Sail Away - St. Thomas

Years ago I watched a documentary movie about bodybuilders. These athletes are extremely disciplined regarding training and diet regimen when preparing for a show. Eating extremely clean diets with low fat, high protein, and lots of water helps them anticipate and prepare for the two minutes of flexing and posing on stage at the contest. In this movie, after the competition, many of the athletes gave themselves some celebratory time off and took themselves out to eat. Those meals generally consisted of huge steaks, baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, as well as dessert. I wouldn't call it binge eating really, just a big release after depriving themselves of that kind of comfort food for such a long time.

After the six day crossing of the Atlantic at the first sight of land we all acted like a bunch of bodybuilders after a show. Running off the ship as fast as we could to eat at restaurants and drink wine. In St. Maarten, we had a day off from work so we ended up going to the beach. This was, of course, accompanied by more eating and drinking. Today in St. Thomas, I went to the Shipwreck Tavern for a Shipwreck Supreme Burger. 

Spending six days in a row 'trapped' onboard a cruise ship seems like a really long time. It feels more like six weeks. I can understand our need to feel like having a 'cheat' day or two, but, this is getting pretty ridiculous. I'm looking forward to getting back on a little more planned diet and exercise plan.

Tonight I joined three other musicians from the orchestra (Beau - tenor sax, Chris Joodi - trumpet, and Sam - guitar) on Deck 13 for a the sail away from St. Thomas. They enjoyed cigars and we all had a drink while watching the sun set over the mountainous islands. It's very quiet up there. It's really hard to hear the engines. Very peaceful, really. Tonight it was surprisingly calm and there was very little wind. The conversation ranged from the best places to party and eat on the next run to the best locations for bargains on alcohol all the way to iPad video game ranks and high scores. This is all pretty much par for the course among my friends onboard. We're all basically living for today. It's part of the spoiled life of a cruise ship musician. Hey…every job has perks, right?

We were floating by the Marriott resort as the last rays of the sun were in the sky behind us. I could see the camera flashes from the balconies of the resort as people took pictures of the Adventure from their rooms. Kind of a neat role reversal. Here I am taking pictures of everything from aboard the ship and it never really occurred to me that people would want a picture of the ship I was standing on. Here are a few of the pictures that I took before I lost all daylight.