Day 9: TUESDAY

Time: 12:58 a.m.
Location: Stateroom 9138
Physical condition: Slightly elevated body temperature; fatigued muscles; blistered feet; mad endorphin rush.

More on that later.

First, let me start with this morning's events. After approximately two and a half hours of sleep, I dragged myself slowly out of bed and got dressed to go see the Hubbard glacier. The glacier, a huge blue monstrosity that abruptly walls the ocean off from the mountains on either side, is roughly six miles wide and 300 feet tall, and most ships consider it a good day if they can get within half a mile of it. (Icebergs and weather conditions often prevent close viewing.)

Today was a good day for glacier viewing, by which you should understand that it was cold, windy, and occasionally raining on us. (Sun bleaches out the glacier's true color, so it's best to see it on an overcast day.) Hundreds of passengers huddled on the decks, wrapped in sweatshirts and wool blankets, watching intently to catch sight of the glacier calve into icebergs.

When I went out on deck, I was of course impressed by the length and height of the glacier – and then I discovered that we were still over half a mile away, and the huge cliff face that towered over the water was actually more than twice the height of our ship.

Oh.

Because of the unusually clear (of icebergs) water and fairly cooperative weather, our ship was actually able to creep up to within 1,200 feet (¼ mile) of the glacier – the closest it has ever been! During our hour-long observation we saw some impressive activity, too; chunks of ice that from our ship looked relatively small, but were actually the height of a five-story building, broke off with the distinctive gunshot-like sound of calving. Fissures opened in the ice, and small pieces shattered or exploded in the ocean (air pockets in the ice will sometimes cause the piece to burst when it hits the water). One impressive sight was the steady flow of fresh meltwater that jets out into the ocean from beneath the glacier – an underwater waterfall that is at least 150 feet wide, and juts out into the sea with ripples like a firehose into a swimming pool.

Glacier-watching occupied us for the first part of the morning, but even after our extended stay, when we began to pull away from the ice mountain, it was only a little after 8:00 a.m. I went back to the stateroom, pulled the covers over my head, and went back to sleep for several more hours.

I got up after 12:00, showered and dressed, grabbed a very quick lunch upstairs, then dragged Dad to the salsa lessons. We were a couple minutes late, but Leah caught us up quickly on what we'd missed. Laura, Jon, Dad and I practiced salsa for an hour (it's fun and easy! You should do it, too!), then wandered off to do our own thing for the remainder of the afternoon. For me, that was doing laundry in our stateroom sink, waiting while the repairmen came and went (our electronic safe was on the fritz, and then my bed refused to fold up properly), and then reading my current book (Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett) until dinner.

After dinner, we went to the show, which was an incredibly lame set by a foul-mouthed comedian whose material consisted primarily of fart imitations and the sexual deficiency of the elderly. The worst part was that most of the audience was roaring with laughter. Honestly, I don't understand why people think this is funny. I was utterly repulsed.

Fortunately, we didn't have to end on that note, because it was '50s Night. We went from the show to a musical trivia contest (identifying song and artist from a brief sound clip). Laura and I earned bonus points for our team “for creative choreography” because we danced during the song clips, but it was Dad who won the contest and earned us the free Celebrity Cruises T-shirts. We could have predicted this; my father's knowledge of '50s and '60s music is practically encyclopedic. Give him any song from those decades, and he can tell you title, artist, record label, year (sometimes month) of release, and often how the song fared on the radio charts. It's not that he's a huge fan; he just grew up in that era, and he never forgets ANYTHING. (I inherited the half of that talent that retains utterly useless information, as you may have noticed. Unfortunately, I don't remember the things I'm supposed to. I can tell you that the Beach Boys recorded on Capitol Records, and that Arnold Palmer's birthday is September 10, 1929, but I have no idea what the mileage on my tires is or when I last changed my air filter.)

After the trivia contest was the 1950s sock hop. Laura and I dashed upstairs to change (we were still dressed semi-formal from dinner), then came back to dance, because we hadn't done enough of that on this trip. :) Top Secret was playing covers of '50s and early '60s songs. We freestyled for a while, then started a Fosse dance line and were quickly joined by ship dancers Patrick and John. Tons of fun!

Gradually the other passengers and dancers faded off the floor, leaving only the four of us dancing (Jon was upstairs with a headache). We held the floor alone until the band shut down, except for the thirty-second bursts when a group of teenagers would dare each other to go dance, and they'd rush out, wave their arms around, and rush back off the dance floor as if the spotlights would cause them to spontaneously combust. I don't know what they were worried about. By the end of the set, we were exhausted and dragging, but still having way too much fun to step off the floor.

According to Mom, who alternated dancing with photographing from the sidelines, most of the people in the room stayed just to watch us dance. Dad once again stole the show, both with his superior Twist talents, and because he repeatedly performed the signature Chuck Berry duckwalk (no easy feat on a rocking ship!) The ultimate compliment came at the end of the evening, when one of the sk8ter boys caught him on the way out and said, “Man, you got some moves!” Not many men of 55 years would be able to impress a bunch of 16-year-olds in wallet chains and baggy drop shorts.

My family is so awesome. :)