Waves And Wounds | Retrospect Ep.174

In this week’s episode we discussed our hectic week, we're back and catching up! One of us has just returned from an exciting cruise, while the other is recovering from an injury. This is laid-back episode where we try to get back on track after all of this.

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Transcript

cruise experience, food poisoning, balance issues, music cruise, Norwegian Getaway, Cozumel, Roatan, snorkeling, excursions, specialty dining, drink package, Million Dollar Quartet, travel companions, retirement, travel plans

Ian  
Ian, welcome to the retrospect podcast, a show where people come together from different walks of life and discuss a topic from their generations perspective. My name is Ian, and as always, I'm joined by Jason.

 Hello, everyone.

 And Stoney

Stoney   
hello

Ian  
man, it feels like they're too long.

Stoney   
 Yeah, we had to take a little break. Yeah, I fell and the JUGS hurt myself pretty bad, and then I was worried, because Saturday night, Miranda and I went out to eat with my father and his wife, yeah, and I caught food poisoning. You?

I can't catch a break. I can't catch a break by Saturday at 1130 it was an explosive event. It was insane. I lost eight pounds. Wow. Just for the listeners, we record on Mondays, right? I've lost eight pounds since Saturday night.

Ian  
She Yeah, not the kind of weight, weight loss program, not a gear, no,

Stoney   
because the other one was pretty bad, too, busting my head open. Oh, man, but yeah, it's good to be back, kind of in the swing of things. That's good.

Ian  
It's good to see you up and around. I was worried there for a minute because I was like, Man, I I thought we promised that you were gonna get wrapped up above the rap for the foreseeable future. So whenever I heard that, I was like, How dare you, yeah, but it's all good. I'm glad it's here. Well, I'm

Stoney   
still trying to plug along and find this new normal and this balance thing and everything we take for granted, oh, yeah, and you get something like this taken away, and you just people just don't realize what a struggle every day is now, cognitively number one, but the balance part is just, I can turn and completely lose my balance. Wow, I can be closing my eyes and towel drying my hair, and now I have to sit down on a little chair to be able to do that, because I can just do it the wrong way and come crashing down. Wow, it's this ridiculous. Well, I'm

Ian  
glad to sit like I said. I'm glad to see you're doing well, that you have people to help you out in those situations, not the food poisoning, one that's like a soul, Yeah, that

Jason  
sucks. That was by myself, and that's a nice restaurant you went to. Yes, it is. That's kind of not the place that you would Yes, think that that would happen, but you just even those places, yep, I

Stoney   
guess, yeah. You know, everybody's cutting corners to, you know, get the prices down. Maybe they cut a little corner there and cost me eight pounds. Yeah,

Jason  
oh, no. That's

Ian  
a hard way to look at it. Well, on the other than the spectrum, we got Mr. Jet setter over here. That's right, on the whole Old trip out there.

Jason  
That's, yeah, I this is, I went on a a music cruise. Well, it's a cruise, but that's

Stoney   
gonna say all cruises.

Jason  
My stepfather plays music Nice. He's been playing music pretty much most of his life. He plays the baritone sax. That's real nice. And he his band along with another one. This was a was about 300 in this group that went on this cruise. 300 band members, no. 300 members, people that you know, fam, you know, family, spouses and everybody associated with the band who wanted to attend. So it was a Norwegian Getaway, okay, cruise, big ship. I believe that ship. I believe there was almost 4000 people on that ship. Cool, total, total. Oh, wow, it's a big ship. So that's staff and staff and guests and so it was a massive ship. I had been on one cruise before. It was a Disney cruise out of Port Canaveral, I think back in 2009 so I've not been on a lot of cruises. So that was a nice cruise. We went to the Bahamas, if I call on that cruise. But this was a seven day cruise. We left out of New Orleans, and it was a we went to our first stop. Of course, you I never actually exited the mouth of the Mississippi River, right? So I was very interested to see the Mississippi going down that far, okay, which I'd never seen, yeah. Now, unfortunately, it was dark by the time it's late, right? Because the ship leaves at four o'clock. O'clock in the afternoon, right? And at this time that long to get down to the, oh, yeah, you're it's about a five hours of cruising just getting out of the Mississippi River from New Orleans, from New Orleans.

