Men go on cruises for the fishing while girls go on cruises for the hunting

C-Day

Sunday morning I had to get up pretty early since we were supposed to be at the dock around 1 o'clock or so and I had literally not packed any clothes yet. Subsequently as most of the rest of the group slept, I had to go through drawers and the closet and get together the clothes I would need. Fortunately I went shopping Friday morning and had quite a few new pieces that made it pretty easy to transfer from the shopping bag to the clothing bag. I also had to get together the dive gear and the cases of beer and run to spread amongst the bags. Carnival charges quite a bit for drinks such as sodas and beer, so our solution is just to take our own. A flexible cooler gets stocked with ice by the room steward and keeps everything cool for the week!

To save everyone on the massive parking fees at the pier parking garage, we all caravaned to Brandon where my father graciously allowed everyone to leave their vehicles for the week. We threw all the baggage into the trailer, piled into a couple of vehicles driven by non-cruisers, and headed downtown. Loading was a breeze since we just stacked the luggage by the curb and walked over the meet the group at one of the Channelside restaurants. After hanging around for a while meeting new folks, we headed over as a group to board the ship. We took a group photo before getting on and then retired to our cabins for a while to get situated and wait for the luggage to catch up. After shoving off, we headed to the muster stations for an evacuation drill and, in hash tradition, wore the bathrobes that were provided in the cabins. After that was complete, we headed down to RICHARD PIERCE's suite for some champagne. The Coast Guard patrol boats were circling the ship and would always slow down when at our balcony since all the hasheriettes were showing their appreciation for the often boring and thankless job. I'm pretty sure that they appreciated the gestures.

We hit the top deck for the ritual of passing under the Sunshine Skyway bridge and then went to the cabins to rest for a while. Dinnertime soon came and we got dressed up and heading to the dining room to find our seats. For whatever reason, we were situated in the absolute middle of the dining room, a placement I'm sure the maître d' rued that decision for the rest of the week. :)

C-Day +1

This was our first day at see and after partying up the evening before, I think most people slept in. Part of the day was spent exploring the ship and partying it up again in PIERCE's room followed by a trail hared by CAPTAIN JERK. The trail was a lot of fun and took us through the ship with a lot of stops along the way for shots and beer. There was an open bar welcome-aboard party set up with games organized to help people get to know each other that was a blast. There were all kinds of questions that required one to find the appropiate hasher that was the answer. After the games were done, we went back to the PIERCE's room (that pretty much ended up as the main party spot for the week) to hang out with a bunch of folks just crashing on the bed wherever space could be found. Eventually most of us woke up and crawled back to our own rooms to change into formal wear for dinner. It is impressive as to how well some people (including me) can clean up and look respectable (though some decided to take it to an extreme and wear a white rhinestone suit a la Elvis style). After a bit of dancing, most headed off to bed since we had to get up early for the shore excursion to Grand Cayman in the morning.