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You Never Know What's Gonna Happen on the Cruise-Uh!

Wrapping Things Up - Friday, February 1 and Saturday, February 2

After the BNL show, we crawled our way up to the Lido deck, AGAIN, for the late-night jam. Last year we missed it, and it was apparently mind-blowingly insane, so we figured we'd TRY this year. Picture about 30 people on stage, roaming from song to song randomly, getting drunker and drunker. Then picture Steve appearing as "Bartles," dressed as a strung-out Richard Simmons. Wow. You really, truly never know what's going to happen on the cruise-uh. LOL! We made it until about 3:15, but had to bail, and finally went to bed around 3:30. The festivities apparently went to 4:30am, when they were forced to stop as we got closer to Miami, and the crew needed to start cleaning up all the equipment to get it off the ship.

Alan Doyle and Kevin Hearn arrived pretty early on!

Jason Plumb, Sean Nelson, Alan Doyle, Ed Robertson, Kevin Hearn.

Tyler Stewart, Ryan Miller and Adam Gardner arrive!

Sean Cullen takes center stage.

And then... Steve arrives. Oh, excuse me, "Bartles."

How many people are ON that stage, anyway?!

I see Boothby Graffoe in there now...

Andy Creeggan and Jim Creeggan are here. BNL fully accounted for!

But we can't stay awake any longer. One last parting shot, looking at Lido's blue lights.

We woke up at 6 am, showered, finished packing, and were off the ship by 7:15, thanks to self-debarkation. It was depressing to have to get off the ship, after having so much fun!!!

The next step was to get the Hertz Shuttle, so Clarissa could pick up the rental car they needed to get back home. What a clusterf**k that was. Hertz had given Sixthman a deal, so lots of people booked with Hertz... so what did they send for a "shuttle?" A few vans that held only 7 people at a time. There were at LEAST 50 people waiting, and we were the first bunch off the ship. Nevermind the fact that a SECOND Carnival ship was also offloading passengers that had Hertz reservations.

We sent Clarissa on an earlier shuttle so she could get the paperwork in gear, and John, Steve and I caught the next one. When we got to the rental place, it was on a random downtown street, and about 50 people and their luggage were all over the sidewalk, waiting for their cars. We did get ours fairly quickly, though, and were on our way back to the Lorraine Hotel.

We got back to the hotel, and pretty much collapsed in the lobby until our room was ready. Steve and Clarissa left for home, and John and I got our stuff upstairs -- after checking our local newspaper's web site for weather information back home... it was not pretty. Sleet, ice, rain, snow. A total mess. Luckily it was all clear by the time we needed to fly home on Saturday.

After we went up to our room and offloaded our stuff, we went back downstairs to wait for my friend Mary to arrive. She drove over from Cape Coral to visit with us for the day, because how often are we in Florida?? While we waited, I checked in with Barenaked.net, and of course she walked in as I was posting, and poked fun at me for needing to get back online so fast. LOL!

We went and hung out by the beach for a while, chit-chatting and sharing photos, until we got hungry, and wanted to get some lunch. Oddly, there were not many eateries near our hotel. Finally, we found a little Italian place, and had Panini. After lunch, we walked back along the beach, and hung out waiting for the ships to leave port again on their next journeys. We got to say goodbye to the Victory one last time as the MayerCraft Carrier (John Mayer cruise) set sail. Mary headed home around 7:30, and not long after she left, we collapsed in a pile of sleep. LOL!