Star Date: 0509.2009

And we gone where no Weiler has gone before (well not that we know of anyway...) - but more on that later!

First of all, a big shout out to our little buddy James. I suppose someone somewhere knew this day would really come but since we consider you "one of our collective 6" it's nice to know that the baby has actually factually graduated from Gonzaga (we still want to see the actual degree in writing - not that we don't trust you but you know...we don't).

Second - a big shout out to all the mums since by the time you read this it will be Mother's Day (if anyone reading this will be contacting Gerry's mother today please let her know we are thinking of her and will call as soon as we get home!) An especially Happy Mother's Day to Sarah and to "mum-to-be" Jenny! (As we've been chumming around with an awful lot of Brits and those "colonists" - Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders - it's likely that we will require a bit of deprogramming upon our return from holiday!)

There will be much, much more later (I'm desperately trying to savor every last moment aboard the ship before we hit reality on Monday) but today was an incredible day! I think I mentioned that our tour of the bridge had been cancelled last week due to "fog" (actually we've since learned that it was because the ship was at Red Level - just like Homeland Security's color coding - because of the norovirus outbreak). We asked if we could be put on the list for this short cruise's tour (because surely others would be touring the bridge as well).

Imagine our surprise when we got a PRIVATE TOUR OF THE BRIDGE! Just us, the watch commander, the guy actually driving the boat, the two sailors ("watchers" they are called) and (for our benefit only...he's not usually on the bridge but only when there are "strangers" on the deck) the armed security guy. We had as long as we wanted to chat and look around and ask questions. It was incredible!!! They even put captain hats on us and took our picture - that's Gerry steering the boat (not really though because the darn thing runs almost always on auto-pilot and is operated by a two inch joystick!)

More later....

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