At Peace – Victoria, BC – [06/17/2018]

Posted on June 17, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

They say life never hands you anything that you can’t handle. The truth is that I was starting to doubt that…there were some situations in my life that I Just thought…that’s it, that’s the way that things are always going to be…and I’m just going to have ot learn to live with that…

And then, something changed…I don’t know really if it was with me or with the other people involved, but I honestly think it was probably a group effort…

Or perhaps life just told all of us that it was time to grow up, because time is short and memories are long, and in the long run is it really worth it …

It sounds cliché, and perhaps it is, but when life gets dark…well, I think Dumbledore had it right…

There is joy to be found even in the darkest of nights, if only one can remember to turn on the light…

Namaste…

 

Posted in Below the waterline, Reflections, Transitions | 1 Comment

“Going up to Alaaaaskaaa” – Victoria, BC – [06/17/2018]

Posted on June 17, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

Even though I’ve done it once before, sailing as girlfriend onboard still feels strange. This morning I was on duty, in uniform ,still teaching. This afternoon I locked the classroom door, put the keys in the office mailslot, hung my uniform in the closet (I may or may not have glared at it and told it to think about what it’s done ,I will not confirm or deny this) and …I was on vacation.

It’s only a two week break, and yes, I did have the option of going home for it. But to be honest, being on the ship and not working? That is sometimes a better vacation than being away – especially when it’s for such a short period of time. Our lives on board are rather tightly regimented (and if you love the job – which I absolutely do – you accept those restrictions) and freedom from that for a few weeks? That’s pretty awesome.

So this evening I started my vacation by bring my parents on board to have dinner (after all, it is Father’s Day, and this is something I could actually manage to do). Which was nice ,and it’s own kind of relaxing on a multitude of levels.

And then tomorrow I have to go to one immigration interview (because I’m considered a passenger and I’m arriving from a foreign port) and one drill, and that’s it, I’m done for two weeks. No uniforms, no stress, no drills – I can sleep in, I can go on tours…I can do absolutely nothing. I can get off the ship whenever I like!

Ha! I am officially on vacation…

Life is good.

 

Posted in Leisure Lady, Vacations/Shore-Side | 1 Comment

A Girl & A Guitar – Anchorage, Alaska – [06/11/2018]

Posted on June 11, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

Today…has been an odd day. It’s hard to explain exactly why; just one of those  days where you can’t focus on anything, where you are randomly angry and stupid things like the walls being the wrong colour. I think it may perhaps just be a case of cabin fever, hard to say. Whatever the circumstances may be that led to it, I found myself at loose ends, unable to even focus properly on my embroidery.

Which led to my finally – after far far too long – picking up Strange.

Yes, she’s here, of course she is, though I’ve been horribly lapse about practicing. There are all kinds of excuses to be made, none of them good enough. And I’ve missed my guitar. Rather terribly actually.

The moment the brightly coloured strap slipped over my shoulder, I started feeling better. I haven’t picked her up since before I came to the ship, except to hand her to Amras for tuning (I managed to forget my tuner…twice). But her weight is reassuring. Slowly, and albeit stiffly, my fingers found their stumbling way back through my one song I can play, and a few of my strumming exercises…and as I was doing this, I realized that my shoulders were relaxing…and my brain was unwinding.

I was smiling.

And I also decided it was time to learn a new song. Since stumbling through one song is okay and all, but there is no good in only knowing the five chords that make up that one song, no matter how well I eventually end up being able to play it. So I popped online and found the piece I have been secretly wanting to learn to play since I first unwrapped Strange nearly a year ago (was it that long???) and stared in some dismay at the chord structure. Bar chords. Two of ‘em. I can barely stumble my way through a C-Major let alone a C#Minor! But, this is a song I really do want to learn, and if I have to bleed my fingers to do that then I will…although I admit I will probably have to go through several – okay several dozen, perhaps hundred – teeny tiny beginner steps first…

But still…

Ha, take that universe, I have my books, I have my thread, and I have my guitar…I think those may be all the weapons I need just now…

 

Posted in Alaska, Guitar, Steam Heat 2018, Summer Contracts | 3 Comments

Around Like A Merry-Go-Round – Victoria, BC – [04/06/2018]

Posted on June 5, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

There is something about a fair. Even a little one….there’s just…something.

The Tea Party happens once a year, and it was such a huge part of my childhood that when my parents discovered it was actually running during a day when our ship was calling at home – that we instantly had our plans for the  day.

Yes it was cloudy (verging on raining) and yes the older I get the smaller and more rickety the rides appear…but I still can’t think of many ways I would rather spend a day.

We only bought enough tickets for two rides (the ride prices have gone up over the years, $20 worth of tickets used to get you a lot more rides as I recall, but we got the two we wanted) – and I practically dragged Amras onto the Tilt-A-Whirl. I have countless memories of being so tiny that when my Dad leaned to make the car of the T-a-W spin I would fly right across the seat! I am a little bit bigger now, but I still don’t really have very much weight to throw around, so Amras did most of the work as we spun that car fast enough to pin us to the back of the carriage. What was funny about that was that we were the only ones putting any work in, everyone else was sitting in their cars looking unimpressed, while we were spinning around laughing uncontrollably.

AppleJack wants me to mention that she got dizzy….

There was cotton candy, and mini-donuts, and a surprisingly good band from one of the local high schools (not mine, so I should have hated them on principal, but they were much too talented to hate). And Amras won me a prize at the dart game! Which I am abnormally pleased about!

All in all, life still looks pretty good from the top of a Ferris Wheel…

 

Posted in Steam Heat 2018 | 2 Comments

Pizza Pie – Anchorage, Alaska – [05/14/2018]

Posted on May 16, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

Amras and I have a weakness for what we have taken to calling ‘pizza moments’. The term comes from a comic strip called Catana Comics (if you haven’t seen them check them out it’s adorable) – and basically means we’ll balk at spending $15 on silverware, but will gladly spend $20 on a large pizza. Perhaps not the best thing to have a habit of doing, and we try to watch our tendency towards it, but to our credit our “pizza purchases” tend to be things we’ll actually keep rather than well…real pizza.

For example my usual strain of ‘pizza moment’ is the tours I still go on in port. Yes, they are expensive, but they are – after all – experiences that will last a life time. My lower quality ‘pizza moments’ tend towards less exotic things like brightly coloured clothes and crazy shoes. But I digress.

Rarely, do Amras and I have a joint pizza moment. So I was rather surprised when he got back from port this afternoon bearing ….a PlayStation 3. Used of course, and acquired at a very good price. But…definitely a pizza moment.

A totally awesome pizza moment.

Especially since I was stuck on IPM all day, and was exceptionally grumpy about it; and was all around having a rather …lousy afternoon.

Especially since with said system, he also got Call of Duty 4, Fallout 3, ….and …GOLF! Seriously, I have not played computer golf since I was a kid playing with my parents. I had totally forgotten how much fun it was…and how completely addictive it could be.

I still…definitely need to work on my swing. But by the end of the night hey, I had earned enough experience points to get myself a pretty awesome golfer outfit..

What? We make our own fun out here..

 

Posted in Alaska, Below the waterline, Steam Heat 2018, Summer Contracts | 1 Comment

Looking for Elves – Icy Strait Point, Alaska – [05/12/2018]

Posted on May 12, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

But I thought I saw one! An Elf! I was sure this time
~ Red Riding Hood

There is not much to Icy Strait Point. It’s even smaller than Skagway (and trust me, that’s saying something) – the only touristy things it has to its name are a few local shops, a visitors center and a zipline from the top of the mountain (that last one has somehow always felt out of place). And that’s it. Tiny tiny place.

But despite that – or perhaps because of it – this is one of my favourite places on the Alaska run. Because what Icy Strait does have, is peace. And forest. This place…I don’t know if the forest here is truly old growth, but it feels old. It feels…set apart. Even in the areas where it hugs close to the road. It feels as though the barrier is thin here, as though if you stepped off the trails in the right place and wandered off under the trees you would find yourself someplace else. Someplace…more.

It’s perhaps a little hard to explain.

But as I sat on a trunk of a huge tree scribbling in my notebook, I found myself struck with the overwhelming urge to stand barefoot on the loamy ground and turn my face up to the perpetual mist – a human element rod….take it away Lady, take it all away.

As I said, hard to explain.

By the time we ambled back to the ship, our clothes smelled like campfire smoke (they keep a perpetually burning campfire by the seaside trail, usually with woodchips that you can add to the flames to make a wish), and fresh woods air – and I had even accomplished my goal of finally getting a decent pair of new gloves (gloves, are a necessity in Alaska, and please don’t try to sell me ‘texting gloves’ if I need to message someone I can take five seconds to take my glove off)…

Sometimes it’s the quiet days that do you the most good.

Posted in Alaska, Steam Heat 2018 | 1 Comment

Little Lady: The Gamer Edition – Scenic Cruising , Alaska – [05/10/2018]

Posted on May 12, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

Some of you may have been reading these pages long enough to remember my various distasteful encounters with what I lovingly call the ‘Little Lady’ attitude. The idea that ‘you don’t need to trouble your head about that little lady, you wouldn’t possibly understand”. Now ,I am all for men being Gentlemen, and the idea that chivalry is not dead is something that I really hope is true – by all means hold the door for me, but please don’t think that that means I can’t hold it myself.

Or in this case…

Don’t come into my class, see that I’m a little short girl of slight build, who does – on occasion – wear her hair in double pigtails and has a fascination with cartoon characters…and assume that I don’t have the answers to your questions.

This morning, I had my most recent encounter with this …or I guess close to this…attitude. More like general negativity joined with just a slight tinge of condescending…a rather irritating combination in a student. So, a few things I couldn’t say at the time:

Sir, I work for the cruise line, not for the software company, I just teach the software company. Please do not assume that just because I am unable to answer questions that are completely outside of my field of training is worthy of a dismissive eyeroll, you are asking me something that is so far out of my department is the equivalent of asking an engineer a plumbing question. And if you’re already coming in here with the attitude of hating the operating system (when in reality, you bought an off-brand computer that was apparently malfunctioning from the start, and has nothing to do with the operating system) then how on earth am I supposed to teach you anything? And by the way, the shift away from physical media? DVDs and the like disappearing in favour of digital download? That can’t be blamed on any one company, that is a general shift in the market combined with the general public trend to …I don’t know, want to cut back on unnecessary damage to the environment that is caused by overprinting and overpackaging? And also by the way, it’s the internet websites and search engines that generate the adverts online, not your computer system so nope, we’re not to blame for that either. That’d be the equivalent of blaming the movie producers for the trailers that run before the film.

But the kicker really came when he made the mistake of thinking that I wasn’t going to ‘understand the requirements of a gaming machine.

Oh dear, sir, don’t go there…I may not be competitive level, I may not play a lot but the things I do play I play hard. And the game he chose as an example? Just happened to be Amras’ virtual battle game. I played the game myself for only one summer, and I was terrible at it, but as Amras and I try to keep up with each other’s hobbies (the poor boy probably knows more about Titanic than he probably ever wanted to) – I know rather a lot about that game and it’s requirements…therefore the conversation went something like this:

Guest: you probably wouldn’t know this but there a game called…WoT

Me: Aw man that’s a HUGE resource hog! Did you get the new graphics update? There’s no way that you’re going to be able to run that on anything older than a 3 year old CPU, and you’ll need a killer fast graphics card. Otherwise the ping rate is going to absolutely kill you because your chip won’t be able to keep up with the demand. I mean the download *alone* for those new graphics took a whole day!

And he just blinks. It’s only a millisecond, but you can totally see it cross his face “this girl games?”.

