Up in the morning at 7:20 a.m. when the steward knocks on the door with breakfast. For me it is simply cereal and milk, but Mary Alice has juices and a croissant. After a bit we rouse ourselves put in a mile on deck 7, which is the deck on this ship that is set up for walking all around the ship on the outside. It may be deck 7 on every ship for all I know. A sign tells you how many laps to the mile – on the Dawn Princess it is 3. Lots of people put in their mile or so and it can be crowded if the weather is good – and so far on the Dawn Princess the weather has been excellent. We stop to photograph the wake and other interesting things.

Back to the cabin for a shower and fresh clothes, now it’s 9 am and the day begins. Right outside the cabin is a “mailbox” in which you find quite a bit of junk mail advertising the many things you can buy on the ship, and a daily newsletter (the “Princess Patter”) with the day’s schedule. Today I could have attended “Scrapbooking At Sea”, for instance. But didn’t.

I’m working on a way to get better food. My plan is two-fold. First, I am going to eat whatever is most similar to a steak at dinner, on the theory that they are less likely to mess that up than a more fancy dish. Secondly, tomorrow night we are going to eat at the ship’s premium restaurant –by paying a premium of $15 per person. So I call down to the reservations office and reserve a table for 2 at 7:30 pm tomorrow.

I’m also working on a way to get seated for meals when I show up rather than waiting as I did last night. My plan is to make a reservation.

The champagne art auction is at 2pm, and at 4 there is a drawing for some free jewelry, which we have tickets for. Our chances are 1:50, which is worth walking down two flights of stairs to try, so we’re going to do that.

Also, this evening is the Captain’s Welcome Cocktail party at 7:15. It is formal night at the restaurants, and everyone dresses for the CWCP too. So, a free drink puts this one on the schedule.

But it’s still morning, and I take my laptop down to the lounge and go on-line. I want an ice-tea but the bar has no non-alcoholic drinks. They suggest deck 14’s buffet, but there won’t be any wi-fi there so I settle in with nothing to drink and check out my e-mail and the news. It is costing me 40¢ per minute but I haven’t figured out how fast that is going to add up yet, so I browse at my leisure, checking BBC, CNN, Google, and, of course, Sohum Parlance for the latest on the Reggae controversy and other hometown news.

The laptop is acting up again, erasing blog entries just before I post them after I spent some very expensive minutes writing them, so this time I write off-line in Word, and cut and paste into the blog. Works fine.

Mary Alice comes by, and gets us some water from the bar. I should have thought of that. We look at the pictures she has been taking, and off she goes again. Me too after a bit. We have a 1pm date at the cabin to go to lunch. About 12:45 we are both at the cabin, and thinking that the ship has more passengers than can be fed conveniently, so perhaps we’ll just get room service. The room service menu is small, but includes a variety of foods including a BLT so I’m up for it, but we decide to go up to the 14th deck buffet anyway.

Good thing we did. There is a sushi spread, so we have sushi for lunch while a 3-piece band plays instrumental versions of hits from the 40s and 50s. This excites one woman who shrieks repeatedly and does a symbolic dance in her chair. I am fortunately facing the other way. Along with the sushi is an ice sculpure, a cabbage used as a chopstick holder (you should see the photo to understand this) and a vase of vegetables cut to resemble flowers. About 1:30 the crowd thins noticeably, but not our table. We are now considering desert. There is a constant struggle between a leisurely lunch and the waiters who clear the dishes the minute you are through with them. This keeps the table clear for you, but it also puts a bit of pressure on to finish up and let someone else have the table. We are not buffaloed. Let the Dawn Princess turn a few cabins into snack bars next trip and hold down the lines at lunch and dinner.

After lunch we take a tour of decks 14 and 15 looking for hot tubs. Mary Alice wants to soak out her aches. I have a laptop problem to work out, so we skip the Champagne Art
Auction. I went to one on the Sapphire Princess and while the champagne was free and the patter amusing, the art was not interesting and, it seemed to me, overpriced at the opening bid. They move a lot of canvass on these voyages, however, so someone likes it. So we pass. Mary Alice takes a nap. I trash 1.97 GB of files marked “China Photos” after being sure they are duplicates. This laptop only has a 30GB disk and something called my Startup Disk is filling up, the computer tells me and it wants some free space. The trash emptying sounds like tearing paper.

