Our first day on the ship was pretty uneventful.

We got to our cabin – which was pretty gorgeous – and unpacked.

Even though it was closer to her birthday than mine, Sara surprised me with a bottle of champagne in the room.

Me: OMG, you’re the best!
Her: I’ve got a few more surprises for you as well.
Me: Someone’s getting lucky tonight…
Her: (laughs)

One more really annoying thing was that we were gonna save some money and just have a window insteada a balcony since it was just the two of us, but we decided that, since it was our birthdays, we’d splurge on the balcony.

Well, that was a HUGE waste of money as there was no chance we could be out on it for any meaningful amount of time as it was freezing out there.

Anywho, getting back to our first night, we went to the Korean restaurant on the ship and had a feast.

While there, we crossed under the Verrazzano Bridge, which some non-natives asked if it was the Brooklyn Bridge.

Both Sara and I had been on a significant number of ships already but I gotta say that Virgin probably had the best food either of us had ever had.

But more on that later.

We finished off the night at the nightclub there for a pajama party – where everyone was dressed in PJs.

We were pretty entertained.

As we were walking around…

Him: I know you! Where do I know you?
Sara: Do you watch a lotta YouTube?
Him: Yes?
Me: Do you watch Scenic Fights?
Him: YES! Logan!

It’s wild to meet a fan ON a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic.

Not a bad way to start the vacation.

The next day, woke up at six AM and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I decided to hit up the gym.

Because the only other guy there was using the upper body weights, I decided to not skip leg day and focus on that.

When I went back to the cabin Sara was awake, so I brought her a cup of coffee.

We went to get brekkie where I ate my weight in avocados and salmon.

Me: If we’re not gonna go to Bermuda, I’m gonna make back alla our money in food.
Her: Sounds reasonable.
Me: It’s the Chinese way.

After brekkie, we explored the ship for the rest of the day.

We overhead one very sweet couple talk to the staff about how unfortunate it was that we were heading to Canada because they had flown from Canada to head to NYC to sail to Bermuda.

Instead, they flew from Canada to NYC only to sail BACK to Canada, to sail back to NYC, to fly back to Cananda.

Her: They were so nice!
Me: I know! Can you imagine buying plane tickets to Miami, renting a hotel room, boarding a ship, only to sail back to NYC, sail back to Miami, just to fly back to NYC? I woulda lost my mind.

Because Sara is a sucker for a trivia games, we ended up competing in one.

Outta maybe 60 teams, we were part of the four team finalists.

We woulda been the winners but, for the question: “What was the most popular social platform of 2009?”

We choose Facebook insteada MySpace and we had to do the runoff, which had a Wayne Gretzey question as the tiebreaker – we got that question completely wrong.

That was fine, though.

We had a cocktail party to attend…

…before headed to a dinner at their experimental molecular gastronomy restaurant, The Test Kitchen, which Steel woulda loved.

The food was very Wylie Dufresne-esque – both delicious and very, very cool.

We headed back to our cabin fairly early, but Sara wanted to grab a drink.

I figured that, since I’d have to break my intermittent fasting early the next morning, it wouldn’t matter if I had an afterhours drink, so I joined her.

Her: Actually, I want to try going to casino.
Me: Well, I know little to nuthin about gambling but let’s go.

So, that’s what we did.

There were a lotta technical issues – and some personnel ones as well with an extremely rude casino worker – but the casino manager was just great and comped us two drinks, which definitely made things much better.

Me: How much did you put in?
Her: $25? We can’t get it back, so we’ll have to use it all.
Me: OK, let’s go.

She did amazingly well – we ended up making back everything she spent and then some, plus the free drinks.

Me: I don’t want you to think this is how it usually goes.
Her: Beginner’s luck!

So, in our night out on the ship, we ended up making a few bucks.

We went to get some empty carbs to celebrate.

The next day, we were gonna be in Canada.

It wasn’t a sunny beach, but maybe – in light of our time in the casino – our luck was gonna turn?

Narrator: It was not.

Location: urgent care, waiting for an x-ray machine tech to show up
Mood: back-to-the-grind
Music: I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low (Spotify)
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Me: You know what I realized recently?
Her: No, what?
Me: I never really thought of it but, I’m 52, which means that I’m over half-a-century old.
Her: That is how math works, Logan.
Me: (laughing) I’m aware. It’s just one of those elusive obvious things that are obvious once you think about it but completely invisible to you when you don’t.

Years ago, I once told you this apocryphal story about Columbus and how he was able to stand an egg up on one side by itself.

In the end, someone said that it was easy, to which Columbus was said to have replied, “Everything is easy once someone shows you how.”

A more succinct way of putting that it was simply something that was the elusive obvious:

Those things that are stupidly and patently obvious, if you just sat down and thought about it for little bit.

In many ways, this entire blog is fulla the elusive obvious.

Was talking with a buddy of mine the other day – we met in our 20s and he’s a couple of years older than me so he’s now in his mid-50s and I’m catching up.

With my birthday coming up, I’ve been finding myself looking back on my life and realizing a lot of things that shoulda been obvious to me but simply…weren’t.

Me: I’ve reached an age where…you know what I’ve realized?
Him: What?
Me: Looking back, in so many interactions, I was the villain in the story.
Him: I have that – mine were mostly with women.
Me: Some of mine as well. I mentioned that to someone once and she asked if I’d consider calling them to apologize. But what would that do? It’s really just to make me feel better, they probably just are happy that I’ve never reached out to them. Better to just let sleeping dogs lie.

It really is such a wild thing to look back with older, and calmer, eyes and realize that you were the villain in someone’s story.

The thing that’s been bothering me the most, lately, though was that I’d never really realized just how often it was me until only recently.

Yet again, the elusive obvious.

And with most elusive obvious things, once I’ve noticed it, I can’t un-notice it.

Location: The middle of the Atlantic
Mood: It’s tricky
Music: I’ve gone identity mad (Spotify)
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Me: Why didn’t you answer you phone?!!
Mom: I didn’t hear it ring!
Me: For over an hour!?

My sister was inspired by our trip to Taiwan, so she took her kids there for Spring Break.

So, when she rang me, I assumed that it was to tell me something fun.

Instead, it was to tell me that her husband hadn’t heard from my mom in a few hours.

Without giving too much detail away, essentially, my mom forgot where she parked her car and decided to take an outrageously long walk home(ish).

With the help of my brother-in-law – thank goodness he was home – she made it home and found her car but not until hours later.

Out of an abundance of caution, and because I always, always, always regret not seeing Alison and my dad every chance I could, I woke up bright and early the next day to see her.

Because it was so early, I took the same route I took to return home to Queens from high school – it had been years since I’d taken that route home.

It was faster than I remembered.

Maybe it was because I had my laptop and could do work, and that made the commute a lot faster.

I remember that my dad would sometimes be waiting in the car at the subway station for me.

I looked at the place he would usually park for reasons I can’t explain.

Dunno why I do things like that.

Stupid, really.

But in some reality, he’s still alive and he’s waiting for me.

I digress…

Me: I’m just worried about you.
Her: What’s there to worry about? I forgot where I parked my car is all. It’s not that big a deal.
Me: I dunno, mom.
Her: It’s fine, it’s fine. Did you eat yet? Lemme make you something to eat.
Me: It’s ok, I’m not hungry.

That last part was true.

Literally, the only time I’m ever not hungry is when I’m worried. And I was worried about my mom.

Didn’t stay long. It took me 90 minutes to get to her, but I only stayed for 45 mins because I had so much to do.

Just wanted to see and hug her.

If you can see and hug your mom, you absolutely should.

Since I was in Queens, I remembered that I saw this Instagram short about this dude in Flushing Queens selling this 2000-year-old Chinese gyro / shawarma thingy – and you know what a sucker I am for those things – and I decided to get one before I headed back home.

Essentially, I saw that she seemed like herself and my hunger came roaring back.

 

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So, I went there, waited in a short line, and ordered one.

$6. Chicken with a ton of cumin.

The bread was like a cross between a crossiont and phylo sheet. It was pretty delicious, I gotta say.

Realized, as I ate it at noon or so, that it was the very first thing I’d eaten all day – it was my first bite of food in 18 hours.

When Alison and my dad got sick, I dropped down to 140 pounds. I was skin and bones.

I know that I should spend as much time with my mom while I can.

Just don’t wanna think about things like that.

So, I think about stupid things like 2,000 year old Chinese gyros and push all that doubt to the side of my mouth.

Location: the gym, trying to impress this hot blonde
Mood: meditative
Music: we brave beestings and all (Spotify)
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