Cruising

TigerBlog was driving along yesterday when came across a billboard that read "the current temperature is 89," with the "89" as one of those electric displays that change when the necessary number changes.

As he was processing how wrong the number was, he saw the words underneath the temperature, words that read: "in the Caribbean, that is."

It was a billboard for a cruise line.

TigerBlog went on a cruise once. He didn't like it very much.

If he wanted to do all the stuff there was to do on the ship, then he had to stay up late. If he wanted to get off the ship to go to the islands, he had to get up early.

Plus, the boat rocked. He definitely didn't like that.

On the other hand, the cruise ship itself was an amazing structure. As TB recalls, it sailed from San Juan and went through the Caribbean, and it was like being on a mall that could float. A floating mall, that is, with a bunch of food courts, all of which served all-you-can-eat fare around the clock.

And with tiny staterooms, with tinier bathrooms in them.

For TB,  a much better vacation is finding one beach and sitting on it for a week.

FatherBlog is on a cruise even as you are reading this. His itinerary started in Tahiti and went through French Polynesia. Currently, he's in the Marquesas Islands.

Yesterday's destination was Nuku Hiva, for which TB did a search. It seems to be a fairly scenic place.

TB's Aunt Edie took cruises all over the world. BrotherBlog's last major vacation was a cruise in the Mediterranean, through the French and Italian Rivieras.

This week would have been a great week to be on vacation in a tropical location, even if it had to be on a cruise.

And it wasn't just because of the weather.

This is Week 2 of first semester exams. It's a week that has no athletic events at Princeton. Hey, for that matter, there wasn't even an event meeting this past Tuesday at 10, which is a complete rarity for the academic year.

Princeton's teams return to competition tomorrow at the Armory in New York City, where the women's track and field team will be participating in a meet.

After having no events for 12 days, Princeton will have 23 in the next eight days, with at least one event every day.

The home portion of the schedule resumes with something of a double feature Sunday afternoon.

The men's basketball team plays its Division III game against the College of New Jersey Sunday at 2, and then the men's hockey team hosts Sacred Heart at 4.

By next weekend, the basketball and hockey teams of both sexes will be in full league mode, and there will be one intense game after another for the rest of the season.

For now, though, there's still one more day with nothing going on.

TigerBlog is in New York for a meeting all day anyway, so he couldn't have gone away this week after all.

Of course, if he really wanted to go on a cruise, there's always the Circle Line.