Star Trek The Cruise IV (my favorite week of the year)

Wow, this is plenty surreal, writing about this amazing experience that was ridiculously close to not even happening, except we didn't know that at the time.  We love the Star Trek cruise so much and it is one of the highlights of every year.  Approaching this one (the first week of March, so long ago it seems) I was most concerned about not getting sick so they would let us on the ship.

They screened everyone and didn't allow anyone on board if they had been to China or northern Italy in the prior 2 weeks.  We (John and I, Kip, and our friends Siobhan and Rodney) all made it on board, along with all the Star Trek actors, scientists and artists.  The week at sea was spent in blissful ignorance of what was to come after we disembarked, our one big dream vacation, with extra hand sanitizer and plenty of "washy washy!".  Happily, as far as I'm aware, no one on the ship had the virus and once we were all together we were probably safer in this isolated floating community than anywhere else.

It pleases me to go back through the photos and think fondly of this time.  I'll try not to go on endlessly about it but I do tend to gush about Kate Mulgrew and so many other amazing people.  This truly is a special experience that we were lucky (SO LUCKY) to get to have this year.

Our photo with the cast of Voyager, what a wonderful and lovely group of people!  No doubt my favorite Star Trek series, at least so far (I haven't caught up on all things Star Trek since finding out about this cruise from George Takei several years ago).  I did watch all 7 seasons of Voyager this past year and enjoyed it immensely.  Thank you all!

Backing up just a bit to the beginning of this year's journey when we met up with Kip at the Fort Lauderdale airport, hi Kip!

We're getting on the ship at last, mission accomplished and everything else is frosting on the Star Trek cake - and hi Rodney and Siobhan!

Posing as a Voyager action figure:

I think this is a standard Royal Caribbean sign (maybe?), but I'm not sure I've ever noticed the last item on the list before:

Practicing a bit of hygiene, not quite up to the current social distancing standard but at least no one was shaking hands on the ship:

At the launch party, I was so excited to see Kate Mulgrew standing right in front of us!  In fact, a friend of ours in California somehow found this photo on Twitter and sent it to John.  Yes, I was about overcome with joy to be there:

Mr. Anson Mount, aka Captain Pike on the current Discovery show, and a most excellent captain:

Sweet, sweet Wilson Cruz, so happy he could make it on board this year:

Jonathan Del Arco (Hugh on earlier shows and now on Star Trek: Picard), totally fun dude:

Speaking of totally fun - Garrett Wang rocks!  So excited that he's coming back next year, he's super funny and friendly:

There were many more awesome folks on stage that afternoon but I should probably move on...

Our room was near the library so we walked through a few times a day.  One set of shelves had been filled with Star Trek books and I was brought back many years to some of these titles.  Way back when, I read a bunch of these in high school.  I was an Original Series fan, for sure.

Kate Mulgrew spent an evening on stage, telling stories and more importantly answering questions.  One of her great strengths is talking with individual audience members, having a brief but real conversation, and connecting with all of us.  I so appreciate her doing this and loved every minute of it.  Thank you Kate!

(Photo courtesy of Entertainment Cruise Productions)

Anson Mount hosts a podcast called The Well and I've enjoyed listening to it while running.  For the first time he did a couple live recordings, and he couldn't have picked a better guest than Brent Spiner.  Brent can tell a story, and Anson can ask the best questions and really listen to the answers.  Watching this was captivating.

The Voyager cast did a panel and showed how much they genuinely love each other.  Such fun to listen to their stories!

In line for our Voyager cast photo (the one at the top of this post), having a good time even when we're waiting for something:

I was so excited for our other celebrity picture, one with just Kate Mulgrew, that we even dressed up for it.  Kate sat for long hours to pose with everyone, thank you so much!

From there I scurried down to catch most of Nana's cooking show, one of my favorite things every year (especially with host JT playing assistant and the ship chefs helping as well).  Yes, the answer usually is "make it your own" and "more alcohol".

The Rat Pack was back!  I will listen to them anytime, anywhere, and as many times as they want to sing and play.  So creative and fun.

(Photo courtesy of Entertainment Cruise Productions)

The theme of the second evening was Captain Proton (a particularly fun few episodes of Voyager) so we got to see some very creative costumes:

On day 3 we stopped at Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, and we had booked a shore excursion that involved "shopping with Nana" - should be fun!  Not as much fun were the rides on the tenders (or maybe more fun, if you're John), since there was a lot of wind and waves and the little boat splashed around quite a bit.  These are solid lifeboats, good to know if we ever needed to ride on one in a real situation.

First stop was a chocolate store, most excellent (and yummy):

We also got to see a cigar making shop, not something we pop into just every day:

After some rum tasting (and purchasing) and a visit to the local mall, we ventured back onto a tender and were soon back on board the larger and much more stable ship.  We did get to chat a bit with Nana, who was super gracious even though it appeared as though she was a bit less than thrilled about the tender rides herself.

Game Show Night!  Always one of the highlights.  So many of these people are great at improv and comedy and you never know what will happen.  Especially with Marina Sirtis around.

(Photo courtesy of Entertainment Cruise Productions)

I caught the end of the Enterprise Blues Band set to close out the evening, more wonderful music and entertainment:

On day 4 we docked at San Juan, Puerto Rico, one of my favorite places in the Caribbean.  Kip and I went on a "mofongo and mojitos" tour with Robert Picardo and Ethan Peck and had an excellent time.  We got really lucky because the tour guides (without realizing this would be a problem) divided the group in parts and we ended up with Robert and Ethan for the day.  I think ECP tried to make things right for the folks who didn't get to experience the "celebrity" part of the celebrity shore excursion and hopefully that won't happen again.

