OUR FIRST CRUISE

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October 10^th, 2016.  We took our first cruise.  Four nights and five days to Mexico. We left out of Long Beach, CA on the Carnival Inspiration.  When we dropped off our luggage outside the cruise terminal and got through the check in line, we crossed that long covered bridge to get on the ship.  There it was, our big, beautiful lady of the sea, The Inspiration.  Going into this I knew it was an older ship that was revamped a few years ago, but it was 4 days of cruising for $299.00 each.  We could not complain.  For that price, we had an ocean view stateroom.  First our thoughts on the ocean view.  It was really not much more money than the interior rooms, about $50.00 a person.  So we decided to splurge for it.  I loved it and felt like we should always have a window in our room on every cruise we take after this one.  My husband and 10yr old son both thought it was annoying and unnecessary.  The sun shines bright in the morning and even though the curtains are thick and heavy, they let a crack of sunlight come in and they found it annoying.  And, since we spent so little time in the stateroom, I had to agree with them that it was not really necessary to have a window to feel like we weren’t claustrophobic.  The room was big enough as it was so if you are worried about it feeling closed in, don’t.  It was fine.  We are doing interior rooms from here on it.  I’m an early riser so I didn’t care about the sunlight.

Our stateroom attendant was amazing.  We had ordered a 12 pack of water to be waiting for us at the room before we left port.  It was there when we got to the room, as was our luggage.  I asked him to bring us an Ice bucket filled with ice so we could drink the water.  From that moment on, we had an ice filled ice bucket the entire trip.  He was on it and never let it get empty.  He came into the room throughout the day and he worked 24 hours a day.  If we needed something at 2am, he was there.  There was one point when we came back to the room at 5pm to get changed.  My son used the toilet and his business went into the toilet sideways.  I know, this is gross but when we tried to flush it, the toilet flushed fine but since the business was sideways it was kind of stuck in the same position and wouldn’t go down with the water.  I was all dressed for dinner so I told them to leave it and I would try and deal with it when we got back.  Well of course, one thing led to another and we didn’t get back till 10pm that evening after dinner.  The room had those towel animals in it and the pillows had been all fluffed and put back where they belong.  Fresh ice was there again. I forget all about the toilet issue until I went to use the restroom myself, I was standing there doing my business and realized that the toilet had be cleaned. OMG!! Our attendant took it upon himself to deal with that??  Do I even have enough cash on hand to leave him after the trip is over?  How embarrassing.  When we left the ship at the end of the cruise, I handed him $20.00 for taking good care of us and another $10.00 for “Above and Beyond toilet issues”.  He smiled and wished us well.

I got up every morning at 7am like I do at home.  I am on Weight Watchers and it’s a battle every week at my weigh-in to stay on target and lose a pound a week.  Well here I am on an “all you can eat” cruise and I was determined to not gain a pound.  So, every morning, at 7am I walked up to deck 14 and jogged around the track.  11 times around is 1 mile.  I did 33 laps every morning.  I also had a rule with my family that we were NOT to use any elevators.  It was stairs all the way every day.  They hated me!  I ate what I wanted to but tried not to stuff myself.  I didn’t really eat at the buffets but I took advantage of the Blue Iguana Mexican food because they had beans that are not made with lard (I’m a vegetarian) and I ate at the restaurant every night including desert.  They had some meat free choices every night for dinner.  So, if you are vegan or vegetarian, they are ready for you, don’t worry.   So how did I do on my Weight Watchers?   I didn’t gain any weight!  Yeah Baby!!

In Catalina Island, we got off the ship and just went shopping.  We didn’t even buy much, just some souvenirs for our son but it was fun to walk around the town.  You don’t need to buy an excursion if you don’t want to spend the money.  We wanted to do this trip economically.  When we got to Ensenada, we walked around town. We found a great Mexican restaurant and had an awesome lunch.  This place even had potato tacos for vegetarians.  In Mexico????  You betcha!   We had a great meal and then headed back to the ship. 

