If anything could be said to be more of a controlled chaos than a standard embark day, it’s boarding day for a Grand Voyage. I rarely get more than a few hours sleep the night before I board, few of us do, mostly for fear of missing the early morning transport form the hotel to the ship (trust me 5:30am never stops coming early).
The turnover for a Grand Voyage is huge, with at least 100 of us boarding just from one hotel (there’s more than that flying in from other areas and boarding direct). As early as 6am the entire hotel lobby is full of people who are a strange combination of excited and resigned. No matter what else we feel, all of us are exhausted.
Some, like me, have been fortunate enough to have a short flight, others have flown thirty hours from South Africa, or twenty from the Philippines and Indonesia. The lobby is a circus of suitcases, stretches and tiredly-excited greetings.
At 6:45am, two huge greyhound buses pull up outside the hotel to begin the process of loading several hundred pounds of luggage for the transport. In the meantime the lobby is like old home week. Snippets of conversations and shared stories float everywhere.
How long was your vacation?
Not long enough! 18 days!
What???
Had a summer contract!
You’re bloody kidding!
Wish I was!
People have gotten engaged, gotten divorced (that one was a shocker!) , settled down despite all expectations to the contrary, gotten promoted, gotten married, and countless other things. A lot can happen in the course of a vacation, especially when you live on a compressed time clock like we do. Still, a lot stays the same. Many of us know each other, though there are a few new faces in the crowd. Once we all board the bus, everything goes oddly quiet, as we watch the city flash by on either side of us, our last glimpse of ‘normal’ civilization, before we board our own uniquely waterlogged reality for next few months.
Once on board the ship, everything works like a well oiled, if slightly tedious, machine.
Where’s the luggage drop this year?
Crew mess honey.
And…where’s that again
For god’s sake girl, you live here! You know where everything is!
I summer on vista! I’m always lost the first week back! You know that!
Suitcases are loaded through the terminal X-ray scanner then lugged up Seattle’s truly evil stepped gangway before being dumped in luggage storage while everyone heads to the welcome aboard instruction. The crew of the flagship could nearly recite the welcome aboard slideshow by heart by now, but we dutifully sit and pay attention while we are assigned liferaft cards and lifejackets and emergency functions, and finally cabins. By the time we finally drop into bed in the evening it feels in equal parts as though we never left and as if we’ve been dragged out of a deep sleep back into reality.
But either way…
Welcome aboard…and….for a lot of us…welcome home.