This is an excerpt from an email to a friend.

We were in a van with a standard transmission on the way to the ship.  It took a while to get to the cruise terminal because the speed limit on the freeway is around 50 mph.  NOBODY was speeding but they were looking at their cells.  I guess that’s one of the good things about a totalitarian society.

We got into Shanghai 6 hours late at midnight because of crew problem in Los Angeles.  They don’t use the jetways at that time of night.  It was sprinkling and cold.  I had never used my legs on more than two steps.  I had visions of me literally busting my ass slipping down the metal stairs off the plane.  I was slow but I made it safely down to my scooter.  The next adventure was getting onto the the bus to the terminal.

There was no ramp for the scooter.  Luckily there was an American on the plane that helped us lift it onto the bus. Everything went smoothly once we were in the terminal.  A English-speaking girl walked us through customs and baggage claim.  I hope she wasn’t too insulted when I tried to tip her.  In my defense it didn’t look like she worked for the government.

The ride was a bit scary since it was late and wet.  There was no scenery to mark our progress so after what felt like an hour I started silently questioning the character of our driver.  I felt a little better when we got to downtown but not a lot of lights were on.  I couldn’t see the hotel until we pulled in.

To be fair, no city looks good in the rain.  I could tell Shanghai was Europe-influenced.  All those browns and grays look very depressing on a cloudy rainy day.  The hotel restaurant had a good view of the street and Lord there were a lot of people out even in the nasty weather.  I wasn’t about to try to navigate through them with a cane or the scooter.

We got our first look at the city on the way to the ship terminal.  Our van had a standard transmission.  If we were in Houston that would have worried me, but the ride was slow and safe thanks to all the other drivers on their cells.  I got an old school China feel during the ride. It looked like a city from the 60’s.

I saw a different part of the city going from the cruise terminal to the airport.  We had a guide on the bus to sell us on coming back to romantic Shanghai.  She obviously works for the propaganda department.  She sang a song in Chinese about returning to the city.  They need a sunny day for that sort of thing to have any effect.

The scenery reminded me of the last scene in a movie called Bartelby, pods of 20 or 30 story  multi-family buildings.  Rush hour must be a nightmare on a good day.

Apparently I was using the first electric scooter ever in the Shanghai airport.  It must have taken at least 20 minutes and 4 United employees to give me the right tags.  I wanted to tell them to call Los Angeles because they got me on the plane to China.  That prepared us for the Chinese TSA.

If a person is tall in China and can’t play basketball I guess they put them in the military.    It was a bit scary trying to explain about the scooter to guys that have guns and barely speak your language.

There wasn’t a lot to see from the ship in Tianjin.  This is being built near the port in Korea.

It reminded me of the second Judge Dredd movie.

This is the last trip story.  The ship stopped at a Japanese island called Kageshima before we got to Nagasaki.  We were docked across this big plain park where families and school groups were enjoying the day.  I was on the 9th deck eating lunch when everybody on the deck started pointing toward the bow. They were pointing at this:

I posted aone minute  video of it spewing darker smoke on Facebook.  Find my name with the green-suited avatar on March 9.

 

I had not read any information about this place.  Since I wasn’t getting off the boat I felt no need for research.  So I see this I expect all the families at the to a classic Godzilla scene, point, yell, and run.  I’m also expecting the ship to sound the horn to signal passengers  get back to the boat.

Geography jumped to my mind first, 1.Ring of Fire, 2, Japan, 3.Smoking volcano directly in front of the boat.  Externally I was calm and quiet.  Internally I was yelling “WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING THIS THING AWAY FROM THE EXPLODING MOUNTAIN IN FRONT OF YOU?”  Coming from hurricane country I have no pity for people who refuse to get out of the path.  They had been told for days the storm was coming.  You don’t get that kind of warning with earthquakes or volcanoes.

I went back to the cabin for two reasons,  that’s where the lifejackets were and to look up the eruption activity on the internet.  Apparently this happens daily.  Occasionally it throws out small rocks so kids should wear some sort of headgear.  My wife had read the literature so she was amused at me being upset about being that close to an erupting volcano.

This was started in January.  We went on the cruise and nothing that I was scared of came to pass.  I will write a post about the trip later.  It will include an active volcano.

Next month we are taking a cruise from Shanghai and I am anxious about it.

Obviously I’m not worried about my physical well being.  Come on, it’s a cruise port.  Google a person getting shanghaied and the closest result is a Wikipedia article.

The idea of being over 7000 miles away from home in a country, hell, continent where I don’t speak the language and can’t even guess at the written symbols.  I can’t call them letters because they don’t give a clue to pronunciation.

I’ll be in a country that’s known for credit card hacking.  I consulted a friend that’s been living in China for so long he’s considered an ex-patriot.

We took an Antarctic cruise that started in Valparaiso, Chile and ended in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  It was a 3 week trip on the Holland America ship Zaandam.  We bought our airline tickets through Holland America.  They sent us through Toronto to Santiago on Air Canada.

Taking a direct flight would have cost twice as much but might have been less adventuresome.  We spent a total of 16 hours in the air from Houston to Santiago.  Our luggage probably spent 3 more than that.

We arrived in Santiago with Brooke carrying a purse and a bookbag with cords, meds, and her library books.  I was riding my motorized chair that survived 2 flights that crossed North America twice and South America.  Our luggage didn’t show up at the airport.

Here’s an important travel hint: LEARN TO SPEAK AS MUCH AS THE DESTINATION’S LANGUAGE AS YOU CAN.

You might be able to decipher the signs or order in the restaurants but those don’t help in extraordinary situations.  Not having any spare clothes two days before a 3-week cruise counts as an extraordinary situations.

That being said the girl at the lost luggage counter could  speak English.  She had a bad attitude and called a different girl over to help us.  She helped us fill out forms and gave us telephone numbers and websites to track the search process.

