Two nights have passed since Bill fell out of his
zero gravity chair by going head over heels backwards. He survived that little
mishap pretty well and slept okay that night. He woke up a couple of times but
was afraid to move without my help. I was in a coma after I took some Ambien so
he had to wait until morning before he could move again. He was pretty unhappy
with the chair after that so we asked the kind folks at the Yakima Holiday Inn
Express to throw it away for us.
Room 3431 on the Amsterdam is the smallest
accessible room we have ever had on a ship. (The bathroom is the largest and
best-equipped, though.) The whole ship is small compared to some of the others.
There were a couple of chairs in here but I asked the room steward to take them
out and that helped a little. The zero gravity chair is too big to set up in here
so it is mostly in our way. If they didn’t have cameras all around the ship, I
would be tempted to pitch it over the rail in the middle of the night. But, I
am afraid they would spend all night looking for a body if someone heard the
chair hit the water.
We didn’t bother to turn on the heater last night.
It was really hot for the last few days while we were driving through Idaho and
Washington. Bill said he was going to sleep in his clothes and he mentioned
that I might not be warm enough in my light summer pajamas. He was right. I was
cold.
I thought about sleeping with my legs on a
suitcase to ease my back. But we have two sleeping bags that are still bound up
tightly in the original bags. I used one of them beneath my knees last night and
it worked pretty well. I am using it right now while I type in bed. I used to
shift positions a lot while I was sleeping but I am tethered to the CPAP and
can’t move much anyway.
Our room is at the tail end of the ship and that
could be another reason why it got cold in here. We have a big window and no
rooms on either side of us. We have a really good view of where the ship has
been. We are on a scenic tour of the Vancouver Island today except we can’t see
anything due to rain and fog.
I spoke to a woman in the elevator after lunch and
asked her if she was having fun yet. She said yes but she had eaten to the
point of being uncomfortable. She said she has been eating since she first
boarded and can’t seem to stop. That always happens to me, too. But, after I
try everything that looks good, I always go back to eating the same way that I
eat at home.
We are stopping at Ketchikan tomorrow. We were
signed up for the Lumberjack Show which is really good but it’s going to rain
all day. Rain is hard on our electronics so I turned the tickets back in. It
looks like we will have rain every day in Alaska so we may stay on the ship.
We had a heart to heart talk with the Shore
Excursions person last night. She remembers us from our trip on the Maasdam. (It
must be disheartening to see people deteriorate between cruises.) She says we
are expecting too much from accessible excursions in Alaska. She said they are
accessible for people who are “lightly handicapped”, not for people who are
really handicapped. You need to be able to climb onto the bus. It’s not a
situation where the equipment can lift you and your chair.
Most of the stops on this cruise are places where
we can ride off the ship on our scooters and right into the town. We may still do that if we can
catch a break in the rain.
There is a big atrium on the ship with clock themed art in the middle.
