03 Dec 2003 - 1st day aboard
I began the day, today, at Gertraude's. We got up and had breakfast and by 0900 I was ready to take off. I thanked Gertraude for her hospitality and we took a few photographs. I think she was sad to see me go and I know she's also thinking about going to New Zealand herself.
I drove down to Oakland from Cotati. From looking at the Oakland maps, I thought locating the Direct Tui would be fairly easy. It wasn't. Oakland Harbor is fairly large (though nothing compared to LA's). It took me an hour and a half of rooting around before I nosed up the 600 foot long truffle of my desires near the north end of the docks.
The harbor was so big (LA also) that they have shuttle buses to run folks from the gates to their ships and places of work. Once I got myself to the correct gate and showed my ticket for the Direct Tui to the security folks, I loaded my 110 pounds and four suitcases onto the shuttle bus and we were off.
When you arrive at the ship, it is along side the dock and the huge cranes that load and unload the cargo containers are extended over it working. These huge cranes run on sets of tracks like railroad tracks that run along the dock so that they can move up and down the length of the ship or even over to another ship.
So,
when you venture out to the ship, you have to watch yourself because semi-trucks
are coming and going, the cranes and moving at times and lesser vehicles and
moving in among it all as you walk across.
Luckily, when I got to the gangway, Emil, the Second Officer, was there to meet me by luck. He had some of the crewmen carry my bags up the eight stories or so that it is from dock level to my cabin on E deck. You can see my cabin in the photo below of the ship's superstructure. Find the orange life boat. Note that there are two balconies above it. My cabin is behind the upper balcony.
After dropping my stuff in my cabin, it was lunch time so I went down to the officer's dining room and joined them. The captain was there (Polish), Emil - Second Officer (Romanian), Michael - Electrician (Latvian and just on-board, having just flown from Latvia to SF to join the crew) and Anatoly - Chief Engineer (Polish).
They seemed friendly and we talked about Iraq, Arnold Swartzenegger and such things.
After lunch, I left and walked back to the gate area intending to take my rental car back to the Oakland Airport. As I walked, I called Freddie, a good friend of mine from my college years, to see if he was in town. He lives in LA but he was possibly going to be in Oakland dealing with the sale of his condo her.
It turned out that Freddie was still in LA but we ended up having a great conversation for about 30 minutes (going to hate to see my roaming cell phone bill!). He and his father and some other members of his family have started a reading club and for their first book, they were reading Edward O. Wilson's Consilience. A great choice in my opinion and it left me even more impressed with his family than before.
IOnce Freddie and I signed off, I started for the airport but then realized that the ship wasn't to said until the AM hours and I didn't need to rush right onboard as I was going to have a lot of time aboard in the next two months. I decided to go over to the Berkeley Campus and wander around.
I've always had a 'thing' for Berkeley since the Free Speech Movement protests of the 60's. I've dropped in several times over the years to take in the ambiance. Today was fun. I walked up and down Telegraph checking out the students and the vendors and street people. Then, I walked into the campus through the main gate at the end of Telegraph.
Wonderful place, Berkeley. Intelligence just crackles in the air. Many of the best America's High Schools have to offer come to Berkeley to see if they can make it in the big time. Along Telegraph, they had banners up along the street celebrating Berkeley graduates who've won Nobel Prizes. They had enough to go for several blocks.
Inside the campus, I just wandered. I went into some of the physics buildings and wandered the halls catching bits and pieces of conversations. I watched seven students singing near the gate to entertain the passers by. They were all gifted with good voices and confidence. One would step forward to sing while the others would 'doo-wap' behind him and than another would come up. It all just made me realize that all the stuff that happened to me when I was in Junior High and High School precluded any possibility of my following that particular dream but it looked like a nice one as I walked. I found a cafe/coffee shop on campus named the "Free Speech Movement" cafe or some such. Inside, they had pictures of Mario Salvio and descriptions of all the stuff that happened in '64 on campus.
Finally, it was time to leave Berkeley so I headed out, filled the rental car with gas and then dropped it at the Oakland Airport. From there, I caught a cab and $38 later, I was back at the gate to the docks. After a ride of a similar length in San Pedro, which only cost me $15 (tip included), I concluded that I had been ripped a bit but I didn't know at the time.
Onboard, I set to organizing my cabin and took a group of photos of it which are just below. There's a nice desk, a good sized bathroom with a shower, a sitting area, a bunk with side walls to keep you from rolling out, a TV, a small refrigerator, a nice cabinet for books or whatever and a closet to hang stuff in. Oh, and a porthole over the bed which faces out on the port side. There's also a notice on the wall that, among other things, points out the uselessness of high heeled shoes onboard <smile>.
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I was up until midnight arranging voltage converters, adaptor plugs, and my laptop, and just generally fussing, organizing and running outside to look at the harbor and to marvel at where I was and what I was embarking on.