Stoney   
That's insane, because I've done it in boat, regular boat stuff, and it does not take that long,

Jason  
yeah? But it's,

Ian  
it's, you also couldn't fit 4000 people.

Stoney   
Say, fun fact, the icon of the seas, which is a Royal Caribbean, can hold 7600 passengers, yeah, with 2800 staterooms and 2300 crew members. So that's over 10,000 people, possibly on a ship. It

Jason  
was a big, this was a big ship, and it's, you know, four o'clock by the time you you wake up the next morning. I mean, you're going to bed, you know, 10 o'clock, 1030 you're probably getting close to the mouth of the river by that time. And of course, when you wake up the next morning, you're out in the middle of the Gulf. And so, you know, first days at sea, and then the second day is your first port of entry. And for us, it was Cozumel, me and my significant other, we got we off job ship and Yeah, and just kind of wandered around Cosmo a little bit. Not that impressed.

Ian  
Okay, it's

Jason  
a tourist thing, but, man, we stayed out there through four hours,

Stoney   
and she got to do it with her. Well, I mean, she

Jason  
wasn't that crazy for for Cozumel, that wasn't right thing.

Ian  
I think what you get, the hard part is, think what you get, like, outside of, like a certain band around, like those cruise ships, you get to some good stuff. But the problem is, like you have to get back on the ship, is the things like, there's a area of

Stoney   
you got from eight to five, right? And that's it? Yeah, that'd be back on that ship. You can't

Jason  
go too far. Yeah, it's, it's, it's funny, because we, we saw some people that were running get out on, running down the gangplank to get to Luckily, they didn't leave. Now, of course, at each stop you could purchase excursions from the ship, right? Or you can go independent. And just depends if you just want, you trust the locals to go bring you somewhere and bring you back right in time that's on you. Now, if you do it through the ship that you're guaranteed to be back in time, okay, but you spend, you spend more money, of course.

Stoney   
How much was like one of those excursions?

Jason  
I think some can run a couple 100 bucks. Yeah, you know, could be $100 a person. Yeah, sometimes it was $50 $60 just depends on what the excursion was, right, and what you wanted to do. So we didn't do a whole lot, as far as we did one official excursion, because after the way Norwegian sets up, after Cozumel, then it's down the harvest k which is Belize, okay, they own an island Norwegian the line does. And so they bring everybody to that island. So it's a beach day, all day. Oh, that's fun, which was nice. So they had some zip lining there and stuff like that. If you want to do all that, we just basically chilled out on the beach, went out in the water, and it was probably like 80 something degrees. Oh, yeah, of course. So it was nice. That's cool. And then after harvest, K was probably my favorite stop. Was Roatan in Honduras. Yeah, Rotan is an island right off of Honduras. Beautiful. That's cool. Lots of poverty. A lot of poverty. We don't know what poor is, right till you visit these countries and see exactly how these people live. I mean, outside of the little tourist spot where, you know, people hang out a nice area, and they were doing some work while we were there. Look like they're enhancing the beach areas and stuff like that. But we did a snorkeling kayak excursion, which was nice, because the guy was a gotcha guy from Chicago. Wow. He's been down in that in road town for 30 years. Wow. His he was kind of giving his story. His sister owned a dive shop there, and then he ended up going down there, and she ended up closing the dive shop, but he stayed, and so he's been there for 30 years, that's correct. He does these little tours. So he owns a restaurant there, and he picked us up, brought us to his place. Served us refreshments, quesadillas. Then we went out. Did our snorkeling, saw some absolutely beautiful fish, saw me, a big red snapper. That's pretty cool. And he right there by me, because I was in the middle of those, all those coral reefs and waters crystal clear. Wow. It's a different world down there, yeah. And so we did that for about an hour, then went back, and then we we chilled out and rested and had some more, you know, iced tea or lemonade, yeah. And then we got in the kayaks and we went to another little beach area, and it was all one excursion. This one excursion, oh my gosh, I went to a beach. And then the our guides basically gave us a some some information on some of the flora, like some trees, and shows them Healing Salves and stuff like that. Yeah, how the locals did things for, really, before doctors got there, and very interesting, saw a big, giant avocado tree. Oh, wow. And, but it was that was interesting. Got back in there, went back and and then, of course, they brought us back and

