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Monday, May 16, 2007.

I woke up relatively early, about 9:00. That may seem late for some, but since most of the work in production takes place at night it tends to shift the schedule a bit. Add the typical trip to the crew club every night and it can make for some late mornings. But last night was disco night in the crew club which usually means it's a zoo up there. I decided to just stay in my cabin and take the night off. I'm glad I did.

When I woke up the first thing I did was look out the window, where I was presented with a beautiful sight--snow-covered mountains in the near distance. I honestly would have thought it was winter had I not known better. Seeing the landscape from a two-foot porthole just isn't the same as taking in the entire panoramic while breathing the crisp, clean air so I was anxious to get moving.

As usual, I dressed in my day uniform and headed up to the buffet, once again grateful for deck privileges. But once I crossed the Neptune pool on deck 14 I nearly cried. As it happens, the ship is docked a stone's throw from the mountainside, and it's amazing to know you're aboard a 116,000 ton ocean liner but it's still dwarfed when compared with the awesome splendor of Mother Nature. It really was humbling to look nearly straight up at the tree-covered mountain and realize just how insignificant we are. It was the first time aboard this ship I felt like the Diamond Princess was tiny.

I dressed up (although not nearly enough) and headed off the ship towards downtown Skagway. I realized about ten minutes into my walk that the jacket I'd chosen wasn't the most appropriate choice I could have made, and at the same time I was thankful I'd been talked into bringing my gore-tex down winter coat by my roommate Uday. This isn't even close to our nothernmost point, and I know I'll be getting some real use out of that down parka. But regardless, my jacket sufficed as long as I kept up a brisk walking pace, and I was able to see all of Skagway. Yes, I said ALL of Skagway.

I really need to illustrate the differences between Skagway and Juneau. Yesterday I reported that Juneau was a nice city, but still small by comparison to Seattle or even Des Moines. Still, Juneau seems like a city that welcomes tourists. Skagway on the other hand, is a tourist town. More specifically, it's a cruise tourist town. Once I hit the outskirts of the commercial district, I was able to walk past every downtown business within twenty minutes. I was still on the hunt for a good ol' fashioned barbershop, so with all of the shore leave I knew I had I wanted to make certain I didn't leave any stone unturned. I laugh at that, because in fact the town had very few stones to turn over. As it turns out, I couldn't fine a single place in the town that cut hair. Once I was fully aware of that fact, I started categorizing the businesses that were there and that's when I pegged Skagway as a tourist town. Now, what retail outfit do you believe would be predominant in a tourist town? Souvenir shop? Restaurant? Wrong on both counts. Both of those business types were indeed present, but the biggest percentage of retail belongs to the jewelry stores--especially diamonds. That's where I came to the conclusion that Skagway is a *cruise* tourist town.

It just seems outlandish to me that a town you can literally walk everywhere in less than half an hour would have about a dozen jewelry stores. And I'm not talking trinkets here, I mean the big expensive stuff. This is still the United States where capitalism reigns supreme and businesses that don't sell don't last, so I can only conclude that every one of these jewelry stores must be raking in some serious capital. I just didn't think it would be here!

After completing my self-guided tour of the town, I eagerly headed back to the Diamond since something started happening for the first time since I started my contract--it started to rain. So it was getting blustery, cold, and rainy. Ah, memories of home...

Later that day I decided to grab my down coat and head back into town where I heard rumors of cheap wireless internet. Internet on the ship is relatively expensive, so when I need to send pictures back home or download anything of significant size, it makes much better financial sense to go ashore and hunt down a coffee shop where they give free WiFi. Lo and behold, my next real score of the trip--Thai food! The production manager of Club Fusion, Greig, was heading back to the ship and had a bag of sweet-smelling eats in tow. I had to ask, and he pointed out a small restaurant off the main drag. Geez, I thought. I guess I hadn't seen *everything* here after all! Now there's probably a barber lurking around here somewhere...oh well. I surrendered that hunt earlier today and got a cut at the ship's spa. Nice cut, and not too pricey. Princess is good to their crew.

Tonight's show was a bit of a treat, and something rather new to me. It's called the crew show, which is selected crew members performing for the passengers. I had no idea what to expect, but the night of the show we were fifteen minutes from show time and hadn't done a rehearsal of any kind. Things were getting changed and put in at the last minute, and that sends up all kinds of red flags for me. The entire production team stayed on the Clearcomm system just to stay as coordinated as possible, and things were indeed a bit dicey. The last act of the night was the florist on board singing "Big Spender" to a Karaoke track that allegedly resides on this silly little microphone the crew club owns, and the song number he selected was rejected by the microphone. So right there in front of everyone, he sang it acapella. It may sound like a wreck, but in the end everyone in the cast received a standing ovation and the audience loved them. I suppose that's all that matters in the end.

Tomorrow the ship is in Glacier Bay, but I won't be spending a lot of time on deck. There's a pretty hefty rehearsal schedule for me tomorrow since we've got a new drummer and Piano Man needs to be as tight as possible. I'm fine with rehearsing--more time to play with things.