This should be one amazing cruise, if all the activity that’s been happening beforehand is any indication! Today our Facebook group for the trip passed 355 members, meaning nearly 1 of every 10 passengers we encounter will be someone who’s in the group. That’s hard for me to fathom. It has been a great time getting ready and I am looking forward to seeing all the different views of the ship and activities that group members will share…when I have permission I’ll pass them along here and in the Cruise Critic “Live Blog” thread as well. That’s here, by the way…
In the (WHOOPS) over four months since my last post, I have:
- Renamed my travel agency — Planes, Trains and Ships Vacation Travel became Sea Freedom Vacations to reflect my choice to specialize in all-inclusive experiences centered around cruise ship itineraries
- Changed the host agency I do business under — this is more travel industry inside baseball than anything, but it does make some differences in the future of my business plans.
- Started marketing a group trip with the radio stations I work on in a nearby town, aboard NCL Jewel next June in Alaska.
- Spent nearly every waking hour the past three weeks consolidating the customers on my web hosting servers to a new cluster of servers based on latest technology (seriously, there have been some 30-32 hour days)
- Took a week-long driving trip to Michigan to visit a friend and see the area I did remote radio news for almost a decade ago
- Invested more time learning about two new passion areas — animal communication and retiring overseas
- Picked back up in my volunteer commitment to the Animal Response Team in our neighboring county, where I am now the Logistics Coordinator
All this in addition to the day job and my contract audio work at church!
(Tap, tap — the sound of my conscience reminding me this is a blog post, not the annual Christmas letter we haven’t written in a decade or more…)
Ah, it never fails…a cruise (or images reminding me of one) gets me back on track!
What’s on the way
A big scramble, in my life as well as those 4,000 people I’m about to share a week with. For me it includes the first meeting with potential guests for the Alaska group cruise; a quick trip to Denver the week before we leave for my travel Consortium’s one-day convention; logistics and potential volunteer management and leadership for a parade the Saturday before we depart, along with the agency for which I volunteer; plus about four days work left on the server project and the rest of my work and volunteer activities.
Roxan is working more of the next 18-19 days than she isn’t, I believe. It’s part of what has to happen for the mega trip next November to be possible financially — working as much overtime as she can while it’s available.
We’re driving to New York City, so the “live” blogging — possibly along with some actual live streaming — will begin Friday, September 29th. I have plans — we’ll see how well I stick to them — to do more, smaller, posts closer to the time things happen than I did last trip. On an itinerary where we have a port a day, I don’t have the luxury of being able to write about a day the next morning. I have a bit better tool set to do it, and went ahead and sprung for upgraded Internet for us both, so we don’t have to pass one unlimited account back and forth like we did last year. That and being in cities with decent 4G/5G coverage each day should make it less challenging.
I don’t have specific plans for when I might live stream — so if you’ll subscribe to the post notifications (either email using the form below, or through one of the popups that shows up when you hit the site), I’ll post links to the live feeds whenever I do them. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel which is where they’ll be streaming. It’s kind empty in there now — hope the echo doesn’t get to you!
Time to be done with this post and go feed the Cruise Critic thread 🙂 — more soon!
and then