My son went to the kids club as soon as we got on the ship to check it out.  I had already pre-registered him online.  They welcomed him and asked me if he was allowed to come and go on his own or if I wanted to be there to check him in and out.  My 10yr old son told the guy he could come and go as he wanted to.   I was not comfortable with letting him come and go by himself but some of the adventures at the kids club involved roaming the ship with groups of kids that did scavenger hunts.  Eventually, I gave in and let him do it.  By this point, we had been on the ship a few hours and he already knew the layout better than I did.  It turned out to be good for him and he loved it.  I was still uneasy about it the whole time but it’s probably because I'm a helicopter parent.  He was never in any danger.  He spent almost all his time with those kids.  Eating, playing, dance party every night.  He loved it.

What was included in our trip?  Well our stateroom of course, all the room service we ordered was free.  The buffet is free.  I didn’t eat from it but my family did.  They loved it.  It was too “Golden Corral” for me and I ordered fruits from room service every day so I was never hungry for the buffet.  24-hour pizza is available to you at the buffet area and all the juice, coffee and tea you can drink.  I just drank water the whole time.  I watched a live show about games shows where they pick people out of the audience to play games on the stage.  That was fun.  There were many other shows included but I just never made it to them.  Between the pool, the meals, the ports of call, the jogging, the miniature golf and all the exploring, I was wiped out by 10pm daily.

The highlight of my trip actually started out as a nightmare.  When we first got on the ship, we went to the dining room and looked at what table we had.  We wanted a table for 4.  We didn’t want to be at a large table with other people.  We found our folio number on a smaller table for 4 on the side of the dining room.  That was perfect.  Now I don’t have to go ask the maître D to relocate us.  That night, we came to dinner and that table was taken.  I noticed that our reservation card with our folio number was on a large table for 8.  I was not happy.  I went to complain but they insisted that we were supposed to be at that table for 8.  Reluctantly, we sat there and were upset.  Two ladies showed up and sat down. They said that they are supposed to be sitting with those people as she pointed to the people at our original table.  She said that they were all supposed to be sitting at the 6 available seats at our current table.  After a few minutes, those 4 people moved over to the table we were sitting at.  As soon as that happened, I asked the Maître D to move us back to the original table but he would not do it.  He insisted that it was reserved for a party of four.   I told him that nobody is sitting there and nobody is going to sit there.  He wasn’t getting it.  After a while I just gave up and said this cruise was getting off to a bad start.  As we started to eat, we realized that we had a lot in common with the other 6 people at our table.  First, they were all real estate agent, which is what I do for a living.  Second, they were all over 30, same as me (ok I'm over 40 but who’s counting).  They were also fun to chat with.  They held great conversation and not once did anyone talk about politics.   At the end of the meal, the maître D came over and gave us a table number for the rest of the trip.  That new table was a table for 4.  The next night, we went to our new table for 4.  We wanted a table for 4 because our son was supposed to eat with us, but he ate at Camp Ocean the whole trip so he didn’t eat with us at all.  Well the new table was nice.  Nice and quiet.  Too quiet.  The people behind us had 8 at their table.  They were all about 22-28, talking about college and starting their careers.  Talking about infants.  I felt like we were in the wrong place.  Our dinner was nice but I really started to miss the people from our table from last night.  This was crazy.  I wanted to eat by ourselves and here we are doing just that and now I miss those people from last night.  On the third night. We ran into the people from the dinner the first night outside the restaurant.  They were like “What happened to you guys, we missed you last night”.  We told them the whole story and they said that the two spots at their table were still open so we should come back that night for dinner.  We did, and we had the BEST time eating dinner with them for the rest of the trip.  We saw those people in the ports of call, at the pool and at brunch.  They were always polite and asked how our son was doing.  They turned out to be great dinner companions.  Of course now we had our original table and the table the Maître D gave us both with nobody sitting at them the whole trip.  Ironic.

So, the most important lesson I took away from this trip was this.  All the stuff they provide for you is great, but the people that you meet will really teach you more about yourself than you can possibly imagine.  Be open for new things and new experience and be ready to make new friends.  It really made the whole trip for us. - JT

The Road To Compassion.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.   