Meanwhile, we got a long walking tour of downtown and even a fun shot of the two stars posing with a "local":

Ethan in particular was so friendly, even coming over to talk with me and Kip personally and to thank us for wearing "DISCO" shirts (the show he was on).  Very impressed with him and his willingness to fully embrace every aspect of this cruise experience.

A bit of local fauna putting on a show along the city wall:

Learning some of the city history and remembering our time here prepping for and running the Great Urban Race championship:

Here's an interesting tree - it apparently blew over during the recent hurricane, but it was such an icon that the people worked to replant it, stabilize it while it rerooted, and now it looks great again:

The food part of our tour, with plantains to mash and sauce and chicken to add (and a mojito to drink):

We didn't realize we'd need to work for our lunch, fun!

That was quite an afternoon, super cool:

But wait, it's not over yet!  We found an escape room in San Juan, invited fellow Star Trek fans to join us, and managed to fly through some interesting puzzles to escape from the prison cell, awesome!

Thank you San Juan, that was great!

In the evening, John de Lancie staged The Dover Trial, a recent take on evolution similar to the Scopes Monkey Trial readings he has done before, but with the twist that this took place within our lifetimes.  It is strange to realize that there are parts of the population that aren't on board with the scientific method and the resulting discoveries.

Kate Mulgrew was the narrator (yay!), joined by many talented actors and ship's guests to tell this interesting story:

(Photo courtesy of Entertainment Cruise Productions)

And finally, the theme of the night was "Heroes and Villains", so what could be more perfect than JT dressed as Dorothy, accompanied by Star Trek versions of The Wizard of Oz characters?

Kip made an excellent choice - Westley from The Princess Bride.  Villain?  Or hero?  As you wish!

Sparring with another hero and/or villain:

This mask freaked me out every time I turned around and caught sight of mini Janeway:

Dr. Horrible!  Another excellent hero and/or villain and a superb costume:

OK Westley, now you're taking it too far...

That's enough fun for half a cruise!  Stay tuned for the remaining days of our Super Lucky Journey.

Kennedy Space Center!

(Note - we were in Florida back in February; this is one of several catch-up posts from that time period)

Kennedy Space Center!  I've been wanting to come to Cape Canaveral for some time, and while we didn't manage to get lucky enough to time our visit with an actual rocket launch, maybe that just means we'll have to come back someday.

Especially since we didn't have time to see any of the nature-related things in the area either (like manatees!).  As soon as I started browsing the KSC website I knew we'd need to spend every possible minute making maximum use of our entry fee (and also that we wouldn't have time to see everything there even).

So while I was highly focused that week on not getting sick (so we could get on the cruise, which was screening passengers for any COVID symptoms), we went and braved the crowds at the space center.  And washed our hands a lot.

Live love and prosper, Astronaut Friend:

John can move the world, or the whole sky even - his training lately has been paying off:

Space Shuttle rocket model - life size, I believe:

We started right away toward the Space Shuttle Atlantis, our last remaining shuttle to visit (after Enterprise, Discovery, and Endeavour).  First, a gathering in a theater...

The dramatic unveiling of Atlantis reminded us that we weren't far from Orlando/Disney, quite an impressive introduction to this space shuttle "in flight".  Hello Atlantis, it's great to finally meet you!

An item of note is that the folks in Los Angeles are hoping to eventually display Endeavour in the upright launch position, which would be super cool to see someday.

The Canada Arm, used for many missions in space:

A wonderful look into the cargo bay:

A quote from Neil DeGrasse Tyson describing how the Hubble Space Telescope was repaired, along with one of many amazing images from it:

An early shuttle computer...

Which was named SPOC!  Coincidence?  I think not.  They should have added "Kiosk" to the end of the acronym though.

Hey, another Star Trek reference - astronaut Rick Searfoss was onboard our first Star Trek cruise and gave some excellent presentations about his time in actual space (one of the few - maybe the only one - on board the ship who had been there for real).  RIP Mr. Searfoss.

An unexpected Stephen Colbert sighting - he just pops up when you least expect it sometimes:

Here we have the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill!  Too funny.

More Star Trek - as part of the memorial to Michael Anderson and the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia:

A photo of John Glenn going back to space on shuttle Discovery, super cool:

The NASA Airstream bus that transported astronauts:

On the bus tour out past the control center:

Tesla cars parked at a SpaceX building, woot!

One of the SpaceX launch pads, so amazing to be this close to something we've been watching on webcasts for several years now:

Imagine being here and watching that!

A really nice tribute to Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin:

Wait, where's the camera?  I managed to capture one more Star Trek-related image before the screen changed...  can you tell what was on my mind at the time?

Up-Goer Five, in real life!  Ridiculously large and impossible to capture in a photograph.  And so awesome to see.

Another attempt, along with an oversized notepad and "space pen":

One of the places you might could watch a launch, if you happened to be here at the right time:

Continuing the walk through the long building, finally to the front section and the "people box":

It's almost like we're on the moon too, playing golf, driving around:

But first, imagine having to travel there and back in this!

An actual NASA capsule, rescued from the ocean:

A moon rock, and like most everything else here, it's the real thing:

So this is really neat, and I just happened to hear a tour guide explain that the artist, Alan Bean, was also an astronaut who walked on the moon in 1969!

Models of Mars rovers, so adorable.

SpaceX makes another appearance, in the hall of future missions:

And finally, as the sun is setting on this planet and they are asking people to leave so they can go home too, the rocket garden which we'll need to explore - another time!

In closing, a 1914 quote from another brave explorer: