{"id":690,"date":"2011-12-14T22:03:32","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T04:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=690"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:11:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:11:46","slug":"racing-with-the-clock-at-sea-12072011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=690","title":{"rendered":"Racing With The Clock \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [12\/07\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When you\u2019re racing with the clock
\nWhen you\u2019re racing with the clock
\nAnd the second hand doesn\u2019t understand
\nThat your back may break and your fingers ache
\nAnd your constitution isn\u2019t made of rock
\nIt\u2019s a losing race when you\u2019re racing with the
\nRacing, racing, racing with the clock!<\/em><\/p>\n

The adjustment is always a bit unusual. Going from a Grand Voyage, where three quarters of the guests are four and five star mariners and often know more about our jobs than we<\/em> do, to a relocation cruise, where a lot of people are first time cruisers or lower level mariners, who have to be \u201ctrained\u201d for lack of a better word. The ship takes on a whole different personality. Gone are the sweeping evening gowns and theme nights, in come the party bands and the mixology classes.<\/p>\n

Truly, life is crazy. The team has changed over, but thankfully the new team here is wonderful. I miss my people, and I miss my cast-girls, but the new arrivals have blended in nicely. The new band includes at least one member I know, though none of them are \u201cmy\u201d band. In all honestly I don\u2019t know where all of my \u2018Cats are, once we leave the ship we tend to scatter to the four winds. I know where Hunt is, but the rest of them? No idea. Anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

When a switchover like this happens, my days jump from a standard of 7.5 hours to a crazy 10.5 (yes it\u2019s supposed to be 10, but it never quite works out that way). That\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing, it makes the days go quickly and you actually end getting a whole heckuva a lot done. And it means your down time feels that much better when it does come around. It\u2019s not even quite the same as Alaska, where I actually have a fair bit of downtime \u2013 especially in ports like Juneau where I have almost an entire day off to wonder around looking at jewelry I can\u2019t afford\u2026but I digress. While I\u2019m not doing activities anymore, I am still running bingo sales (voluntarily, since I\u2019ve become quite good at it, and our DJ is great fun to work with) \u2013 which have skyrocketed from a modest 15 people or so per day on the Grand Voyage to 50 + people and climbing, with larger cards and higher numbers, which means slightly more complex paperwork, and since there\u2019s only one librarian and only one internet manager now, we\u2019re both covering a lot more duties. When one of us isn\u2019t here, the other one does our job.<\/p>\n

In short, life is busy. Very very busy. My shore-side friends and family often comment that I always look like I\u2019m in a hurry, I walk very<\/em> quickly. In fact, even some of my ship-side family teases me about it, both my shipside Siblings learned very quickly when I could stop to chat, and when they were better off getting out of my way. In truth, that comes almost completely from working on ships. Especially since I started out on the larger ships where it takes<\/em> ten minutes to get from one place to another. Now it\u2019s become force of habit, and since on a regular cruise I do <\/em>always have somewhere to be\u2026most people have figured out by now not to try and stop me in the hallways.<\/p>\n

Having left behind Asia and Australia, we\u2019re now heading into the more typical tropical ports. Tomorrow we port in the sun drenched shores of Mexico. This will be the third time I\u2019ve been in Pueta Vallarta, and only the first time in 15 years I\u2019ve seen my old dance teacher, I\u2019m actually quite excited about that. Almost as excited as I am about the possibility of para-sailing (finally).<\/p>\n

And so it goes\u2026what goes up, must come down, spinning wheels and all that \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re racing with the clock When you\u2019re racing with the clock And the second hand doesn\u2019t understand That your back may break and your fingers ache And your constitution isn\u2019t made of rock It\u2019s a losing race when you\u2019re … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2011"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-b8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2147,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/2147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}