Stoney   
our son and onions going to Hunter. I told you, look for some cigars for me. That's what things say. Bring me back some cigars, plenty of them. Can you? Can you buy a couple of, you know, that's probably got to be fairly cheap there, yeah,

Jason  
and then. But good thing you have to, you know, has to get through customs. You got to claim that and all that. We bought some coffee. So I brought back a bag of Honduras. Has great coffee. I brought back a bag of dark roast and medium roast. Yeah. So, matter of fact, this morning, my girlfriend, she had some dark rose and said it was very good. That's cool. So how hard

Stoney   
is it? I mean, what are they gonna charge you a tax to bring it back in. I

Jason  
didn't. I didn't have to claim bad coffee at all. Nope, didn't have to claim. There was only certain things you had to, yeah, you had to claim,

Stoney   
and cigars,

Jason  
alcohol, probably, yeah, anything with alcohol. But we did that. That was the longest day there, but the ship didn't leave till like five. You had to be back ship of 530 that evening. Yeah. Now, what I wish I could have done and, and my girlfriend was kind of wanting to do it, but, you know me, I was a little I didn't know about time and all that, but there was some private, you know, independent tours, and you can go to and nicest people, you know, they're just trying to make a buck, yeah, and, but I want to go hold the monkeys and, yeah, stuff like that, which would have been nice. I saw a lot of pictures of people who did that, yeah, because there was an actual official excursions, right? But they had already filled up all the time we were trying to do it. So they recommend you actually book these excursions before the cruise, where you're not fighting that, because they fill up fast. So we did that, but we hung out. I've got some, some awesome pictures of ruatan, yeah, which was probably my favorite. I've never

Stoney   
I've never been on a cruise before, but, like, would, would you say that, like, for the amount of money you spent on it? Was it worth it? Like, in the grand scheme?

Jason  
Oh, yeah, I thought it was, you know, I the travel agent that prepped all this. I asked her, I said, Where does this cruise stand in the hierarchy of cruises? And she indicated, this is probably a mid level. Okay, so I asked her, so what would be a step above this ship? And she goes, probably a princess, or even some role Royal Caribbean Cruises might be a little bit fancier, of course, depending on how high how much money you want to, of course,

Ian  
I mean, you can always spend more money. You can

Jason  
get into celebrity. Celebrity. X, yeah. MSC, Virgin, wow. And, of course, always the top of the line is probably Viking, okay, you know, now you're getting into 6000 a person for, you know, 7000 a person, yeah, but I mean, you know, sometimes the ships are a little smaller, yeah, a little bit more intimate. Of course, they can get these smaller ships and get into places these big ships can Right, right? So that expands your possibilities of where your stops are. Okay, that's cool to hear. But, you know, highly recommend anybody that's going on a cruise soon to look at the excursions. Yeah, there's something you want. Book it now and pay for it

Stoney   
now. Did y'all do like the drink package and the meal packages? Because, I mean, like, what is it? There's the galley or whatever. Free. It comes with it, but if you want to do some of the other stuff, yeah,

Jason  
you got to pay for it, right? There's special alcohol packages. We had the unlimited drink, okay, but I say that with caveat. It's not unlimited, right? Okay, basically they capped $1 amount on wine to, like, $15 a glass. So anything that would cost over 50, you had to pay the difference. So which I didn't like, yeah. And to me, when you say Unlimited, it means unlimited. That means whatever. Now I understand how people would say, Well, you gotta draw a line somewhere, because otherwise people you drink and Dom Perry on, of course, yeah, it's, you would have to adjust the amount of money, sure, right? That package would be so I didn't like that, per se, but for the most part, it worked. I had two specialty dining options for this particular package they offered us for this cruise, which are there a number of specialty restaurants, uh, outside of the normal kind of eatery, places that are on the ship, yeah, and, and we ate at two restaurants, I think one was called ocean blue, and the other was Cagney's. In Cagney's, it was a steak house. And then ocean blue, obviously, is a seafood restaurant. Now, there were a couple others that I would have liked to have gone to. There was an Italian and a French but, and they had some Asian, you know, sushi and those kind of places that were also specialty, and you would have to pay.