Mary Alice awakes and we go down to the jewelry store (“joyera” in Spanish) where we join a substantial number of people waiting for the lucky number to be called. After we’ve browsed about 10 minutes it is called, and it isn’t ours. Neither is it anyone else’s in the room, and you must be present to win. So a second number is called. It isn’t ours either. Someone else wins, the shop clears quickly.

But, it’s 4pm. Time for high tea, served the Princess Patter notes, with white gloves. It seems to me that if they have to tell you that, then the gloves are an affectation not a feature. We go in even though we are not dressed for high tea, and get a table quickly. We are seated at a table for 8, with 3 others there already. A couple from Toronto, the second such we have met in 26 hours on the ship, and a woman from Arizona. The white gloved waiters descend. One has tea. Then one has scones. Then the cookie waiter comes. After that there are tea sandwiches, and just when you think you’ve avoided the worst effects on your diet, teacakes.

Another couple comes and sits opposite us. A young couple with British accents arrive. Both are from SF. The opposite couple have a son who just became an intellectual property attorney working biotech and his first day on the job was last week. I assured them that my example shows that he can have a long career. The other couple includes a scientist working in biotech. The waiters clear the table, and after a couple of minutes more, seeing that our conversation is continuing, toss us out so they can set dinner up.

I walk a second mile round the ship hoping to work off at least the scone, if not the scone and the cookie. An interesting math problem arises. I meet a man going the opposite direction. Half way round the ship we meet again. Finally we meet for the third time at the same point that we met the first time. It takes me 5 minutes to make 3 laps. Questions: who is going faster, and how fast is he going. Doesn’t that take you back to beginning algebra?

Back to the room to work on this piece, and dress for the Captain’s Welcome Cocktail Party and dinner. I call for a dinner reservation, which can be done until 5:30. Well, yes and no, it turns out. You can actually call at 5 p.m. but you can’t make a reservation. All their reservations are already given out. We’re going to eat after the Captain’s welcome party (No receiving line, but welcome address and introduction of senior staff at 7;45pm, according to the Patter). I don’t know why this bit of nautical custom has gotten established on cruise ships, but they’ve done it on each of our cruises so far – even on the 100 passenger river trip. I have a photo from the Norwegian cruise and it looks like opera night in Washington DC. Everyone dressed up, women glittering. Very impressive. We all clap as the officers are introduced. On the NCL cruise we got a photo taken with the Captain. On the River Duchess we toasted the voyage with champagne. Tonight will be a bit less of an occasion, but hey, it’s only a 10-night cruise.

It was hard to get the attention of a waiter at the Captain’s party, but we did and I ended up with a generous glass of red wine. The costumes were impressive. We saw a number of bow ties in a variety of colors. Young girls wore what looked like their prom dresses and made grand entries on the many stairs. We rode up and down in the glass-fronted elevator for several cycles admiring the crowd and the changing perspective. Finally the Cruise director, who sounds like he studied under Monty Python, comes on and announces the Captain. The Captain told us of the many nationalities aboard. One from China, one from Peru, several from the Ukraine (which explains the Russian I thought I heard), but the surprise was 279 from Canada. No wonder we keep meeting people from Toronto,

The party over it was time to put my dining schemes into action. I didn’t want to stand in an endless line for dinner. So my thought was that the crowd would have eaten prior to the Captain’s party so a late dinner at 8:15 will involve no waiting. There is a show at 8:15 in the Princess Theater that should draw off some more people, and a comedy/magic act at 8:30. We’ll likely be eating all alone in that vast restaurant.

Not exactly but about 8pm the Matre d was waiving everyone in. Mary Alice had snagged a waiter at the party for a second drink, however, and it took him about 15 minutes to get her the drink. During that time I stood by the restaurant entrance. Periodically the Matre d would inquire if I had located my family yet. But tho the line waxed and waned the Matre d never stopped waiving people in. She came, we sanitized, we were seated.

Our tablemates were southerners. Ah blessed sounds so dear to my ear. Nothing beats a southern accent. One had lost his house in Katrina – he had been living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast not far from my Stepfather’s home in Bay Saint Louis – and he was still arguing with the insurance company about paying for the damage. People from the Gulf coast measure time from the great storms. Camille, Katrina…. There have been 3 in my lifetime. My tablemate moved inland after Katrina, and isn’t going back to the coast to live again. I don’t blame him.

My scheme to avoid waiting in line having technically worked – we would have gotten right in just as I planned were it not for the wayward waiter – I put the second plan into action so I could have a dinner that was well-cooked, I ordered a salad and a big chunk of beef. Bingo. The salad greens were fresh, the beef excellent. My plans paid off.

After dinner we went to see the comedy/magic show at 10 p.m. It was not bad. The Vista Lounge was packed and it was difficult to find a seat but we located one of their mile long couches and squeezed in. The show ended, and so to bed.

Before we embarked onto the Dawn Princess we got to spend a morning in San Francisco. The day was sunny, warm for February, and clear. An unusual day in the city by the Bay. We were near the Noe Valley section of 24th St so we wandered up and down looking at things. Mary Alice, who spent much of her youth nearby, gave me a running commentary comparing the old uses of the buildings, when this was a shopping district for people who needed all their living supplies nearby, to the uses now when it is a trendy area of shops to supply the needs of the young and fashionable. Tugey’s Hardware alone survives, as one look at the ancient floor confirms.

Books were everywhere. Even the barber had books for sale. We spent a very pleasant half-hour or so in a bookstore, piled with volumes from floor to shelves much higher than we could reach. I have been reading Chaucer lately, and what a trip Chaucer is, so I gravitated to the medieval section of the shelves. Nothing interesting in Chaucer that I didn’t already have, but there were 4 different versions of the Decameron. I picked the Norton Critical edition because it has a variety of critical articles about the book at its end.

A difficulty for the modern reader, assuming I am one, encountering medieval literature is that we have changed our view of how to think about things – and what to think about. So in Chaucer, or Boccaccio, when they start to tell a story or when a character starts giving a speech, suddenly they start bringing out examples from ancient history and literature of the kind of thing they are talking about. Why should Cressida agree to receive a letter from Troilus? Well, Cassandra got a letter from Aesculus, and enjoyed it, and in ancient Egypt, Hipolitya got a letter from Marcus, and nothing bad occurred etc. This is the Scholastic method of discourse – we look to the ancient authorities and see what they had to say about things, and that’s a guide for us. Now that I think of it, writing a motion for court is very similar to this. Anyway it takes some getting used to in fiction. Even for Chaucer, evidently, for at one point in Troilus and Cressida he says (in Morrison’s translation)

“I could recite to you a thousand tales
of women lost through the false boasts of fools.
You know yourself proverbs against
The vice of blabbing……”

And so avoids himself having to list those thousand tales not to mention the proverbs.

Mary Alice found a new Nobel Prize winner’s novel, and eventually we stopped gazing at books and resumed our walk. A bit further along, as we returned down the south side of the street we stopped in a bakery for some chai and a bearclaw. Outside was a bench where we sat and ate, and nearby seated on another bench was a man selling the homeless newspaper, Street Sheet. I always buy a copy when in the city because I like the idea of an exchange of value rather than being spare changed by someone. Jon Carol recommends just handing out a few twenties to the homeless without reflection upon what what they’ll purchase – and there is merit in his suggestion, in terms of the giver’s personal spiritual growth, but I wasn’t looking for spiritual growth. I wanted something to read and to help out the person bringing it to me. The Street Sheet is $1, I had a ten, the man had only $8 in change. What to do? Take two copies? Give him the extra buck? Was I falling for the old “I’ve only got $8 in change” swindle? Then he showed me his stock of books. It turns out that like every other merchant on 24th Street, he had books as well as his main line of merchandise. Next to him in a doorway were about 15 books, and they were $1 each. I got a John Grissom, and a mystery from the further tales of Sherlock Holmes. He said I could return any for an exchange if I found I had already read it.

