[Rick Diesel]

Day One – Saturday, May 23rd

The f**king alarm clock is blaring in my ear, and unfortunately I open my eyes to see that it is only 6:00 am. Despite only about 3 hours of sleep, Mrs Diesel and I eagerly jump out of bed, and begin preparation for our flight that is leaving Pittsburgh at 8:20 am. We are in the car within 20 minutes, and drive over to my parent’s house. My parent’s actually live on the way to the airport, so my dad is going to drop us off at the airport and pick us up when we get back, saving me approximately $50 in parking. Thanks dad. Big E and his wife were going to ride out to the airport with us, but then backed out when they found out that we only planned on getting to the airport about an hour before the flight departs. I guess they were too scared that the 23 or so other people that were stupid enough to book flights this early were going to cause a big delay at the airport.

Anyway, we get to the airport around 7:00 am, check our bags, and head to our gate. Security goes smoothly, because I am wearing tennis shoes. I travel a lot for work, and have noticed that I have never been stopped for additional security checks when wearing tennis shoes (about 10 experiences), but have been stopped EVERY time when wearing dress shoes (about 5 experiences).

As we get to the gate, we find out that our flight has been delayed until 9:15 am, because the flight crew got in late the previous night and has to meet their mandatory amount of sleep time before they can fly again. As noted in my Vegas trip report, it has now been confirmed that all pilots are p*ssies. All of the ladies decide to go shopping in some of the airport shops, so being the polite gentlemen that we all are, we decide to accompany them from shop to shop, urging them to spend more of our hard-earned money on worthless crap. Yeah right! Obviously we really went to the bar. “BLOODY MARY’S ALL AROUND!” screamed Sting. If getting to the airport signals the official start of your vacation, well then it was about 20 minutes into the vacation and I already had a drink in my hand.

So the guys sit in the bar for about an hour and a half, talking about the fun we are going to have on the booze cruise in Cozumel, talking about how much we are going to take from the casino on board playing –EV table games, talking about how clear the water will be, and how soft the sand will be, talking about how much we are going to drink every night, talking about how much we are going to eat at dinner, talking about how this may be the best trip ever.

Soon it comes time to head back to the gate, and before we know it we are on the plane heading to Orlando. I don’t remember much of the flight, except that I got 2 gin and tonics and fell asleep for about 20 minutes. I had recently purchased an Ipod for the Mrs., and one for myself, and they definitely come in handy during the plane ride. We touch down in Orlando at 11:00am. Important note: We flew on AirTran and the ripped 3 of our bags. Let me repeat, WE FLEW ON AIR TRAN AND THEY RIPPED THREE OF OUR BAGS. I advise you to avoid AirTran if possible. It also really pissed me off because I always tip the bag guys at the express check-in well.

We quickly find our driver, as since we had a group of 11, our travel agent booked us our own transportation to and from the port, for about $200 total, much cheaper than the Carnival offered transportation of $50 per person. This also enabled us to make stops along the way, and leave as soon as we were ready, rather than having to wait for other passengers. As we boarded our van, we immediately informed the driver that he was going to have to make a quick pit stop at a beer store, as we could not possibly make the hour long drive to the port without some frosty cold beverages. We found one quickly, and bought a case of beer for the ride. Since none of the girls wanted to drink, it worked out quite well because each of the guys got 4 beers, almost perfect for the ride. Well, it would have been perfect until KK says that he doesn’t want any beers because he doesn’t feel well. What the f*ck? Well, I am certainly not letting any of the beer go to waste, so I down six in the 65 minutes it takes to get to the port.

After our detour at the beer store, we got to the port around 12:30. The ship was to set sail at 4:00 pm, and supposedly boarding was to start at 1:30, however people were already boarding when we arrived. It took us about an hour to move through all of the security and get onto the ship. We went to find our rooms, but as we were on our way we noticed that they had messed up our dinner times, as many of us had different times than were requested, let alone none of us were at the same table. So we decided to split up, and the women would go and correct the dinner times, and the men would go and explore the ship.

I am not sure if heading directly to the deck and going straight to the bar is considered “exploring”, but when in unfamiliar territory you tend to do what you do best. And what I do best is get really drunk. We make a quick swing by the deli and I grab a turkey sandwich. It was very good, and I make a mental note to revisit the deli for lunch in the future. We then grab a table on deck and proceed to order multiple buckets of Miller Lite. Then it starts to rain, so we take our beers and move to a table under some cover, and proceed to consume multiple beverages in a short time period. Soon the ladies join us, and Mrs. Diesel, Mrs. Big E, and Whiplash are drinking some sort of drink that appears to be 98% rum and 2% something fruity. I immediately change my drink of choice to that, as it certainly appears to be more alcohol for the money.

Everyone that we are with appears to be pretty pissed off that it is raining as we leave port, but it certainly does not bother me. They, being the experienced cruisers that they are, explain that normally when the boat is leaving the port, they are playing music and everyone is up on deck dancing and screaming. This is not happening, because of the rain. I say, “Who gives a sh*t? We still have beer. Let’s drink!” Everyone seems to agree. Our dinner time is set for 6:15, so we drink until about 6:13 and then head down to dinner. I think it is at dinner when I realize that I am completely drunk as all f*ck. Anyway, we proceed to eat. I order some sort of fish, and it was good. We also drank a couple bottles of wine. Dinner ends around 8:00 and we head back to our rooms to see if our luggage is there yet. We find that our luggage has arrived, but decided to take a short nap (this is code for “I passed out”) and get ready to go out later.

Mrs. Diesel and I awake from our short nap to see that it is now 1:45 am. I guess we slept a little longer than we had anticipated. As we are going to Key West the next day, we figure that we will need all the rest we can get, and decide to just go back to sleep. As the boat is docking at 9:00 am, I call and get a wake-up call for 8:00. We look forward to heading to Key West the next day, as a friend of ours just moved down to Marathon and is making the hour drive to Key West to meet up with us. More on that and a long day of drinking in Key West in the next installment.

Rick Diesel