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The Last Hurrah - 2009| | Hey guys, here we are in Mexico, eating fish tacos together.
Last week I went on a cruise to Mexico with eight of my best friends. This was a trip many years in the making and it was some sort of 'last hurrah' trip, since most likely, this will be the last time all of us will be able to get together and do something of this grand a scale. We launched from San Diego, cruised into Cabo San Lucas and then back to San Diego in four days. Four glorious days of friends, food, fun, jokes, relaxing and more friends.
We were assigned different tasks for the cruise. Paul would take care of the finances, Wade would take pictures, Sammy would show us how to eat, Hal would figure out how to sneak alcohol onto the boat, I was charged with the task of blogging about the trip. I thought a little bit about the best way to blog about the cruise. How do I write about the cruise without losing half the audience who will probably have no idea what I'm talking about since you guys weren't there? I know for sure that eight people who read this will enjoy it, but hopefully everyone else will as well. I was originally going to do a timeline style post, but that would be way too long. After thinking about it one night, as I was struggling to fall asleep listening to Paul and Wade snore like monkeys, I decided to go with the 'award show' post with plenty of pictures.
So without further ado, here we go.
Before we start the festivities though, some pictures to wet the appetite.
 
Left : We somehow crammed seven people (with luggage) into a twenty year old minivan with 250,000 miles on it. It was great. We almost stalled on the San Mateo bridge, but luckily, we didn't.
Right : Waiting for our flight to SD at SFO.
 
Left : Shuttle ride to airport. I am determined to use as many photos from my camera that I can. I think that's the only reason you are seeing this shot of Wade, Rae and Winnie.
Right : Our group. We don't go anywhere without our laptops. Our laptops are our lifelines. Who cares if there is no internet access on the boat. We need our laptops. I also have no idea what Winnie is looking at so intently at SFO... No idea.
I Can't Believe What We Done Award
To Lily, Sam, Paul, Wade, Sammy, Rachel, Hal, Winnie and myself. Folks, I cannot believe we pulled it off. What started out as a flicker, a pipedream, somehow became reality. I am not exactly sure when we started planning this cruise (and when I say 'we', i don't include myself, since I really didn't plan anything), but it started , appropriately enough, with a single-email, possibly about 8 months or so ago. From there on, we had more emails, more emails and even more emails. Those emails then lead to a mass planning session, which caused more emails to be sent. In September, we booked our tickets, and even then I had my doubts about us pulling this out. Even when a majority of us flew into San Diego last Weds, we were not ready to celebrate. It was not until all nine of us stepped onto the boat that we declared, as the great George W.Bush once said, 'mission accomplished'. Cause we had done it.
The magnitude of what was pulled off cannot be appreciated enough. We had nine different people, with different lives, different schedules, different personalities, different obligations and we somehow was able to all come together and go on a fairly good length cruise. Us same people have problems selecting one day a month to celebrate a birthday sometimes. It really didn't hit me what a accomplishment we pulled off until we were in Mexico. We were in Cabo, at a little taco joint, and eating fish tacos when someone casually said (not sure who, Winnie maybe??), 'Hey guys, here we are in Mexico, eating fish tacos together.' That's my favorite quote of the whole trip. Such a simple sentence, but the meaning behind it blew me away... Like, we were really in Mexico , eight of my closest friends, sitting around a table, chatting, joking, eating fish tacos. Like, wow, we really did pull this off. And it was an amazing thought.
 
Left : Our boat. The Elation. Docked in San Diego.
Right : The first seven of us board... and we wait for Sam and Lily to come later...
 
Left : Mission Accomplished.
Right : The aforementioned 'fish tacos in Mexico' moment. Minus the fish tacos, which you will see later.
Theme Song of the Cruise Award
Every trip needs a theme song and this cruise was no different. Unfortunately for us, we somehow ended up with Katy Perry's Hot N Cold as our theme song... I am not exactly sure how this travesty happened, I think it happened on Weds night, when we were in San Diego and Wade was singing the song about girls changing clothes and PMSing (cause he's into this kind of stuff) and then Hal had it on his ipod and then before we knew it, it was playing in an endless loop and every single joke the next few days involved being hot/cold, in/out, black/white, up/down etc etc you get the point....... For the rest of my life, every time I hear that song it will remind me of the cruise. I am not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing.
The Best Arch Award
The most famous landmark in Cabo was a nature made (I think) rock arch. I don't really have much more to say about it, except that we bribed the water-taxi driver ($5) to take us there and see it enroute to our destination. Honestly, i thought it was kind of lame.
 
Left : The Arch
Right : Me, Paul, Arch.
Best Dressed Award
They had one formal night and we all dressed up for that. Here are pictures of our good-looking selves.
 
Left : Hal and Winnie.
Right : Samuel and Lily.
 
Left : Sammy and Rachel.
Right : The girls.
 
Left : The boys.
Right : The gang.
Incredible Moments Award
Watching shooting stars. One night a bunch of us, minus Hal and Winnie, went up to the topmost part of the ship at around 1AM. It was pitch black and it was really windy. But amidst the conditions, the skies opened up to display the heavens in its true, unadulterated beauty. We laid on our backs for about half an hour just staring at the stars and looking at its brilliance. None of us had any good astronomy knowledge so we didn't exactly identify the constellations or anything. We were able to identify Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Orion's Belt and I think Polaris, but that's it. As an added bonus, we saw two shooting stars and everyone made a wish.
The paragraph above does not really do justice to that moment. It was not just the stars that were amazing, but below us, we had the Pacific Ocean roaring and with us, we had the wind gusts swirling around and whistling and then above us we had the heavens. It was like being enveloped in nature and all it's power. It was an incredible moment, an incredible feeling. You had to be there to really appreciate it.
The Best Beach Award
Well, I'm already running out of clever award names, so this one is pretty obvious. The best (and only beach) we visited was Medano Beach in Cabo. The weather was great, the water was great, and the Mexican beer was great. We swam a little bit in the ocean, we snuck into the hotel resort pool and played there for a little while and we even stole a volleyball from the hotel and played some beach volleyball (see below). Gonna let the pictures tell then rest of the story here.
 
