep. Go figure.

Vince P