Kit Cassingham It all comes down to one thing: Doing your homework.
September 30 marks one year since we sailed away from Belfast, finally starting our Residential Cruising journey that we set into motion in May of 2023.
The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an island nation I’ve long known of since learning about the West Indies. I learned a bit more because our ship’s Chief Purser, Alex, grew up there, and still lives there.
Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, went on quite an adventure to learn that truism. The Hero’s Journey, described by Joseph Campbell, talks about Adventure, the hardships, and the coming home in the end.
90 days of sailing. What an interesting way to measure time and life. But then, measuring time is confounding. Measuring life is something I can get into, though.
Randy Cassingham worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 10 years, and watched the Cassini spacecraft being built. Here he talks about the brain behind the mission design, right up to the time he went back to California to be there when Cassini was intentionally destroyed.
During a recent outing, several of us got to talking about the activities we liked to do and looked forward to. Every so often someone would ask if Randy would do a particular activity. Generally the answer was “no,” but not always. One person asked, with a bit of incredulity, why he is even on this cruise.
Going to the highest point in town is something I love to do in my travels. I’ve taken cars, cable cars, trams, and elevators to the top — and of course I’ve walked. As we sailed into the Gibraltar harbor on October 20, that memory came to mind, acting as an inspiration to scale that high point, that point known as The Rock of Gibraltar.
In 2015, Randy and I discussed that someday, we wanted to retire to a cruise ship — Residential Cruising wasn’t yet a thing.
It didn’t occur to us when we signed up for living on a Residential Cruising ship that we were being pioneers. Maybe we are pioneers in general already, and I just hadn’t considered it.
We’re still in pause mode: our Residential Cruising ship, which was supposed to sail May 15, still hasn’t sailed. At minimum it will be more than a month of delay — we’re not sure yet. And we’re not upset by that.
As I set out to my new cruising life I thought that I might miss out on voting. That’s especially a big deal for me with national elections like the one coming up. Happily I found the bottom line is, voting from abroad is probably easier than you think.
It wasn’t simply about “moving away” when you go from a large house to a small cabin.
Some ten years ago I heard of a practice called 5 in 5: get rid of five things every day for five days. Being an overachiever I played the game 10 in 10. LOL! I played that game several times a year, only decluttering my own belongings.
She grasped immediately all the benefits we’d receive with that lifestyle change — yet she “could never” join us.