Stoney   
So you had to pay. But did you have to book these ahead of time? Correct? You had

Jason  
to book those because you have to have reservations, otherwise you go up. Makes sense. Other than that, we, we ventured out and I paid for an additional specialty restaurant that was not on my package, so that I just had to eat that cost. There was some liquor that I had to eat. Yeah, eat those costs. But I mean overall,

Stoney   
and then what is it like? A daily tip that you gotta tips

Jason  
are already included in the deals. You don't tip anything. No, no. But what

Stoney   
I'm saying is, you have a daily tip that you have to fund before the trip. It doesn't come with the package. It's an additional thing, right?

Jason  
No, it was nothing different. I don't know. It was simply the only thing that you would have paid for on the ship, in addition to whatever your package, whatever that package may be, yeah, it would be additional specialty dining options, additional booze, right? That went over your allowed amount, like I had a San jovicie bread, okay, that they considered that exceeded the normal amount that they would allow. I had to eat that cost, yeah. But, you know, the entertainment was good. There was a show called The Million Dollar Quartet, which was a very interesting story, which I didn't realize, even though I have, I have visited this place before. Was the the one time that the four classic musicians got together was Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee, Lewis and Carl Parker. Carl Perkins, I believe who, if anybody, just music trivia, right, right. He's the one who actually wrote blue shoes. Yeah, his when he tried to do it, flopped. It was only when Elvis did it that, that it made what it you know, what it became. But this story, I never knew, the story of these four guys, and how Sam Perkins, who was a very, some say, the father of rock and roll, he was the one that really made this kind of music popular, and just how he did it. But it was interesting, the story of the him and those four musicians. So the actors that played those particular musicians, I thought they did a real good jobs. Real good show. That's cool. So if you get a chance to watch the Million Dollar Quartet, wow. Uh, to some of the dynamics of some of the fighting between all at the time, yeah, and how they basically all end up leaving. Uh, Sam Perkins, yeah. Now, of course, I didn't realize that Sam Perkins was also an early investor in Holiday Inn. Really, yes. When holiday he hadn't moved, so he took the money he made that when he sold, yeah, he sold Elvis. Cost. Contract RCA. He took that invested in this new hotel chain called Holiday, yeah, it was a, it was a good show. Matter of fact, at the end, they showed the photo of those four guys. Yeah, I have that photo that I took when I went to Memphis, yeah, back in last in 2023 right? I visited Sun Studios. Yeah, that's where all that took place. Wow. So the piano, where you see that photo of Elvis on the piano with the other three behind him, that's where they took that photo. That's crazy, but that was an interesting, great show. They had other shows. They had a music magician, which was really good. It was another show we went to see called something Broadway, which was nice. But, I mean, outside of, you know, our deal in Roatan, the next stop was Costa, Costa Maya, yeah, which is also in Mexico, which is nice. We actually rented bicycles and we went drove around the, you know, road around right now, me and the girlfriend, yeah. So we had a great time doing that. It was electric bike, so we were able to go through those, those were fun, go through all the markets and see the all that. And it was interesting. We sat on the beach for a while and but that was a short day. Yeah, that shit. We had to be back at 1230 Oh, yeah. So we had to jump back on ship pretty quick. And then, of course, the next day, I mean, you're, you're leaving, and lo and behold, while with the ship is, is pretty much, because I was kind of tracking where we were at right when we're getting ready to enter the streets out of the Yucatan into the Gulf. Right, I see an alert hit of a sea quake that hit in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. What? And they had issued tsunami warnings. Wow. So I be honest, which I'm very concerned if any of the areas we hit, yeah, experienced any problems with that, but they issued tsunami warnings, actually, for the northern Gulf of Mexico too, really. Oh,

Stoney   
excuse me, point point of order. Point of order, Gulf of America. Yeah,