San Francisco is full of eccentricities. Not just people on the street. No one from Southern Humboldt is likely to encounter more eccentrics on the streets as a matter of routine, than they do at home. It’s the external decorating of the houses. They have small front yards, if any, but one tiny courtyard was jammed full of plants in pots- some quite large, and the effect was of a glimpse of jungle. Another had a very large mural of a renaissance garden with a couple of cherubs, and a young woman taking her leisure; another house had a mural entirely covering the two story front of the building showing a jungle scene with monkeys, and a leopard poised to leap down upon anyone coming to the front door. It was a wonderful walk.

Useful too. I got my beard trimmed so I could embark neat and trim (and saving quite a bit of money, I think. On the ship the men’s barber offers a $99 haircut package with some hot towels added in. MA got her hair cut. We considered getting a whole lot of cheeses and meats to take on board, but decided against it. Just as well, you can’t carry fruits or foods aboard.

The Dawn Princess left SF's pier 35 about 4:30 pm or so. Perhaps 30 minutes late. We boarded around 2pm, got checked in, got a late lunch at the buffet, unpacked my suitcase (MA's came later) and went up top to watch the sail-out. 4pm, the scheduled time arrived, and the boat thrummed its mighty engines and stayed right where it was. We ordered drinks - I got a Dos Equis. After a bit the PA came to life and the Captain welcomed us aboard and predicted we'd be leaving at once. Nothing happened. A bit later the Cruise Director came on the PA and said we were leaving and led us in a countdown blowing the horn to indicate we were going. The horn blew and we stayed still.

Finally we backed away from the pier, and the city which the ship had been dwarfing, since it is more than 15 stories high and the dockside buildings are not. Immediately the wind picked up and the temperature droped. We turned and sailed past Alcatraz heading for the Golden Gate. Soon we were under the bridge, with pedistrians or potential leapers waiving at us and us back at them. No one jumped, and before we knew it the bridge was lost in the fog and we were at sea.

We can take Amtrak from Garberville, which is 17 miles over the moutain from our home, to San Francisco. It costs $34 for us old folks, one way. Of course the actual train part of the train ride is fairly short. The Amtrack bus takes you to Martinez, a train then goes to Emeryville, and another Amtrack bus goes to several points in SF. We left home at 11 a.m. returned at 11:05 to get the credit card we forgot, and went to G’ville. In town we got two foot-long sandwiches at John Earp’s Subway for $12 The Amtrack bus stop is at the Waterwheel café, with a low brick wall outside. We sat there with our very heavy suitcases and split a sandwich.

The bus came at 12:30, we were in SF at the Ferry Building about 8:15pm. It would have taken longer because the trains were running late, but we hopped on a train that came along 2 trains earlier than our scheduled #715 and that saved us about 30 minutes. Driving would have taken about 5 hours. But then where do we leave the car in SF, since we are taking off on a 10 day Cruise to the “Mexican Riviera”

The Martinez Amtrak station has public electrical outlets, so I started recharging the cell phone there in case I needed it that evening. Especially if we would be delayed for our 8;30 dinner date with our SF friends. I’m reading the Portable Chaucer (1949 edition, $1.45 cover price) and sat on the floor by the outlet jumping up every two or three minutes to see if the train was coming. Way across the terminal was an electronic train schedule. The train was coming at 6:45. Next time I looked the train was coming at 6:48. Then 6:51. It changed in 3 minute intervals, but train time never seemed to be getting any closer. I probably should have taken Booker White’s recommendation and laid my head on the rail. “When the rail starts popping, train time ain’t long”, he said back in 1930. That was before electronic schedules, but still more accurate. Unlike the vision he presented in his song, no one at the station was playing the guitar “trying to make a few dimes.”

