An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

A man, a plan, a canal. Panama. I've heard this palindrome many times, but it had never occurred to me to think about exactly who the "man" was. I certainly didn't know that he was a fellow Brooklynite and that I was in fact very familiar with his name. George Washington Goethals was a U.S. Army general and civil engineer who served as the administrator and supervisor for the construction of the canal. The French spent decades in a bungled attempt to build a canal, and after they surrendered (so to speak) the U.S. took over and, under  Goethals' leadership, successfully completed the canal. Today, Goethals is memorialized by a bridge bearing his name connecting Staten Island to New Jersey. I have traversed this bridge (both the old one and the much superior replacement) many, many times without giving its name a single thought. In contrast, while we're on the subject of New York bridge trivia, I do know who T haddeus Kosciuszko, he of the Brooklyn-Queens Expre...

By this point in our trip we had gotten to know just about everyone on board our 62 passenger ship. It's interesting - there are always a few people who keep to themselves, but in general you meet just about everyone thanks to the close quarters, open seating dining, and shared outings. Most of the people are who you'd expect - active professionals with the scratch to pay for a somewhat high-end trip. But it was interesting to learn that the seven year old son of some fellow passengers had already visited fourteen countries (for the record, I'm at sixteen - seventeen if you count the Vatican). And there was the world-weary seventeen year old who expressed his dismay at the unimaginative "plating" of our dinners. Really. Valerie acquired an acolyte - one of the grandmothers on the trip (a woman from Westchester) found Valerie to be a total hoot, particularly her frank sex talk. I would like to blame this on excessive drinking (Valerie drank alcohol on this trip! On...

Sat 12/29 Basically a wasted day in between the land tour and the sea-based portion. Having spent most of the previous day sitting around I started the day with a quick workout on the elliptical, had breakfast, then packed up and checked our bags in for transfer to the ship. Valerie and I took a walk and browsed in a really cheesy souvenir shop then continued across to a shopping mall. The mall was pretty dismal - at least half vacant - but walking around was something to do. I thought about getting my hair trimmed, as at 1/8 inch long it was getting pretty unruly, but the barbershop charged 6,800 Colones (about $11) for a haircut and I was just too cheap to pay that kind of money to have someone spend 60 seconds buzzing my head with the clippers. We ate lunch at the food court, where I impressed Valerie with my ability to order her a personal pan pizza combo in Spanish. My Spanish is very limited, but I do pretty well in restaurants. The conversation is very structured with ...