Wanderung 26

Bob:

For some reason, I pack much more slowly than Monika. Actually, I also eat more slowly than Monika. Come to think of it, I also walk more slowly than Monika. Is there a trend here? Am I just a slow person?

Be that as it may, there really wasn't enough room in our cabin for two people to be packing simultaneously, so Monika took the first shift. she packed from about 8:30 to 10:00 or so and was done!

Monika:

Bob:

We then interrupted our packing activities for the lecture by Paul Eschenfelder on the deregulation of airlines starting under President Carter in the late 1970s. I thought that presentation was fairly weak, impressionistic and superficial. He left the impression that deregulation of the airline industry was a failure without discussing the impact on the average cost of a ticket, the total number of passenger miles flown by the airlines each year, and other critical data. I was hoping for a statement on the impact of deregulation on safety issues such as the current practice at some airlines of requiring pilots to fly with minimal fuel reserves, but that and other relevant safety issues such as average-age-of-aircraft in the airline fleets (older and older!) were never even mentioned.

However, I was amused to find that there was an entire web site called "seat-guru.com" or something like that, which was dedicated to giving you exact the details about how much width and leg room each seat has in each type of airplane for each and every airline. At 6 foot, 2 inches in height, leg room is admittedly very important to me, and so I considered using that type of web site in planning future flights. I also learned that Tuesday is the best day of the week to book flights, and the price is lowest for domestic flights when booking about 3 months in advance, whereas for international flights booking about 5 months in advance works best. So although the data-oriented scientist in me was disappointed, Paul did present some useful information.

Monika:

Bob:

I then started packing, but predictably it took me several hours. Partly that was because I have found that I can only fit 14 pairs of underwear, 14 shirts, and 14 undershirts in with my suit coat, slacks, and other miscellaneous stuff, if I carefully lay them flat--balling them up just won't work. Doing it carefully I can pack 43-45 pounds of clothing into my wheeled suitcase, which is safely under the 50-pound limit for most airlines.

But at least one whole hour that afternoon was taken up by the necessity for repairing the zipper on the front main compartment of my wheeled suitcase. The zipper thing itself had been ripped off somewhere on our flight into Melbourne at the beginning of the trip, and I had been making do without that compartment ever since. But given the increased bulk of the souvenirs I wanted to bring back, I absolutely had to have that extra cubic foot or so of space, and so perforce I had to repair the zipper.

Using my trustworthy Swiss Army knife, I cut open the top of one of the zippers on an interior pocket and managed to get the zipper thing off, hoping it was the same size as the exterior zipper I was trying to fix. Fortunately, the zipper was the correct size to mesh the teeth, but to install it I had to carefully dis-attach the end of the toothed section from the side of the suitcase and then work the zipper onto the teeth on both sides so that they ended up meshing. Much to my surprise, after a bit of careful pushing and shoving, it finally meshed and the zipper worked like new! Now I used the sewing kit I had received from Jaynal, our steward, earlier in the cruise, and sewed the end of the zipper together and to the underlying fabric so that the zipper wouldn't just slide off again. In the end, it seemed to work as good as new, and I was tickled pink that I once again had a secure front pocket to stow things in.

Monika:

Bob:

Having packed all my "good" slacks, for dinner I wore the zippered cargo pants that I had worn for our three weeks in Australia, but compensated by donning a nice short-sleeved shirt. We had a pleasant last dinner with Roya, Alex, Ian, and Judith, and had the traditional Baked Alaska for dessert, after which we gave Nares, our waiter, and his assistant Sherwin their additional tips for their fine service over the last month.

Princess Cruise Line, like most cruise lines, automatically charges a daily fee to cover tipping, but we always give additional tips to at least our room attendant (i.e., Jaynal in this case), and, if we have fixed seating, to our waiter, and assistant waiter as they invariably learn our preferences (water, no wine, lots of bread, etc.) and accommodate us over the course of the journey. The once or twice we have had "anytime" or as I like to call it, "catch-as-catch-can" dining, we never have the same wait staff twice and I have then just hoped that the standard tipping charged to our account would suffice. Some folks like "anytime" dining, but we strongly prefer getting to know a small set of people and one or two of the wait staff well because, after all, we are introverts. After dinner we completed packing everything but our toiletries and clothes for the next day, and then read our books until it was time to retire for the night.

Monika: