After nothing for a few days, I was pleased to get a message this morning from Pam, onboard the Explorer II. Here are some pertinent excerpts:
Thank you for the “Welcome aboard” email. It was hand delivered in an air mail envelope when I arrived.
My internal clock has no clue about the day or time. I decided to sleep until I was ready to get up around 10:30 ship’s time.
Here we are, in the middle of the Atlantic/Pacific coming up to the convergence. I already feel it in my being, not in a sea sick way, just a constant reminder that these 2 oceans have met. The captain referred to this as small swells. Kinda nice being lulled to sleep last night.
The room is comfy. Again I took pics before making a mess of it. The curtains are tilting about 15degrees. Didn’t try showering today. I’ve used the tub to anchor loose things. Okay, we’re really heaving now….
I bought 1 hr of internet time ($27US) which I’ll use for the next 10 days onboard. Oh, how I wish I could send you some pics. There’s a very happy one of me as we head thru the Beagle Channel. I’ve met a picture taking buddy, a business analyst from Chicago. She wants a pic of her in her U of I sweatshirt with a penguin for her alumni mag. We are getting to know each other’s cameras as well as our own for such documentary shots.
Today there were several albatross sightings. Since I don’t know exactly what they look like I’m not sure I could claim seeing them. There are some gull type birds following the ship’s wake. Long wings but smaller bodies than all the seagulls we see at Granville Mkt.
I’ve saved this msg as a draft and now will make my way to the library to mail it. The Library has public terminals and WiFi.
It sounds like pretty rough seas to me. It’s a good thing she took some Bonine (like Dramamine, but with less drowsiness) with her, just in case it gets any rockier.
As near as I can figure out, here’s where that Longitude and Latitude position is (roughly) on Google Maps (I think it’s the white dot at the centre of the map):
On Monday, Pam and I drove down to Seattle, where we stayed at the Raddison hotel, by the entrance to the airport. She slept well, despite more than the usual amount of ‘travel butterflies’. Given that she was headed to Antarctica, I can imagine why there might be some of those.
We said our good-byes Tuesday morning by the airport loading zone (as shown above). I didn’t hear from her during her layover in Los Angeles, but got an email on Wednesday morning from her that explained why:
“I was quite nervous at that point, in LAX. The Seattle leg was a little delayed but the distance between domestic and international terminals was unmarked. I didn’t know how far away it was. The airport is being reno’d and you had to walk outside to get to the Int’l terminal. How odd for a city that only drives.”
The next photos she put on Flickr are of her hotel in Santiago, Chile. It certainly looks luxurious, and I think it would make a nice destination in and of itself.
When I proposed to Pam, I had already gotten a ring at Alpha Omega Jewelers in Cambridge. It was a small shop in Harvard Square, family run, with not spectacularly high or low prices. In the years since then, we used them for not only our wedding rings, but other bits of jewelry.
So, I was not without a fair amount of shock when I read this headline on the web site boston.com:
Alpha Omega liquidation sale set to start tomorrow
What was even more shocking was why they were liquidating our old family jeweler:
The investment consortium that bought the assets of Alpha Omega Jewelers in a bankruptcy court-approved sale said that the liquidation sale of the chain’s inventory will begin at its four stores tomorrow.
Everything must be sold before Ross-Simons, a Rhode Island-based chain, assumes the leases of Alpha Omega stores at Natick Collection and the Prudential Center in Boston, and items will be discounted to ensure fast sales, the consortium said.
The chain’s other two stores are located in Harvard Square and at the Burlington Mall.
According to stories in the Globe data base, Alpha Omega Jewelers filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code last month. The filing came after owner Raman Handa unexpectedly left the country with his wife, son, and daughter, prompting the company’s bank to seize Alpha Omega assets and temporarily close its stores just before Christmas.
That’s right, they were going bankrupt because the owner fled the country with his family. Suddenly my mind filled with all the plots of Jewel heists, with the thieves heading for Mexico, having deposited some of their misbegotten wealth in a Swiss Bank Account…
And to think I was served by Mr. or Mrs. Handa (I never learned their names, nor do I remember them particularly well), who might have been planning their disappearances for years!
Or perhaps it was something less glamorous and far more depressing, like mounting debts and “a threat to himself or a member of his family”.
Back when I was working at RIPE, I used to joke to my co-workers that I’m bad luck to any team that I root for. When the BC Lions were in the Grey Cup, some of them either discouraged me (or encouraged me, depending on their preference) from watching the game on TV, because somehow they would always win when I missed the game and lose whenever I watched. It was almost uncanny how the act of observing the game, like some sort of twisted Heisenberg Principle, made the team lose.
This year, I didn’t watch a single game that the New England Patriots played in, except for one: The SuperBowl.
After winning every other game they played during the whole year, they lost this one game I watched in the last 35 seconds. It was probably one of the biggest Super Bowl upsets in history. In fact, ESPN.com is now having people rank and vote what they think are the biggest upsets in history, and tonight’s Super Bowl XLII (42) is listed among the candidates: (here’s a screen capture for posterity:)
Oh, and by the way, after missing their regular season, I also saw that ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs in the 1986 World Series, when the Boston Red Sox lost to the New York Yankees, which is, naturally, in the list.
Note to self: If your team is playing, and you’ve not seen them play in any other game, and they’ve won every other game, be sure to watch them, and bet against them, big time, particularly if it’s any team from New England vs. New York. At least you can profit from the misfortune you seem to emanate.
Comments (2) 
