Mayor Dan’s Weekly Blog

  Weekly Letter Sunday, March 8, 2009 - Sunday, March 15, 2009

Greetings from the Mayor's office. I hope you and your folks are doing well. My letter this week is about our cruise to Cozumel and Calica, Mexico. We have talked about taking a cruise but never did. A few months ago we decided to go on this one with our friends from Sunday School at First Baptist. We enjoyed it and are glad we decided to go along. It was a great time to be with so many of our friends.

Sunday morning Kay and I made final preparations for our trip to Mobile to board the ship Holiday for our cruise to Mexico. I carried our luggage to First Baptist parking lot to meet the Workman's. They were in their truck and carried our luggage for us. We had set our clock to get up at 6:30, but overslept until 7:15. I made it to meet them at our scheduled time of 7:30.

Wayne and Vonnette Harper picked us up at home around 11:30, and we were off to the cruise. We stopped in Clanton to eat lunch at Shoney's, stopped for gas in Greenville, and arrived in Mobile around 5:00 p.m. Our friends, Opal and Charlie Workman, were already checked in the hotel. We all went to Felix's for dinner tonight. This is a nice restaurant next to the Battleship Alabama out on the Causeway. We had a good night's sleep in a room on the 24th floor, overlooking the ship we would board tomorrow.

Monday morning we slept late, then grabbed breakfast at McDonald's before boarding the boat around 11:30 in the morning. We had to park in a parking deck, give our luggage to the porters, and take our carry-on bags with us. The travel agent advised us to take a carry on with essentials in case the luggage was delayed in getting to our room. This was our first time to board a ship, so it was confusing at times, but we finally made it and found our room. We were pleased with things so far, and our first experience on the ship would be to have lunch at the Lido Deck restaurant.

This restaurant was where we would eat breakfast and lunch every day if we wished, and it had a variety of foods, including a cafeteria, pizzeria, salad bars, sandwich bar, and soft-serve ice cream which turned out to be one of the most popular spots on the boat. There were other restaurants where you could sit down and be served every meal, but most folks used this one. The food at all the restaurants was very good, and included in the price of the cruise. The only things you paid for were sodas and alcoholic drinks.

We ate lunch, explored the ship, and rested for a while in the room. The ship was 92 feet wide, 777 feet long, weighed 46,000 tons, and had a top speed of 21 knots. It carries 1450 passengers and 650 crew. They say it is the smallest ship in their fleet of cruise ships. There were hundreds of college boys and girls on the ship celebrating spring break, and around 400 smaller children who received child care each day. We geezers were outnumbered on this trip.

Before the ship sailed, we all were required to attend a life boat drill. They taught us what to do in case of emergency, how to put on the life preserver that is in your cabin, and which deck to come to to get on the life boats.

We set sail at 5:30 p.m. from Mobile. It didn't take long for us to get out into Mobile Bay, on the way to the Gulf of Mexico. We were moving at a fast clip as the sun went down, and the air cooled down a good bit.

There were eighteen of us from our Sunday School Class on this cruise. Our group included Kay and me, Wayne and Vonnette Harper, Linda and Don Ricketts, Opal and Charlie Workman, Helen and Jerry Schrimsher, Lee and Carole Locke, Etna and Willard Sherrod, Susan and Al Todd, and Jimmy and Linda Sloan. We had two tables in the Seven Seas dining room side by side, and always ate at the early dinner serving at 6:00 each evening. We had the same waiters at our table every meal. The waiters would entertain the diners at every meal with singing and dancing. I had fish for dinner every night. I can't see eating steak and pasta while you are sailing over the bounty main.

After dinner on this first night, Kay and I strolled the decks for a while. We saw the Pilot boat come along side to take the Pilot off the boat and put more Pilots on the boat. There are some requirements about changing Pilots at particular times. I never found the reason for this. I figured it was a Union requirement or some crazy governmental regulation.

Tuesday morning I got up early and went to drink coffee with Charley Workman and Willard Sherrod. They are always up early, so we drank coffee and told war stories until the ladies were ready to come up for breakfast. After breakfast the ladies all planned a shopping trip in the ship's shops, and we were left to explore the boat and eat ice cream. This is what we did most of the day. There were other things to do like carpet golf, shuffle board, bingo, and slot machines in the casino.

We had to dress up for dinner tonight. It was supposed to be formal, and several folks really dressed, but we just did coats and ties. The ladies did dress much better than the men. We had our own social in the Lido Deck cafe tonight late after dinner. They announced we would be late getting to Cozumel tomorrow because the main engine had gone out and we were running on axillary engines. I saw on the news where the stock market rallied a good bit today, and this made us all feel better. Several of us attended a country music show in the theater tonight after dinner. It was a good show, but hardly country. They did have a great fiddle player in the band, and he played, "Orange Blossom Special, and, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia".

Wednesday morning I was up and drinking coffee with Charley and Willard early. We had breakfast around 8:30, then watched as our boat pulled into the slip at Cozumel. I thought this boat was big, but the one we docked beside looked twice as big as ours. We left the boat at 10:30 and hit the streets of Cozumel for a day of shopping and sightseeing. This town is laid out along the shore of the bay, and it reminds me of some of the towns along the Gulf in the states. It was full of shops selling the things tourists like best. Clothing and jewelery seemed to be what everyone was looking for, but they were also hawking Cuban cigars and liquor of every kind.

It was a pretty town, and seemed to be one long strip beside the bay. There were some side areas that featured small squares of shops and restaurants and places you could sit and rest. They also had many different activities for the tourists. You could swim with the Dolphins, snorkel, tour the Inca Ruins, and many other things.

We got back on the boat around 2:30, so we showered and took a nap until it was time to go to dinner. The news had been seen on television about the man in Geneva and Samson killing his relatives and himself. There were a lot of folks talking about this event.

Thursday morning I was up early drinking coffee with the guys. The ladies came down at nine for breakfast. We all ate in the formal dining room this morning and it was nice. The boat had pulled in at Calica so we all took a taxi into town. I liked this town better than Cozumel. It was laid out along the bay, but seemed to be wider and have more people in it. It had several squares of shops and stores to visit. We stayed in town until 2:00 then went back to the boat. We had a lite lunch at the Lido Deck restaurant, then went to the room to rest for a while. We cleaned up and went to dinner tonight and the ship was rolling a good deal, enough to make some feel icky. I explored more of the ship tonight.

Friday I went for coffee early. We had breakfast in the Seven Seas restaurant this morning. I had the Egg Benedict and it was very good. We all went to the top deck to get group pictures made by Lee Locke. He took good pics and we didn't have to pay the price they were charging on the boat. We went to a de-boating lecture in the theater this morning. They told us how to get off the boat tomorrow morning, and what things we could take with us. I loaned Willard my walking cane this evening because his leg was hurting him very much.

We had dinner tonight for the last time in the Seven Seas, and Willard became very sick while we were there. We had a wheel chair brought in for him, then carried him to the infirmary to be checked out by the Doctor. They suspected a possible blood clot and said an ambulance would meet us at Mobile tomorrow morning to carry him to the hospital. All of our group met in the Harper's cabin and had prayer for Willard and Etna. They later sent him back to his room, but they had to come to the room to do some things for him because he was in so much pain.

Saturday morning we were packed and ready to get off the ship. The ambulance met the boat at the dock and Willard was carried to the University of Mobile hospital for treatment. We didn't get off the boat until after 11:00, and we were almost the last ones through customs. We placed our luggage in the Workman's truck, then we headed to North Alabama. We stopped at Greenville and had a burger at Hardee's which was not too good. We made a couple of rest stops, then arrived in Athens after five o'clock. We were tired and glad to be home with the kids. Kay, Whitney, Dinah, and I went to Cracker Barrel tonight for supper. It was good to see our kids after being gone for a week. We went back home and hit the bed early.

Sunday morning we slept late, then I got up and packed again for a trip to Washington, D.C. this afternoon. I caught the plane in Huntsville at 1:10 p.m. and arrived in Washington at about 4:45 EDT. I went to the hotel, dressed, and went to the Willard Hotel for a dinner with the Workman's Compensation Board. This is a very historic hotel, and is located very near the White House. There were about twenty-five of us in a private dining room. Most were associated with the Alabama League of Municipalities organization. There were a few kids there with parents and grandparents. My dinner partner was Avery. She is the fourteen year old granddaughter of Steve and Loretta Martin from Montgomery. Avery lives in Millbrook, and she is a beautiful young lady. She and her grandparents had visited Mt. Vernon and she really enjoyed seeing the home of George Washington. I got back to the hotel around ten o'clock and hit the sack.

I guess this is enough for this time.

Take care and I'll see you next time.

Mayor Dan