DAY ONE: THE CRUISE BEGINS -- Which actually began last evening, when son Jeff drove us to an airport motel in Raleigh, a pretty essential part of the trip since it began with stumbling aboad a Delta flight at 6:00 this morning. We aren’t terribly enthusiastic about doing anything that begins in a Terminal, yet despite all our misgivings it couldn’t have been a smoother trip: no lost baggage, no missed connections, no crying babies next to us, no bad weather, easy hookup with our transfer to the ship, no surprises.

Well, almost none. As we were jumping through the hoops at our ticketing check-in at RDU it was discovered that Ann’s driver’s license (her required photo ID) had expired, but after a short spurt in blood pressure we produced a passport which solved that problem. It was only a couple of hours later that we were walking onto the m.s. Ryndam before noon, (just in time for lunch!) and spent the rest of the day getting settled into our cabin, exploring the new home, and learning the cruise-ship style of life.

Our fellow travelers seem, at first glance, to be a nice bunch of folks, about as varied a group as you can imagine except, well, they’re almost all well-fed white folks and almost all old, older, at least, than us. (A friend reported that going on a cruise made you feel younger and thinner. She was right!) Since we’re pretty well-fed ourselves and we always get senior citizen discounts without asking for them, we should feel right at home.

At any rate, we’ve spent the rest of this day tied up to Pier 92 at the LA Cruise Terminal (there’s that word again), and it wasn’t until about 9:00 pm (a.k.a. 2100) that without any ceremony the lines were cast off and we eased our way into the San Pedro Channel and silently, almost stealthily, headed south and on our way.

We stood at the railing for the first ten or fifteen minutes, watching as we slipped by the huge and brightly lighted Port of Los Angeles. Scores of giant container cranes, flashing red lights on top, stood along the piers looking for all the world like giant metallic praying mantises. Then suddenly, as though a switch had been thrown, it was pitch dark and we were sailing in the Pacific Ocean.

It’s been a long day, and we fell asleep easily and quickly.