011020 Jamcruise IV

Somehow it took until day four of Jamcruise for me to find the inevitable omelet station among the ship’s large and varied 24-hour buffet.  I knew they had to have one but it was tucked way back in the corner of the cafeteria, well past the piles of croissants and cheese that would generally take all of my morning attention and appetite.  Ironically, though I found the omelet station and watched m’lady devour a hand-crafted egg-fold I missed out on the omelet entirely, so taken was I with conversation with my new friends at the next table.

We were docked aside an obviously created-for-tourism Mexican villa for our second and final destination of the cruise and it was my joke about the ancient Aztec waterslide that caught their attention.  The sea and jungle views outside the large floor-to-ceiling windows mixed perfectly with the easy conversation and before I knew it two hours had passed and the omelet station had shut down for the day.  No matter, I had the area sussed out for the following morning(s), and I really enjoyed the lackadaisical start to the day.

I’m not sure how I whiled away the rest of the daylight hours but somehow I did.  I know I ended up at Ivan Neville’s charity Texas Hold ‘em tournament where I made it through about half of the thirty or so entrants.  Special mention goes to the guy to my left who knew nothing about the game and kept miracling one all-in after another – I mean it was astounding – and to host-player Ivan Neville who short-stacked me by mistake.  Ivan had called my three-of-a-kind with what he thought was two pair.  When he realized his mistake he said, “Aw sheet, I ain’t got nothin’” and tossed his cards in the middle of the table.  As he was leaning back to secede the pot someone at the table pointed out that he actually had a straight.  “What, a straight?” Ivan said, perking up.

“Well, whattya know, I do have a straight!” he remarked with a smile, and with that he raked in the pot.

It didn’t put me out but it sure left me short, but heck, what was I gonna say?  Twenty minutes later I was pretty much forced all in with a pair of fives, and I got called by two sixes.  Then I raced down to the Master’s Camp for a quick happy hour before the night began in earnest.

I started off with Circles Around The Sun in the theatre and it was fantastic.  A very liberal bartender armed with extremely high-octane IPA beers at a previous day’s happy hour had truncated my first opportunity to see Circles Around The Sun on this cruise so I was very happy for the opportunity to sit down and take in the entirety of their set.  Though I had seen the band once before, this was my first time hearing them since Eric Krasno took over guitar duties from the late Neal Casal, and the show was really great.  

Upstairs the Pool Deck had been shut down for the evening due to weather – specifically: extremely high winds; winds strong enough to literally blow a bourbon and Coke up and out of the plastic cup in my hand and all over the front of my shirt…I mean it was windy!  The result was a very rocky boat, one that sent many passengers to their rooms with a strong bout of seasickness.  While I am fortunate to be impervious to seasickness m’lady is not, and like so many others she ended up lying in her bunk trying to quell the swell.  I took one for the team and joined her, and we ended up missing the rest of the evening’s music, which included an epic (or so everyone says) moe. set that had been moved indoors to the Atrium.  Which was pretty okay with me – I’m not such a moe. fan.

One image I shan’t forget came when I weaved up to the cafeteria to fill our water bottle for the evening.  I stopped at the indoor pool and marvelled at the water gushing back and forth, back and forth, as thousands of gallons would dump out of one end of the pool only to quickly spill back in and dump out the other end.  The motion of the pool proved that the prevailing pitch of the ship was front-to-back but curiously I couldn’t feel that aspect of the movement at all.  All I could feel was the side-to-side motion.  I suppose the boat was so long that it somehow masked the front-to-back rocking.

Bottom line is the fourth day was a short one for us, but it was still pretty darn fabulous.  Jamcruise is awesome.