Thursday morning on the cruise ship brought a welcome relief to me. I was waking up without the slightest trace of a hangover, the sun was shining and we were docked in every banker’s favourite place, George Town in the Grand Cayman Islands. Kiel unfortunately was not feeling up to the task of trekking around the island, so I headed out with Nat, Jeff, and my mom. The four of us ended up hopping in a cab and heading over to the main beach, where Jeff and I promptly left the ladies to lay in the sun as we headed out for greener pastures. After a quick stop off at a Wendy’s (very Americanized island) and an internet café to check my emails (internet on boats = really expensive and slow to boot) the two of us found ourselves settling into one of the local watering holes sipping away on Caymanian beer. A few brews and a couple of complimentary Jager-bombs later, it was safe to say our Thursday was headed in the right direction. After sauntering back to the beach to round up the Moreau ladies, we cabbed it back to the boat loading area. On our drive, our cabbie provided us with some great knowledge of the island and I was surprised to learn how tough it was to find work there right now, as apparently even they were not immune to the Global Financial Crisis. Couple that in with the fact that a hurricane wiped out a few of the major hotels a couple years prior, and let’s just say the Caymans aren’t quite the utopia that everyone thinks they are. Once back on the ship, Jeff, Kiel, my dad and I made our way to down to the showroom for some afternoon Bingo. Due to Kiel’s persistent heckling of the DJ all week, we had amassed a monster stack of free Bingo cards in addition to purchasing some. Sadly, we did not win any of the games, although in one game that featured a prize of $300 I was the first player in the room down to one number, but ended up losing like the big donkey I am. With my Bingo defeat still fresh in my mind, I stuffed my face with another amazing dinner before settling back into the old routine of post-dinner gambling and drinking. Since it was Thursday, this meant it was the second night of the blackjack tournament that still saw Kiel on top of the leader board from night one. Jeff and I both took another crack at it, and I ended up getting lucky early in the night and found myself in first place. If my score could hold on for a few hours I would be playing in the finals at 11:30pm that night, although seeing as how it wasn’t even 9:00pm yet chances are I was going to be tuned by the time the finals rolled around. With that in mind, Jeff, Kiel, Nat, Jenn and I played a little poker and some roulette to try and kill the time before the finals. Somewhere in all of this, Jeff decided to get absolutely annihilated and had to be put to bed by his loving and I’m sure totally understanding girlfriend Natalie. When the dust finally settled, Kiel and I both made the final table of the winner take all ($500) blackjack tournament. I qualified in second and Kiel just snuck in the last/seventh spot. At the final table, we had a fairly big crowd watching us, which only fuelled mine and Kiel’s ridiculous drunken banter. Before we commenced, Kiel and I agreed to split the money if either of us won (bad idea Brent!). Well to cut a long story short, seven hands of blackjack later I was the blackjack grandmaster of the ship and was $500 richer. After exchanging high fives and congratulations from people I didn’t even know, I looked over to see Kiel waiting to collect his share. Using the power of mind control, I managed to talk him down to only taking $200, which left me with a cool $275 after tipping the dealer $25 for dealing me the best cards ever! Feeling like a champion, the party posse headed over to the nightclub, where things quickly got sloppy. The club was pretty popping that night by ship standards and Kiel quickly jumped into the mix. Now something I failed to mention was that Kiel had somehow lost two belts that week and had to resort to wearing a shoestring tied around his waist to hold his pants up. We liked comparing him to Nelson off of “The Simpsons”, because I am pretty sure he is the only other person (real or fictionalized) to ever pull this stunt. Add in that Kiel was drinking a 60oz of contraband vodka out of a two-litre pop bottle with his shirt tucked in, and you have yourself one helluva mess on the dance floor. While Kiel was dolling out his vodka to anyone who could drink it (male nursing students and such), Natalie had since run into her old high school friend Kellie who had started buying her shots. Next thing I knew, Natalie could barely walk, and Kellie, Jenn, and I along with a couple of other people had to literally carry Natalie and all her dead weight up two stories of the ship to her room. Toss in the fact that she was wearing a skirt and I was trying to hold her up, there was a good chance there was some ass exposure going down on the Eurodam ship. I got quite a few stares from people who thought I was some kind of creeper, which I reassured everyone with, “it’s okay, I’m her brother!” After dropping Nat off (and literally dropping her a few times along the way), the rest of us made our way back to Northern Lights, where sure enough there was Kiel, flaunting his string belt on the dance floor like it was a heavyweight championship belt or something!
