Friday, January 17 - At Sea

 We saw Doug and Joan at breakfast and they said the show last night, a guitar player, was fabulous and wasn't too loud.  We may have to give him a try at his next show.  I really wish the shows didn't start at 9:30.

Terry Bishop gave a talk called "The Amazon Explorers".  The Spanish did a lot of exploring from the west coast of South America unsuccessfully looking for spices like cinnamon and the city of gold, El Dorado.  Terry's take was that the natives told them that these things could be found just over the mountains to the east, knowing that they couldn't, but wanting to get the conquistadors away as they'd had enough of their "bad behavior".  I love how he puts history in context we can all relate to.

The weather is warm, but not unbearable (yet!).  It rained for part of the day which drove the pool chair hogs indoors, but didn't bother us.  And the seas have been pretty mild, at least to us although some others have been a bit uncomfortable.  Here's another photo from the ship.

Mariner Lounge right outside the main dining room of Compass Rose.  This seems to be the most popular lounge.

Bill Lee's talk this afternoon was titled "Space Food for your Trip to Space".  He gave a history of food on board spaceships and the International Space Station.  The Gemini 3 launch in 1965 was the first launch that lasted long enough for NASA to be required to feed the astronauts.  They provided a lovely tube of meet and vegetables (like toothpaste), but astronaut John Young sneaked aboard his own corned beef sandwich which he picked up at his favorite deli, unbeknownst to the NASA crew at Cape Canaveral.  When they heard this, they went crazy: what would that do to his digestive system in weightlessness (diarrhea, excessive gas, bloating, vomiting?), could the crumbs escape and mess with the filters, should they abort the mission and return them right away?  Before they could make any informed decisions, he had finished the sandwich and was ready to get back to work.  But that was the one and only corned beef sandwich that ever went into space.  Now, if an astronaut wants his favorite cake or cookie or his wife's wonderful chicken cordon bleu, for example, NASA will do its best to make it safe for space travel.

At Trivia we got 10/15 which was enough to get us 3rd place for one point.  It was a tough day.  Not many teams knew the name of the first woman prime minister of Canada, (Kim Campbell, 1993) but she only lasted 5 months, so I guess we can be forgiven.

We ran into Roger and Barbara at the Mariner Lounge.  We had eaten with them earlier on this cruise, so we visited over a cocktail for a while and then went into dinner together again.  I'm not sure how it happened, but I agreed to meet Barbara tomorrow morning at 9 am to walk the track up on Deck 12 unless it's raining, of course (let's hope it rains tomorrow).