Without them, humanity cannot survive    -   Dalai Lama

For those of us that decide we have had enough, the path is different.  It’s different for each of us.  One day you are leading a life enjoyed by the majority of people, eating steak, chicken fingers, lots of dipping sauce, fast food almost daily for lunch and telling yourself a salad at dinner with your pasta is putting the cap on a somewhat healthy day of food.   Meanwhile, America gets fatter, unhealthier, and people come into an operating room weighing 300 pounds, on 10 different medications for high blood pressure, cholesterol and type 2 diabetes, yet their relative’s cant understand why they are dropping dead.  They demand autopsies, they demand explanations and they even start praying for help.  All a waste of time.

My own journey began about 10 years ago.  I was like most people.  My favorite food was anything with chicken.  I hated veggies, and I do mean hated them!!!!  Greens?  No thanks.  But, I was an animal lover.  Ok, I thought I was an animal lover.  I had a dog that I loved.  One day, I was at a party at a major hospital here in Phoenix.  It was a Winter Holiday party.  My husband was chatting with his work counter parts and I wound up talking with the wives.  We all seem to hit it off and even though I didn’t know any of them personally, they talked with me like they knew me their whole life.  That’s definitely a perk of being a gay man around a bunch of ladies.  They share!

A few days later my husband comes home and hands me a pamphlet that one of the women had given her husband at the hospital to give to me.  It was about how animals are treated before they are slaughtered.  I didn’t put much though into it.  I am not really interested in all that crazy stuff that people try and convince you of.  Well I had to use the toilet so I grabbed that pamphlet so I would have something to read.  Yes my epiphany in life was experienced right there on the throne.  I started reading.  Very quickly, I realized how completely clueless I was to what was going on in the world of livestock and animal cruelty. 

This particular pamphlet talked about how pigs are kept their whole lives in cages so small, they can’t move at all.  Their hoofs get diseased and 75 percent of pigs go mentally insane before they are ever slaughtered.  How the hell is this possible?  In my mind pigs had a lovely life, with kids visiting them and mud to play in and then one day they get really old and they get put to sleep humanly until its time to cut up the body and make food of it.  That’s how it was supposed to work in my mind.  There was a lot more to the article about cows being shot in the head with screw guns and it went on and on.  I was crying.  I was shaking.  I was part of something that was absolutely horrible and it was wrong.  I knew it and I knew that I could not continue on the same path.  I was still sitting on the toilet when I came to the realization that I was now a vegetarian.  Why the heck did that lady send that pamphlet to me? What could I have possibly said to her to lead her to think I wanted to be a vegetarian?  UGH! Somehow, she knew it when she met me.

My first questions was, how was I going to stay a vegetarian for more than 20 minutes?  I had no idea.   For the rest of that day I did not eat anything.  I was still so hurt.  I went to the store, looked at the fresh vegetables and was lost.  I don’t even like veggies.  This isn’t going to work.  Although I never went back to eating meat, I spent the next weeks, month and most of the year eating just side dishes.  When we went to a restaurant, which was almost daily, I just got the side dishes, minus bacon or any obvious meat items.  I was still so clueless but I was making changes.  I thought it was going well until on the 4^th of July, during a pool party at my house, I served Jell-O to our friends, one of who is a vegetarian.  I had spent hours on this Jell-O.  It was three different layers in the colors of red, white and blue for the holiday.  The red Jell-O was the first layer.  The white whipped cream was the second layer and the blueberries on top were the third layer.  I started handing it out.  Everyone was amazed and commented on how good it was.  I got to my vegetarian friend and he said “Ill Pass”.  I asked him why he was passing and he said its because he’s a vegetarian.  I was stunned.  I said “Its Jell-O, There is no meat in this”.  He then very nicely told me about gelatin.  How it’s made, and well if you are a plant based eater, you know the rest.  It’s made form the bones of animals.  In fact, anything with gelatin in it is made that way.  I got on the Internet and of course, he was right.  I told him I was sorry and I put the last two of them back in the fridge.  He felt bad because I decided not to eat mine either, but I couldn’t do it after all that I had accomplished.   So, being a vegetarian meant not only passing on the meat, but also now giving up Jell-O, marshmallows, s’mores, some candies, and lots more.  Holy smoke, I had no idea.  Why the hell are there animal parts in Jell-O!! I thought it was just sugar and water.