The next day was to be our last on the ship, and we were given a rude awakening in the form of some gnarly waves rocking the boat and everyone’s stomachs. In fact, that morning while I was trying to shower I ended up falling over, which was a combination of the boat rocking and my equilibrium being totally fucked! Nat, Kiel, and Jeff were hurting even more than me, and according to his own blurred report, Kiel had spent the previous evening sleeping at the ship’s Piano Bar after the club had closed. With not much going on, I ended up spending most of the day rolling around in a chaise lounge chair before the Bingo grand finals in the late afternoon. After gathering up the complete stockade of Bingo cards we had amassed over the week (almost forty), I headed down to the Bingo room and prayed that somebody would show up to help me, as my dabbing skills aren’t that sharp. Luckily, I randomly ran into my parents who agreed to help me and the lovely Floridian Jenn happened to saunter by and was forced at gunpoint to help me out. Just as the game was about to get under way, Kiel even managed to get out of bed, so we had ourselves an official Bingo party! Unfortunately, like all previous attempts at Bingo we didn’t have the magical card and had to leave empty handed. Hey, as long as we all had fun that’s all that matters, right? Wrong! Winning is everything, and to quote Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first your last!” I never thought until now how much this quote applies to Bingo. With the taste of defeat still firmly in our mouths, my parents and I went out for one more fancy-pants dinner. I made sure to savour the food, as it was probably the best grub I was going to be getting for a long, long time! After bidding my parents adios and discovering that no one else in our party was up for any form of socializing due to the previous nights over-indulgence, I met up with my best cruise friend in the whole world Jenn and ended up hanging out with her the whole night. I received a world of knowledge on such things as Harry Potter, Call of Duty, what pharmacists really do, and plethora of other useless knowledge that I shall try and retain in case I ever do make it on to Jeopardy. We managed to make time to say adios to a few of our cruise friends, namely Donna The Soccer Mom/Roulette Stud and Adam The Honorary Moreau/Male Nurse before calling it a night as we were all set to disembark early the next morning.
Saturday morning we all arose bright and early, as it was time to start heading back to reality and out of the world of cruising. I must say, like most things on the ship, they had a very efficient system for getting everyone off in an orderly manner. After everyone was off, the six of us made our way to the airport in Miami as my mom and dad along with Nat and Jeff were going to be flying home. Luckily for them there were open seats on stand-by, and not so luckily for me and Kiel this meant we had to take the SUV on another 30-hour drive back to the Great White North. Prior to leaving the airport we decided to take I-95 home instead of the I-75, which we had taken on the way down, as it was apparently the faster of the two routes. Well it would have been faster, except for the fact that I had to pull over about ten times to sleep because Kiel was almost always too tired to drive. This led to me doing about 85-90% of the total drive up through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. At one point, I even had to pull over for a few hours and nap at a rural gas station in West Virginia, where I was certain we were going to get raped “Deliverance” style. After enduring some bad weather (turns out we were just ahead of a major, major snowstorm) and scary Southerners, we ended up pulling into our lovely home in Bradford, Ontario a mere 29 hours and 2700 kilometres after leaving Miami International Airport. It was nice to be home, although it was going to be short-lived as I had exactly two days to ready myself before I departed on my next adventure, Canada’s Arctic.
With our voyage complete, in summation I must say I had an amazing time onboard Holland America’s Eurodam. The crew and the ship were awesome as were most of the people we met! Special shout-out to my parents for taking us on the cruise, and I can honestly say our first family vacation in over ten years was probably one of the, if not the best vacation I’ve been on in the last ten years (and I’ve been on a few). So people, show your parents some love! I’ll leave it at that.
Lastly, thanks to anyone who checks my blogs, I love hearing from people who read my garbage. Even if you think it sucks, admitting to me that you read it still puts a smile on my face. Having said that, stay tuned as I have now moved to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories (really fuckin’ far up north!) and there are sure to be some tales forthcoming. Ever wondered what it’s like to be a waiter at a restaurant at the very end of the earth? Didn’t think so, but I’m going to tell you anyways! Until next time, keep your class intact you classless sandbaggers,
~Brent~
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