I did not tell him of course that my game of choice is Call of Duty, or Civ 6, or Fallout (3 or Vegas, pick your poison)…and that the only reason I knew anything about the game he was talking about was because my fiancé has been playing it for years. He didn’t need to know that particular piece of information 😉

I so should have asked him if he had the new Italian tanks…

 

Posted in Alaska, Below the waterline, Steam Heat 2018, Summer Contracts | 4 Comments

Searching for Mr. Tumnus – Endecott Arm, Alaska – [05/10/2018]

Posted on May 10, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

We’re sailing through Endecott Arm fjord today, and I am once again finding myself in awe of just how massively astounding the place is. There is nothing like mountains to make you realize just how small you really are.

When I worked in the library I had to sneak away from the desk if I wanted time to recharge outside. But with my current position, the bow is my office for most of the afternoon during scenic cruising days; so not only do have I have a reason to be out there, I’m required to be. Unfortunately, by the time my hours started we had left the glacier long behind us, but the upside was that the bow was almost empty – leaving it quiet enough that I could hear the roar of the ever-present waterfalls as we coasted by. If you listen very closely, you can even hear the ice crackling as the bow brushes it out of its path.

Even know, I still find myself scanning the banks for signs of Mr. Tumnus, or Lucy, or the lamppost. I am certain that if there ever was a place in the real world for such creatures to exist, it would be here – along side the wise wolves and the curious owls and the vast majesty of the grizzly bears.

I could spend days just staring at that coastline, trying to be quiet enough to see something…more….

It honestly baffled me that, so few people were outside. Contrary to its reputation this area of Alaska is not particularly cold this time of year – wet perhaps but not cold. In fact, it’s probably colder inside the ship than out, but there I was, one of only a handful.

I honestly feel sorry for those people who cannot see beauty in places like this, who don’t seem to understand how precious they are, how much they can teach us.

I had a gentleman (I perhaps use the term loosely, and perhaps more on that later), in my workshop this morning who – when I stated that we don’t run formal classes on scenic cruising day because honestly people have better things to look at – responded with:

What is tehre to see? It’s just water and ice.”

I blinked for a moment, responded with something subtly witty, and inwardly shook my head in astonishment. How grey, I thought, must such an outlook be.

“Just”, what a ‘horrible candle snuffing word’ indeed.

I hope that I never become one of those people. I hope that when I am well beyond the place in life where I am now, whatever lies waiting for me at the foot of the next glacier, that you will still be able to find me in some way – sitting here, looking for Mr. Tumnus.

Posted in Alaska, Reflections, Steam Heat 2018, Summer Contracts | 3 Comments

Singin’ In the Rain – Ketchikan, Alaska – [05/10/2018]

Posted on May 10, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

I have never been so happy to see rain.

In all honesty, I have been waiting for Alaska since we arrived on the ship. Sure, the Bahamas was nice (well, eventually), Mexico has a lot of charm…and there are amazing historical sites in South America if you can get out with a group to see them…

But Alaska…my dear, beautiful majestic Alaska.

There is something about Alaska, the very air of the place, that tugs at my heart. It makes me feel better.

Walking down the rain-slicked street of Ketchikan I could actually feel my shoulders start to relax. As much as I am starting to love Florida, and as much as the child in me will always love California – if for some reason I had to move to the states there is no real question that it would be here.

I think it’s that Alaska gives me some kind of hope for the rest of the world. The air is still clean here ,the trees are still green, there are still animals that know enough to fear humans but also know that we are in their home not the other way around.

And on a purely superficial note, the crab soup at Dwyer’s is still to die for….

Nope, there is not one single piece of me that misses Mexico…goodbye heat, see you next season

Posted in Steam Heat 2018, Transitions | 1 Comment

Spring sails & Overcast Skies – San Diego, California – [05/01/2018]

Posted on May 6, 2018 by GypsyShaughnessy

Spring in San Diego feels a great deal like spring at home. Cool, crisp, and more than slightly overcast – with the perpetual near-dampness of oncoming spring rain. After the heat and humidity of Mexico and Panama, this kind of weather was a beautifully refreshing change. After all, all you really need is a light jacket, it’s not as though it was bundle up weather.

