It started out as a simple week long cruise to Alaska. My wife and I are avid cruisers?well my wife is and she drags me along. It may appear as though I am enjoying myself, but really I just want to get back to work. My wife lets me work pretty much all the time, so I want her to enjoy the cruise. For her to enjoy the cruise she has to think I am having fun too, so that's why I pretend to enjoy myself.



Anyway, back to the Alaskan cruise?some people we met on a cruise were going to go, and so we were going to go along as well. It's always fun to cruise with people you've met before?assuming you like them of course. A couple of cruises back we went on a cruise to the Caribbean where a large number of people had been yakking at each other on the Cruise Critics message board for almost a year. People all going on the Caribbean cruise of course. It turned out to be a fantastic cruise. We had so much fun with this huge group of people. We referred to it as 62 best friends meeting for the first time. We had some group party's and a couple of blow-up dolls as mascots and we even had a Pirate theme. It made the whole cruise far more fun. Well for Kathy it was a lot of fun, I was just pretending of course. There are a lot of pictures of the cruise, the group, and even the mascots at my cruisesrfun website.

But I digress?back to the Alaskan cruise. Well, it turned out that a whole bunch of those folks that went on that Caribbean cruise decided to do another cruise together, this time to Acapulco Mexico. The next thing I knew our Alaskan cruise had become our Acapulco cruise. I much prefer hot weather to warm and warm to cold, so I had not been looking forward to the Alaskan cruise, but a cruise to sunny Mexico would be another story. Er uh at least it would be easier to pretend to enjoy the cruise.

One of the nifty things about this cruise is it stops at Zihuatanejo, which is where my step son and his wife got married on the beach. Actually, the beach was called La Playa Ropa, and the wedding was at a restaurant called La Perla. Well'we thought why not invite our son and his wife and his sister and her husband to go along too. They are great fun and our son's wife is Mexican and speaks fluent Spanish'it makes her very handy when in Mexico.

This cruise to Acapulco is at the end of October. We will be on the ship for Halloween. You know what that means. It means that there will be a mandatory costume party. At least it will be mandatory for anyone married to my wife. Jeeze. UPS has been making stops at my house several times a week lately bringing things like big fancy ear rings and costumes, and dresses?lots of dresses. My wife Kathy really likes to dress up on these cruises. I pretend I don't mind donning my tuxedo a couple of times each cruise. Apparently I will also be getting dressed up as a Mexican Bandito?with bandoliers holding shot glasses instead of bullets, and holsters that hold tequila bottles. Kathy is going to go as ?Miss Piggy? dressed as ?Big Bird?. Doesn't make sense to me either, but check out our website in early November to see for yourself.

This cruise is aboard the Carnival Spirit, and we have never cruised on Carnival. The last cruise I was on was aboard the HAL Oosterdam, a ship we've traveled on twice. On that cruise I had my iphone, and I could check my email and visit my favorite websites from almost anywhere on the ship. I hope that's the case with the Spirit. As usual I will do a cruise review and post it on cruisesrfun.

Kathy has been in near constant communication with one of that group of 64, Judy, who happens to be a Travel agent. So now we've been moved around, up graded and God knows what else, but we apparently have the perfect state room?with a wrap-around balcony and plenty of room for that cocktail party. On this cruise our group will be around 20 people, and I know Kathy and two of her friends are planning at least one cocktail party for the entire group. A lot of the original group of 64 still chat on the boards, and of course this upcoming cruise has a message board at cruise critics site, and there is daily chatting. I never get involved in that stuff; I leave it all to Kathy.

The cruise begins in San Diego, and we will be staying overnight in the same hotel as the last time we cruised. Kathy has booked us a room where we can stand on the balcony and watch the ship dock early in the morning. Last time it was at like 5:00 a.m. or something'I don't really understand the attraction., but I am pretty sure that at some un-Godly hour I'll be up watch the ship pull up to the dock.

We usually build web pages about our cruise as we go, and upload them to the CruisesRfun website from the ship. This time we will be doing the same thing. I have a new digital camera that takes nice movies, and I would really like to begin incorporating videos into my website. If we can upload at a reasonable speed I'll certainly have some cool videos posted on the site before the end of the cruise. If I am really lucky I'll be able to get some really embarrassing footage of my children for all of their friends to view.

On this trip at least, what happens in Mexico will definitely NOT stay in Mexico. Vive la Internet!