As the years went on, I learned to make sure that the refried beans I ordered at restaurants didn’t have lard in them, I learned to ask if the vegetable soup is made with chicken broth or vegetable broth and I learned to ask if the baked potatoes are rubbed with animal fat to make the tastier.  The list goes on and on but learning to eat a meat free life goes so much further than not chewing on flesh.  I had to almost completely give up fast food.  Taco bell has some non-meat items but the big names in fast food are not vegetarian friendly.

As time went on, something amazing happened.  I started to reach for more vegetable at meals.  I was still eating side dishes only when I was at a restaurant with my family and they had only meat main courses.  But, I started to acquire a taste for avocados, spinach, salads, sweet potatoes, kale and all sorts of stuff that I never liked before.  I thought I would be happy knowing that after about 7 years now, my palate had adjusted and the food choices in front of me was much broader.  Then, I started watching movies on Netflix.   There are lots of them on there but they really broke my vegetarian heart.  Here I was thinking I was saving animals by being a vegetarian. Sure, I was making a difference in the world by not choosing meat, but I had no idea cows are kept pregnant their whole lives so they can produce milk.  I had no idea that chickens are basically kept on top of each other and not roaming free in the grass like I pictured in my mind.  I also had no idea how disgusting the process of pasteurizing milk is.   I still ate a lot of cheese and milk.  It was the base of my meals.  Now, I find out that I am part of the problem for what those animals go through even though I am not eating their hide.   And the photos of the pus from the processing of milk were just too much for me to go back to.

So, I started the conversion to vegan plant based eating.  How the heck do I give up cheese and dairy?  I started with Soymilk.  I had to stop drinking dairy milk immediately.  I discovered that you really don’t taste the milk in cereal or most of the foods you put it on.  When I went to soymilk, there was little change from diary milk as far as taste.  Since then, I stopped eating anything soy and its now almond milk.  It only took me a few days to get off dairy milk and its now been a few years since I had any of it.  Getting off the cheese is a much different story.   I know there are cheese substitutes so I started trying them.  I was not happy with them.  I just eventually came to the conclusion that Pizza is never going to be the same again.  And it’s never been.  But, it has been better at times.  I learned to eat pizza with BBQ sauce on it (home made) and with just a slight layer of substitute cheese that tastes half way decent (Follow Your Heart) and its fantastic.  I add pineapples too. So, I had to change the way I eat pizza, but didn’t have to give up pizza.  I was ok with that.

10 years have gone by.  Now, not only do I not eat anything to do with animals, but I also make almost all my own food.  There is nothing in my house that is processed. I prepare food on the weekends for the coming week.  That includes all my vegetable soups, my cashew based dips, my vegan burger patties made with almonds and quinoa, and usually some vegan pancakes for during the week.  My kid loves the vegan chocolate chip cookies because he can eat the dough raw and my family loves my tossed salads with romaine lettuce, avocado, dried corn, seeds, walnuts and home made dressings.  Becoming a plant-based eater was originally about the animals for me.  In the end, it became about health.  Not only did I not want processed animals on my plate, I no longer wanted processed anything on my plate.  My fridge is filled with organic fruits and veggies, washed and in clear glass containers ready to eat.  I never feel like I have nothing to eat. 

The clincher to all this, and the reason I write this story is that 10 years ago, there were no vegan or vegetarian restaurants in Phoenix, AZ.  Today, you can eat vegan anywhere from the local trendy vegan restaurants to basically any Mexican restaurant by asking them to give you their beans (black beans or whole pinto if no lard is in them) potato and avocado in a tortilla or corn shell depending on how they’re made.  There are multiple pizzerias in the area that have a whole section of their food made vegan.  The choices are plentiful.   Of course you will be eating processed food at restaurants to some degree but you can still rest assured that you are making a difference in the animal world.  If every one of us stopped ordering meat, it would no longer be stocked by the stores and restaurants.

Ignorance is bliss.  I get that, and I know we can all agree on that.  It’s the decisions you make after that bliss is over that really define who you are and where you are going.  I knew sitting on that toilet 10 years ago that I had to make a change.  I didn’t know what that change was going to be or how to get there.  I had to keep learning every day and keep asking others who were on the journey too.   But, at 51 years old, I am in great health, am not on any medications and every time there is a new meat based virus scare in the news, I just smile and think, not be baby. Not today.  You can make the journey too and today, its easier than it ever has been.  Just ask.

07/02/2016 - Regular Joe