Final day of the cruise and final thoughts

Back from my cruise, it is time to add in some details about the last day in Ensenada and my final thoughts on the trip. The trip was good, but it could have been so much better. Regardless, I did have fun and I was able to take some decent pictures while on the ship. Beautiful sunsets and fairly decent pictures at night too.

So on the last day, I pretty much ran out of internet minutes and I didn’t feel it necessary to spend more than I had already spent on access to the nerd world. The ship got into port around 8 or so in the morning. Since we had changed time zones on our way to Puerta Vallarta, we needed to change back to Pacific time at Ensenada, apparently, my mom didn’t get the memo so we got a lovely wake up call around 6. After talking, I hung up and just went back to sleep ignoring her inane babbling. I get woken up a couple of more times and finally refuse to go into town as I just want to sleep.

The family takes off into town and I finally wake up around noon. I head up a deck and eat my normal ration of rabbit food. After walking around the top deck for about a mile, I hit the gym for a quick thirty minute run. Mile time is even better – if anything, I have the cruise to thank for if and when I get back into a shape that isn’t “round”. Providing as little distractions as possible is a great way to turn me towards running to entertain myself. I also snap a few pictures of Ensenada, and of the other cruise ship that is in port. From the ship, Ensenada looks just like any other coastal city in California, nothing special.

At around 3pm, I head down to the second deck to see about their daily trivia game. Today’s trivia is music and I get 10 out of 20 correct. The winner nailed 19 out of 20. Well, at least I got the Lionel Richie song question correct – I just don’t know if I should shoot myself for knowing that one or not (the question was: “Name the song that has the following lyrics: ‘Tom bo li de say de moi ya.'”). I head back to the room and the family is passed out from the day in the city. It is friggin’ windy – but we are far enough away from Norbert for that to have any affect, I have no idea, I’m not a meteorologist. I head back out to the deck to snap some pictures of the sun setting.

Nicky joins me while I’m taking pictures of the sun setting and wonders if I really am gay… But as I prepare to slam the poor bastard with a rebuttal, I see that his eyes are red as if he’s been crying and his eyes well up and are watery. Apparently he just found out that one of his closest friends was in a pretty bad car wreck and he has no other information. So I just sit there and listen to him vent a little. he gets a free pass from me today. He’s a very happy go lucky kid, so it sucks to see him sad. Dinner time is rolling around so he heads off to get ready and see if he can make another phone call; and I head back to the room and pack my stuff.

Nothing interesting happens at dinner, so afterward, I head back to the top deck to walk off dinner. It’s f-ing windy, and damn cold. But I get a good mile and change in and then head down to the back of deck nine where the giant chess board is located. The two guys from last night are just finishing, and Tom, the older, ex-navy gentleman has once again beaten railroad worker Nick (not to be confused with Nicky the 17 year old). Nick is a 29 year old married guy who lives in Hesperia, and enjoys playing chess and talking strategy. Since Tom just won and I just showed up, they force me to play. Apparently I can only watch so many games. Tom and I play, and I’m doing decently against him, however, Tom baits me and I make only one single mistake and I get checkmated. Nick went to go see his wife off to sleep, so Tom and I decide on a rematch, but Tom needs to head inside for another cigar.

I’m sitting out on the deck looking like a lonely douche as I stand there next to the chess board… alone.

And as a side note, that big yellow caution cone is the other black bishop. Nick returns with his brother-in-lay Aaron, who had beaten Tom the previous night. Since Tom is not back yet, Aaron and I play, and I have him on the ropes for a while until I make the mistake of moving my stupid queen to a position where it gets taken by a F-ing pawn… I make a small victory later by taking his queen; but the beginning of the end for me has already started. After a couple more of my pieces are removed from the board, I see my impending doom in the next 5 or so moves so I concede so that a new game can be had for the others there. Tom and Nick start up again, and I head out to check on my bags, so see if they were put outside of the rooms and such.

Returning, the game is slowly progressing, but not long, Tom takes Nick out, again. Tom calls it a night and it is just Nick and I playing. I run black. The game gets going and I start out as I usually do with my knights. Nick, Aaron, and Tom like to push a line of defense with their pawns. I just think that it allows for too many holes so I only move a few of them a single step to allow movements of my bishops. In four moves, I put Nick into check, just to ensure that he cannot later on castle himself. Once that was done, I pushed with my knights. I castle which frees my rook while keeping the corner area pawns in place. My king is in a fortress. Nick sees that but cannot do anything as I just keep pressure on hi king, putting him in check every chance I can. I take his queen and he completely falls apart. One by one I take his pieces out. At one point, I had only one knight and one bishop out of the game while he had only one knight, a rook, and a bishop in play. I drop his rook with a pawn and get back my other knight as my pawn reached his end of the board. Adding insult to injury, I take out his bishop with my king leaving him with only his king on the board. He knew early on that he was done for, but unlike me, refuses to concede so I just make a spectacle of it.

I enjoyed the game, but it was about 2:30 in the morning so too late to start up another. I should start playing chess more. It has been too longs since I last played; and I used to have a fairly decent traveling chess set that I picked up in Venice Italy about 18 years ago…No clue where that thing is anymore.

I head back to the room and crash only to be woken up in 4 hours to get ready for leaving the ship. The bags are gone and around 8:30AM, we head down to the second deck to await our scheduled departure from the ship. The family and I sit there and play Big 2 for almost two hours before we are ready to leave. And like most things, getting on, getting off, getting off for excursions, etc etc… there is a line.

We are finally off the ship at around 11:30 AM, and in the car on the way home. We stop by for some Pho, Vietnamese style eggrolls, charbroiled beef, etc. I’m in my house around 1:00pm. I can finally get some rest. My new skis have arrived… time to assemble my bindings and get ready for the cold season… I hope for some good snow this year.

I offloaded my pictures and formatted a few videos I took off my camera as well. I still have a few videos that I need to reformat but I’ll do that later. For now, I have the pictures and videos up. So for the previous days’ picture less posts, here are some quick snaps.

Puerta Vallarta:

Although the visibility on the one day I got to dive sucked ass, I did get to take some pictures of things I’ve never seen before, sorry for the crappy pictures and video quality, but you get to enjoy the 10-15 feet of what I got to see.

You can sorta see the gigantic sea turtle slowly swimming by:

Cabo San Lucus:

And the rest of the pictures and videos(still processing some of them) are here:
http://www.gamerabaenre.com/mexico.htm