I love San Diego, partially because there’s something about it that reminds me of home – and when you spend as much time away from home as I do, the little reminders come to mean something.

Originally, Amras and I had a vague idea of going to the zoo, but as it turned out it wasn’t exactly zoo weather (although I love spring showers, it isn’t really conducive to wandering around outside looking at animals) – so we ended up just exploring instead. We have a few favourite haunts for food, and there are some great places for specialty teas very close to the ship, and it’s nice to just have nothing to do once in a while. We were actually in port considerably longer than usual – as our call didn’t fall at the end of a cruise, which is almost unheard of, so instead of having to rush back to the ship at 2pm we could actually stay out for dinner.

As much as I love spring weather on the west coast, it does have the effect of sometimes making things feel a little spooky. Like any other city, businesses close and reopen in San Diego on a regular basis, but there are a few things you expect to stay basically the same so we were caught by surprise when our wondering steps finally took us to the mall that we’ve visited every San Diego port for years now…only to find that the place was a ghost-town. Shuttered up store-fronts and stalled escalators that obviously hadn’t been repaired in so long that people had just started treating them like stairs; empty kiosks and flaking marquees, and the sad ghost of what was once our favourite Cinnabon store only last season. It was spooky. There were only a few storefronts left in operation, and our footsteps almost seemed to echo as we made our way to Hot Topic…

When we finally found someone to ask what on earth had happened to the place, we found out htat one of the anchor stores had shut down, and when that happened apparently the rest of the mall went with it…

The results were eerie…

In some ways I almost just wanted to sit and stare at the empty space, I’m finding myself fascinated with abandoned spaces…perhaps it’s the writer in me that thinks that every space has a story to tell of what it once was.

Once we left the empty mall behind us we – no big surprise – found the pub that had the most awesome pinball machines. And for once I actually won! Total disbelief, I actually beat Amras at pinball! Things I never thought I would see happen.

But my favourite part of San Diego, bar none, is the waterfront. Walking back from dinner, the first edges of the spars started rearing up against the sky, and by the time we reached the waterfront, the vast cream-coloured sails of the Star of India could be seen spreading themselves across the overcast grey; and I could hear the rigging creaking against the wind. I have been known to spend hours at the San Diego Martime Museum…I know these ladies, they know me. Sadly, we didn’t have enough time for a proper visit, so I had to say my greetings from afar and take my traditional turn around the gift shop. Once again I am reminded that the tall ship sailing course is something I have to do, thankfully the program doesn’t have an age limit as long as the person applying is healthy and strong enough to handle the work – but I’ve been putting this off for so long that it feels like past time to stop doing so.

Further along the waterfront stands the very imposing silhouette of the HMS Midway museum. Something that I have never been able to really make myself do. My relationship with military ships is…turbulent. Somehow I just can’t handle them. But – with the exception of the Pearl Harbour memorial – I’ve always been afraid to even approach one. I’m thinking that might change now that I’m usually travelling with Amras, as he’s a military history buff and enough of a grounding influence htat he can keep me from flying all to pieces from the energy pressure (that may not make sense ot some people, but trust me it is a thing, which more than a few people I know will understand).

The area around the Midway is full of memorial statues, to sailors of course, but also to the ships themselves. The area is full of history, in fact one particular area of it made me physically dizzy. My favourite part of the area however is the giant statue of the famous end-of-war kiss (officially titled “embracing peace”) that stands on the edge of the water. There is something about that statue that gives me…an incredible amount of hope. And there’s something eerily ironic about having it stand so close to a warship. In the evening it’s very quiet, and the thronging crowds taking pictures around the statue’s base are light, in fact it’s quiet enough that you can hear the old-time radio broadcast that plays on a loop from the nearby Bob Hope tribute drifting through on the air….

Ghost malls, speaking sails, and radio carried on the wind…yeah, I love this city.

 

Posted in Below the waterline, Steam Heat 2018, Travel | Leave a comment