#68. At Sea (Sunday, December 22, 2024)

#68. At Sea (Sunday, December 22, 2024)

What was your best day of…making new friends you knew you’d never see again?

Note: Let me shatter the fourth wall for a moment and say that the most recent-occurring entries on this list are being placed fairly conservatively. Because, by definition, it’s too early to know what my full perception of them will be, and it’s better to set reasonable expectations (and be pleasantly surprised) than the other way around.

Although I did go to college, I never had the quintessential college experience (#115 is a very rare, very late highlight). And so, I never had those four years to get the partying out of my system.

Rather, it’s been twelve years since of trying make up for that: through one fun-filled year at Duke (#104, #87), weekly research happy hours (#120), pre-meditated wild club nights any time I travel alone (#80), and generally always being down to go drinking with friends at the drop of a hat (#112, #102, #77, #74).

But with grown adults, these social events are different. They’re mere side events in each person’s busy day and busy life, sandwiched between more important things to do or more important places to be. That special feeling of everyone around you placing their hundred-percent attention on having a good time in the moment (and nothing else) was something I never expected I’d ever get the chance to experience.

Good thing about a five-day Caribbean cruise, though? The people you’re with have nowhere else to be, except on the boat. And pretty much nothing else to do, but party.

So, that’s what happened. For the first week of my Christmas vacation, I took a solo cruise on the Norwegian Pearl, which departed from Miami with stops at Key West, Cozumel in Mexico, and Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas. Also, the food was amazing, the weather was perfect, and I had my moment of trivia (#118) glory when I stomped the competition in this Jeopardy-like game show in the main atrium on Day 4 (this Sunday).

And, yeah, I got the open bar package, so all five nights was an unrestrained party to the Nth degree.

The pattern for each night was scarily similar:

  • Some singing or acrobatics show at 7 pm in the main theater, with a reasonably high production value (for a cruise).
  • At 8 pm in the giant 18+ Spinnaker’s Lounge on the highest deck, select audience members would compete in some decidedly adult-themed competition (titles included: The Newlyweds Game, Battle of the Sexes, and The Perfect Couple1) with over a hundred audience members laughing uproariously the entire way through.
  • Dinner at 9 pm. Normally the complementary buffet, but I did use my one free specialty meal on Day 4 at the (literal) all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse.
  • 10 pm Karaoke at the Bliss nightclub2. On Day 4, I get up and holler out and dance my favorite song ever (details forthcoming) to a rousing reception.
  • Bliss closed at midnight, so from there it was an hour more of drinking and dancing at Spinnaker’s (six decks up and across the ship, a memorable journey each time) before it closed as well.
  • Late-night eats and more drinks (or water if we had an excursion the next morning) at O’Sheehan’s, the 24-hour Irish pub spread out across the 8th deck in this big open space that overlooked the atrium. Usually until about 3 am.

And this Norwegian cruise had the perfect mix of ages3: a lot of college-aged kids, several people around my age or somewhat younger, and a good number of older folks in their 40s and 50s who just wanted to have a good time. I must have made over a hundred casual “friends” the entire cruise. And when you’re confined with these “friends” and always going to the same spots as them, a special feeling emerges by the third or fourth day, where you literally feel like you’re spending time with true friends you’ve known for years and not complete strangers like you actually are.

Still, out of these hundred-plus friends, two of them became especially close friends. Landon Kincaid, an MBA who worked in sports management and was based at Kansas State, with whom I bonded on the first night over our love (and analytic obsession) with sports4. And Aaron Smithson, from Brisbane, Australia, who singlehandedly won Battle of the Sexes for the guys with his dance moves5 and was literally the most social guy I ever met. Mostly through him, we had a loose group of about thirty people doing that same approximate itinerary above each night.6

Of these hundred-plus friends, I say I’d be lucky if I could cross paths with five of them at any later point in my life. But that’s the beauty of cruises. Those five days are both a complete separation from your real life, as well as a small snapshot of a life on their own – at the same time.

Yes, I had gotten my long-overdue college experience. Through one-hundred-and-twenty blissful hours at sea.

  1. The titles belie how risque some of the tasks were, especially the physical ones.
  2. Which also featured a full-on bowling alley, the first one ever installed on a cruise ship.
  3. The two previous cruises I did were Carnival in 2012 (all high school and college students, and I was with my family), and Holland America in 2016 (#77, which was a bunch of old people, and I was with my family).
  4. He kept telling me that with my impressive economics and quantitative background, I could make it far in the sports industry if I wanted to go there. I promised to send him my working paper (once I finished it) that showed that baseball batters were swinging more often than they should.
  5. He led the dancing in Bliss to my karaoke song, then told me he’d send over a one-of-a-kind mixtape that a DJ he knew had compiled of that favorite song of mine.
  6. This included: (1) three college-aged brothers from Utah, with whom (along with their cool parents) I had lunch after the dolphin swim in Cozumel, and who would should out in unison “Jeff!” every time we ran into each other on the boat (which was often); (2) a group of four closer to my age, which included an Anguillan guy from Toronto with some astounding card tricks and a girl from Denver who had me sing Shaggy’s “Mr. Bombastic” with her at karaoke on the third night, after I over-excitedly went on stage thinking my song had come up (I’d never heard of that song before then, but apparently I did an excellent job); and (3) a super-cool older guy Ted from Wisconsin and his wife (who won “The Perfect Couple” and stayed out almost as late as I did every night).