Pre-Cruise San Diego-

Welcome to the first entry on my Live Blog of the 35 night  cruise on Holland America’s Koningsdam. We sail out tomorrow to Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Marquesas (think the set of Survivor).

This blog will mostly be a cut and paste from my Live blog on cruise critic and facebook, but I’ll be adding more photos and videos here because they are easier to work with in this format.

Before I begin, I know some of you must be wondering why I finally lit up a blog. The answer is two fold.

First- I really enjoy reading my travel blogs years after. They are like a journal/diary and take me right back to travels of days gone by. The blogs help me remember little details often forgotten by time.  Unfortunately, years of my live blogs vanished when cruise critic did a whole site update several years ago, so “A Wandering Doc” is a way for me to have a personal copy of my travels.

Second- this blog gives me a bit more creative freedom with content. Other sites have their own sets of rules. They are well within their rights to enforce said rules, but I suck at coloring in the lines and find myself sitting in time out with some degree of regularity…….. so there’s that.

I’ll be “spilling the tea” on things that would surely get deleted on other social media sites. Those of you easily offended may want to stick with the G rated cruise critic version. Things are likely to get a bit shady here :).

With that… here is a cut and paste of the first blog entry I posted on cruise critic.

Pre-cruise in San Diego

Got wheels up from the D before the storm hit. The weather folks couldn’t decide if it was going to be a light 3-4 inches or “buy all the toilet paper” 17 inch Snow Armageddon. I figured best to avoid the nonsense completely and spend an extra day in San Diego….. under a flood watch. Rain beats snow in the precipitation version of rock, paper, scissors, so here I am.

Those of you who followed my South America/Antartica adventure might be wondering just how much time I had between trips. The answer is 9 days. NINE.  And since I won’t be be home until mid-may that means packing for 3 months, laundry, dentist, tax man, Hair, stock up on Sheba so Sherpa doesn’t forget to feed the cat. The usual. To ensure I didn’t sleep at all, we hosted a Super Bowl party, so add scrub baseboards and buy a keg to the list of things I got done in those NINE short days. Ps- I’m kidding about the keg, it was a quarter barrel.

So, the real pre-cruise stuff- My flight was uneventful, but apparently a fighter jet narrowly missed the top floor of the best western yacht harbor and crashed in the bay about 30 minutes before I arrived. The pilots ejected safely. I can’t make this stuff up, it actually made the news.

The weather here in Sam Diego blows. It’s was rainy and cold yesterday.   I did a mani/pedi because I missed my appt flying out a day early. I added a 90 minute Thai massage because, well, I’m on vacation.

This was my first ever Thai massage. My masseuse was all of 4’2” and couldn’t have weighed more than 80 pounds sopping wet. She sprung up on that table like an excited spider monkey and walked on my back like a full fledged linebacker. Interesting combo. If I am limping later, y’all will know why.

Like last year, there are over 100 of us staying at the best western yacht harbor. It’s a great place for people who need parking ($5 a day). For the rest of us, it is a $125 a night hotel (if you book early enough), so nothing fancy. It is across from shelter island and the marina, so lots of great seafood options. Plus, these peeps are great hosts for our pre-cruise gatherings.

Many of us are already here. Apparently, I nearly ran over a fellow cc member with my luggage cart while checking in. His description of the event goes like this (quote): “Bermudabound2014: I think you and I met in the lobby of the BWYH today around 1:30pm. A woman was in the lobby with a luggage cart stacked to the top with bags and suitcases, she was driving the cart with reckless abandon and nearly pinned me against a wall.” In fairness, I missed him by a good 4 inches.

I also rode the elevator with another CC member, a gentleman with one of those awesome English accents that distracted me. We chatted about coffee. Just to prove I can embarrass myself anywhere, I forgot to push my floor in the elevator and we rode all the way to six before I realized it. If you see me riding elevators aimlessly on Kdam, please intervene. Apparently I’m easily distracted.

Breakfast was packed with lots of K’Damers. Cruisers are just a great lot. I know I’m with “my people” already. I am hosting pre-cruise get together both tonight and tomorrow. By hosting I mean I brought some name tags. Over 100 have said they will show. If that’s true, we will beat last year’s record of around 80. Nothing like getting the party started early.

I held the first pre cruise get together last night. About 40 folks showed up. I think it went really well. Cruisers on a whole are exceptional people. So many great stories to share and lots of little rid bits to learn. I enjoyed myself and hope others did too.

We are repeating the pre- cruise gathering tonight. I expect more people so we will be spilling into the hallways. If the weather holds (currently it’s sunny on Friday morning), we can even gather in the pool area Here is a quick photo of the group-

There’s nothing like a group of people about tp sail to paradise!! Look at those smiles :)