The numbers didn’t work and the chatlines didn’t work outside of North America.  We were getting frustrated because we both have Mensa cards and couldn’t work a Chilean phone.  We were relieved when the numbers didn’t work for the concierge.

The Air Canada website said they were having problems due to an ice storm.  I thought at the time and still think that if there are 2 airlines that could handle cold weather it would be Air Canada and Alaska Airlines.  I would have accepted a holiday excuse even though it was a week before Christmas.

We got our travel agent and Holland America involved.  They couldn’t get any information either.  We were calm because they had a couple of days before we sailed.

We didn’t get our bags until 9 days and 1900 miles later in Punte Arenas.

Holland America was nice about it.  They gave us $100 to get some clothes in the shipboard gift shop.  It was all right for my wife but I am what Gabriel Iglesias would call “Fluffy”.  There is not a lot of clothes for big people in a small clothes shop on a ship because the passengers have brought all kinds of LUGGAGE.

Brooke also went to a department store to pick up some things, Ripley.  Driving into Valparaiso I saw a Ripley store and thought it was a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum and took a few pictures.  The guide and the driver must have thought I was a real hick.   Follow the link and you’ll see that it wasn’t as dumb as it sounded. She brought me back some waaay too small underwear.

As we approached Antarctica the winds grew stronger in the small channels.  It averaged 35 mph switching sides of the ship.  It peaked around 50.  The winds died down when we got to the continent.  My scooter was envied when the ship listed; and it listed often around 2 degrees on average.

I know this because my iPhone has a level app in the extras button.  I would put it on the bar in the Crows Nest.  The Crow’s Nest is at the front of the ship on the top deck so you can see what the bridge is seeing and watch the bow rise and fall.

I will write a post just about Antarctica.

We pulled into Ushuaia after Antarctica.

It’s been almost 6 weeks since I’ve been back and the memories are fading.

The Falkland Islands were the next port of call.  The landscape there looks exactly like the default hilly landscape on every 90s computer game I’ve played.

I saw a wreck yard for boats in the Montevideo harbor.

 

 

Some Uruguayan naval vessels were on the other side of the ship.

 

The pictures were taken the same day but edited with snapfish and gimp respectively.  Gotta build up them photo software skillz Yo! That’s another post.  This post is getting like Moustache from Irma La Duce.

The next day we arrived in Buenos Aires.  We were going to be  there for 2 days.  The second day was for disembarking.  Since our flight was later in the day we combined a tour of the city with a trip to the airport.

It was a great tour through the Embassy row, the rich parts, and the poor parts.  The tour is a post in itself.  I know, Moustache moment.

All the airports I’ve been to (except Love Field in Dallas) have had iconic structures associated with them.  I don’t know about Toronto since it was night both times I was there.

After you pass the security gate you see gray blocky buildings.  The terminal is behind these leftovers from World War 2.   Since you can’t see the newer terminal from a distance when you approach from land our first impression was the inside of the terminal.

Their version of TSA was pretty quick.  Maybe we caught them on a good day.  The airport was like most, all the interesting shops were past security.

The flight from Buenos Aires to Toronto has to make a stop in Santiago.  Everybody has to deplane with their belongings in Santiago.  We saw this at the beginning of our trip but we were’nt affected since Chile was our destination.

Coming from Buenos Aires we were affected big time.  We were in the back of the plane so they had plenty of time to get my scooter into a waiting area at the end of the jetway.  They put me in a wheelchair and pushed me up to the area.

There were three other people that needed assistance and we all waited there.  The bad part of this was we didn’t know what was going on and we couldn’t speak the language.  We were being watched by armed security people.

The good part was that we didn’t have to go through customs with everybody else.  We were the first ones back on the plane after about 20 or 30 minutes. (It’s been about 4 months now.  Memory fades.)

Brooke and I were in the middle 2 seats of the middle aisle.  We were bracketed by two ladies.  It was an 8-hour flight.  Unfortunately I had to use the restroom during the flight.  I try to be invisible because of my prosthetics.  Going to the bathroom from the middle of the plane makes this impossible.  The stranger in the aisle seat has to get up and wait for me to come back.  The only bright side is that we were one row away from the bathroom.

After we went through Canadian customs in Toronto we were held up in Immigration because they couldn’t find our bags.  At least we knew our bags were lost before we got to Houston.

The Toronto shops in the airport are a lot fancier and bigger than IAH.  I didn’t take any pictures because a shop is a shop.  I took only two pictures;  a pay phone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a 747.That’s the end of this blog entry.  It took six months but it’s done.  I know I owe the blog an Antarctic entry.

Last week I read on Facebook that a friend of mine had been missing for a while.  On November 24 (Thanksgiving Day) he walked the house without his wallet, phone, or keys.  Speculation was rampant about his fate.

People were posting songs about suicide and holding on.  They posted pictures of him.  His last post was November 22.   I haven’t jumped on the pageant of posts because I realized I hadn’t talked to him face to face in years.  There are a few glaring absences in  the posts.  The people I know he would talk to personally have all been silent on Facebook.

When it comes to important life decisions like suicide or walking away from your life you are not going to put your thought process on social media.  If a male is going to mention something like that it’s going to be in a private setting or hushed tones.

I am going to believe he is dead.  This way if he shows up alive he’s the asshole.  People will feel awful if they believe he’s alive and it turns out he suffered a horrible and slow death.

Conn’s situation makes me think about how badly I keep in touch with people.  I am going on a long trip next week and I don’t plan on using the Internet on the ship.  Tomorrow I’m going to call my brother and let him know about the cruise.

My wife and I are taking a cruise from Valparaiso, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina stopping in Antarctica.  It’s going to take 3 weeks to go around the continent.