Notes From Hawaii (Part the Fourth) - News from Da Cruze

Well, it’s been an interesting day at sea.

I played Monopoly for the first time today. My hunch was correct…I’m no better at managing Monopoly money than I am real money. You can kiss my big Community Chest, Mrs. Moneybags!

The excitement started when we were having lunch. We spotted something orange and floating in the distance, something that looked about the size of a life raft. We told our server, and he advised us that he was sure it was nothing to worry about. We ordered our food and took him at his word.

About 20 minutes later, we felt the ship start to lean to the starboard…and lean hard. Further than we should have been leaning. We heard china crashing and breaking in the kitchen, we heard heavy thuds from items falling to the floor on the deck above…it was intense. The servers all looked a little afraid; it appeared that no one really knew what was going on. I kept a clear head in case this really WAS “Titanic, Part II”, but I was sufficiently concerned.

I looked back at our wake and noticed we were turning, and turning rapidly. This ship turns on a dime, which is pretty impressive! It’s no leaky dingy! Anyway, it was at this point that I was sure we were going back to take a closer look at said floating orange object. It really did look like some sort of raft to us when we saw it at first.

It was nothing. It turns out it was some kind of discarded air tank. The captain came on the PA system later and told us that he had notified the proper authorities of the object. We turned around (much more slowly this time) and continued on our way.

The final news of note has to do with laundry. Or rather, how frugal I can be. There was a note on our bed with a mid-sized paper laundry bag when we got back from dinner; the note notified us that they would wash whatever we could fit into that bag for $25. Laundry on the ship is not cheap, but we need to have some done.

You expect me to accept a challenge like that without really going for it? They had no idea who they were dealing with! I rolled everything that needed washing into tight rolls and fit $54 worth of laundry into that bag. Suckers! Yeah, that’s right.