Jason  
that's right, Gulf of America. Now,

Stoney   
is that official? You knew where I was? Yeah, that's official. Now get out. Yes, I thought that was a joke. It's gonna be I think even Google Maps has changed it a couple of yes, yeah, those

Jason  
executive order President Trump signed to change the name, yeah, it's gonna take a while to change the vernacular. Of course, the Gulf of Mexico, is what it's always been so, but the Gulf of America, but, yes, they discontinued the tsunami warnings for the Gulf, but not for the Caribbean. And so it was about initially, there was a point, oh, Quake, which is, that's a nice size quake out water. That'll move a lot of water. Yeah, so I'm hoping, because I knew what I saw in Roatan, yeah, it wouldn't take much for something to come ashore. Now, I didn't also realize a little bit of history of the country of Honduras, and what does Honduras mean? Yeah, Chris, that was named by Christopher Columbus, right. And the name comes from deep water, because right off where we where we were snorkeling, it drops like 2000

Ian  
feet. You can even, you can even see it on, uh, on Google Maps. I have it pulled up. It is, that's where the deeper than, I think, some of the Gulf of Mexico actually, or Gulf of America. Apologies,

Jason  
there, there was, it's a very it's, it's, once you get right past the land, it falls off pretty quickly. Matter of fact, the guy was telling me while we were in ruatan that his friend actually built him a submarine, and he actually goes down to like, 2000 feet and sees all the fish, because there's certain fish that at that level, yeah, that he goes down there and observes. So it's pretty interesting on that's crazy. But overall, you know, it was a great trip. I enjoyed it. I probably would think about if doing another cruise. I would probably be now the Eastern Caribbean, which means we would have to leave out of Florida, okay, because there's nothing around here. Yeah, that that goes that far. I think there's one crews I saw that maybe go to the keys. But beyond that, that's it. Most of that you have to leave out of Miami or Port Canaveral right to go to. So me and the girlfriend, we had talked about next cruise, and that looks like that may be where we'll probably go next. We'll do Royal Caribbean or something like that. But I'm glad you had great experience. It was fun. On. I enjoyed it. It was paradise.

Stoney   
And you found out whether you make good travel companions. Yes, that's one of the things. Early on, when Miranda and I first got together, we we went on a week long trip to Vegas. I don't know if y'all I do remember that wow. And we were able to find out very quickly if we were going to be good travel companions, and that's nice to know early in a relationship. I think that should be a requirement that if you're going to date somebody and think about marrying somebody, you got to go on at least a week or two vacation and plan it together, do everything together, travel it together, and then say, Hey, okay, is this worth it or not?

Jason  
Yep. Well, it's, it was fun. Yeah, it goes by quick.

Stoney   
Look like you had a good time. You got a good smile on your face. And,

Jason  
you know now, just now it's back to the real world, back to the real world, and waiting on the next trip, yeah, okay, which for me will be in, probably, may, might be, really, might be going to Florida, okay? And then in July, to Glacier, and then in probably October, Las Vegas. Wow, this year is going to be busy. If I'm not mistaken,

Ian  
it sounds like you're enjoying retirement a little bit.

Stoney   
Say the same thing. Welcome to the retirement.

Jason  
Yeah. It's nice. But, you know, with my girlfriend, she's still got to work, so of course, of course, and you know, probably maybe going back to work too this year. So it's, you know, my time off is probably coming to an end. My just, yeah,

Ian  
you know, easy living. Easy living, waking

Jason  
up what I want to wake up and do what I want to do, but you know the

Stoney   
God to enjoy while you can? Yeah, but

Jason  
that's nothing. Ability to travel takes money. Oh, takes money. 100%

Ian  
Well, with all that being said, if you want to try and reach out to us, you have an email address getoffendedtogether@gmail.com where you can send us your more long form answers. We also have comment sections on things like Spotify and YouTube, and a little hiccup with YouTube or but we're, I think we're back on track now. So for those of you who listen on YouTube, check back in See how it's all working, because should be back operational again. Sorry about that, and yeah, until next week. Thank you so much for listening. Bye, bye. Goodbye,

Jason  
everyone. God bless Hey.

Stoney   
Thanks for hanging out with us today. You're the best. Peace.