The train had a nice table for four with two electric outlets so I completed the cell phone charge, and charged the laptop while riding to Emeryville. I bought Mary Alice a digital camera for Christmas and we edited her first “roll” of pictures on the laptop while riding through the darkness on the train. There was at least one 5-star shot on her roll.

We met friends at a restaurant they recommended,, which was in the Ferry building. It was the Slanted Door. The reservation was for 8:30, the table was ready about 8:50. We were able to leave our luggage at the door, and check my hat ( makes me look like Sean Connery someone said on a cruise ship). The staff was skinny, which seems to be a good sign in a restaurant, however counterintuitive that is, and extremely friendly, Excellent food. Probably the 2nd or 3rd best dinner I have ever had. I had the Slanted Door spring rolls with peanut sauce, the grilled quail, and a baby beet salad. For desert huckleberry cake with ice cream. The spring rolls were thick and not crunchy, with the prawns embedded in them. Really good. The quail was from the appetizer menu, and so, small, (which make sense given the size of a quail) and excellent. .I ordered baby beet salad because Mary Alice doesn’t like beets so we never have them at home. Twice now I’ve been disappointed in them as served, so its going to be roasted beets with butter or nothing next time. It is possible that I don’t like beets as much as I think I do. The wine was white and French so I don’t know what it was, (Voudray? Pinon?) except that it was really good and cost $32 for the bottle (one of the cheapest on the list). With the wine, and desserts, dinner for 4 fairly light eaters was just under $150, and worth every penny.

The next morning I looked the Slanting Door up in the Zagat Survey (zagat.com) and found it was the 3rd most popular SF area restaurant. With a 25 (out of 30) food rating it misses the top Area list, but makes the to SF itself list. It’s a 25-22-20 (food, décor, service).

The taxi to our friends’ house was $20 with the tip. You get the most miles per dollar on the train. Tomorrow Mary Alice gets to go to the yarn shop on 24th st. which opens at 11. The boat sails at 4, and embarkation begins at noon so the yarn shop may be our only adventure before boarding.

“Embarkation”, getting on the “barque” as ships used to be called for a reason unknown to me, My Apple dictionary tells me it is from the Middle English, and was a three-mast sailing ship but now in poetic language is any ship. You can spell it “bark” if you wish.

Today is crazy, as usual. I get out of the house at 6 a.m. and head for Willits. Beautiful drive with the fog clinging to the valleys. My client is outside the court house and says "I was hoping you'd show up". That's my line usually. No one told me in law school that I would spend more time looking for clients who had already retained me than looking for clients who might retain me. But my guy is right there this morning. I tell the DA that I've got a secret weapon in this case and they should give up. They don't.

Off to Ukiah.Nice lunch at Oco, which is a Japanese restaurant on Church St, about 1/2 block off the main drag and 2 blocks from the courthouse. I'm very health conscious but I'm also hungry so I have deep fried tofu. Delicious. Nice lunch with an old friend who is in the biz too. We discuss medical marijuana law and Japanese food. Court has its moments too, but nothing wild.

Now, do I go to San Rafael, or go home. It all depends upon what the DA in Marin county says, and he's not taking calls. I leave messages. I discuss the situation with co-counsel. I get a golden raison scone from Shatz's. I can't put it off any longer, so I put the radio on 88.5 and head south for San Rafael. The DA phones when I'm about 10 miles from San Rafael, but it's ok because our analyis of the situation requires me to be there tomorrow anyway. And it's raining. Finally it is raining. And warm. Very nice.

San Rafael is a nightmare to drive in, not least because a lot of people want to do it. The freeway cut right through the town and destroyed any hope of a coherent traffic pattern. It is dark, it is raining, the street signs are poor, the rules of the road unpredictable from block to block. I make it to the motel, and off to eat. I stay at the Days Inn. About $65 a night, internet, bath tub. The light switches are in very odd places suggesting a budget remodel some time in the past, but the beds are comfortable and the internet works, and I'm happy. Tomorrow I go home. That's good too.