Left : On water taxi ride to get to the beach.
Right : Resort that we snuck into near the beach.
 
Left : They had a really nice pool in the resort.
Right : But how needs a pool when you have the Pacific Ocean so close by?
The Best Witch Award
Goes to Deepoo Vascrapi or whatever her name was, the photo manager of the cruise. What happened was that we wanted to buy a photo that we took. (For those who have never been on a cruise, they have these photo stations where you can have your picture taken and buy them later). But the ship has a rule that if you had more than eight people in the photo, you can't buy the digital file, you can only buy the actual copies (because they want you to buy eight copies instead of just one digital file). Anyways we complained to the manager, this Indian woman, and she was a complete jackass to us. Condescending, mean and arrogant. Not helpful at all. And her breath stank. At one point, when we asked her if we could talk to her manager, she said she had no manager. We currently are in the process of figuring out a way to get the digital file and destroy Deepoo's reputation in the process. We skewered her on the cruise comment cards.
Left : Deepoo.
The Illegal Activity Award
Like a Mexican sneaking over the border, we illegally played a game of beach volleyball on the sandy beaches of Cabo. When I say illegally, i mean we literally stole the ball from the hotel and then trespassed onto their beach volleyball court, and played. We tried to bribe the waiter to get us a ball, a guy name Marteen. But no matter how much beer we bought from Marteen he would not get us a ball. So Hal Light took matters into his own hands to get us a volleyball. He snuck into the hotel, got a hotel number, then went to the front desk, told them he was staying in room 103 and demanded a ball. So one 'Sean Light' got us a ball.
We played and sweated for thirty minutes before they got onto us, took the ball back and kicked us off the court. Luckily, we were not thrown into a Mexican jail. First time I played volleyball on the beach, it was great. I now know how it feels like to be Kerri Walsh and Misty May.
 
Left : The set, the spike!.
Right : More beach volleyball action.
Worse Use Of The English Language Award
To Sammy for thinking that the right side of the boat is called the 'starbird' side not the 'starboard' side. (Wade thought it was called the 'starburst' side, but we'll ignore that ignorance). Sammy was so vehement about it, he even asked one of the deckhands to confirm that he was right... except he was wrong. He also told us to never mention it again, so we won't.
The Best Meal Award
I considered doing a section on food, but there was just too much. Maybe one day I'll do a follow up update with the food pictures... Our group, we love taking pictures of food, so I have plenty of them. But if I had to choose one meal that was the greatest... It would have to be the meal we ate BEFORE we actually got onto the boat.
We spent the night before the cruise living it up in San Diego and we decided to go to a grill it yourself steakhouse. It was like a korean bbq place on steroids, at this place, they just give you a slab of raw meat and then you take it to a grill and you grill it. It was great, the seven of us devoured like 10 lbs of meat that night.... And for the record, the place is cleverly called the 'Strip Club' but it's not a stripclub. So all you people who were clicked on the website and was gonna say something, you don't need to.
 
Left : Raw meat.
Right : Cooked meat.
 
Left : Cooking.
Right : Eating.
Making the Best of A Bad Situation Award
Another San Diego story. The one night we spent in San Diego was pretty much one of the longest nights of my life. Our hotel was right next to the train tracks and it was nearly impossible to sleep because it seemed like every twenty minutes a train would roar through the city, blowing off the train horn in the process. Why so many trains go through San Diego and feel the need to blow off their horns at 3AM in the morning, I will never know. But that kept me, Wade and Sammy up all night and lead to some great discussions. We talked about religion, politics, relationships, Obama, God, girls, boys, music and a wide variety of topics. It was really stimulating honestly, even at 4AM in the morning. I think we got a total of one hour of sleep that night.
 
Left : Our hotel had a great view of the city. (Paul).
Right : We enjoyed a couple beers on the balcony.
Loudest Snorer Award
Goes to Rachel, her snoring is equivalent to that of mating elephants. It would have been quite the spectacle if I wasn't in the same room as her. This contributed to our one hour of sleep in San Diego. It was also very impressive that she was able to sleep through the train horns and the yelling, laughing, debauchery of me, Wade and Sammy.
The Our Cabin Award
I just made up this award so I can display photos of our cabin. It was small, but the beads were remarkably comfortable and i liked the side reading lights (nice design).
Left : I roomed with Wade and Paul.
The Boat Award
I just made up this award to display random pictures of the cruise boat.
 
Left : Bird's eye view of interior.
Right : Card room.
 
Left : They had a mini-golf course and track on the top.
Right : Bird's eye view of exterior.
 
Left : Waterslide.
Right : Wade going down waterslide. (nice shot Lily or Sam, whoever took this one)
 
Left : They had hottubs all over the boat.
Right : Once again. Mission Accomplished.
And that's it. I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed typing it up. It was fun to look through all these pictures again and reminisce about the fun times, even though the fun time took place less than a week ago.
| | | Posted 1/26/2009 1:42 AM - 123 Views - 10 eProps - 8 comments
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