{"id":1618,"date":"2008-11-03T16:02:32","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T22:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=1618"},"modified":"2008-11-11T19:12:13","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T01:12:13","slug":"day-8-november-3-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=1618","title":{"rendered":"Day 8: November 2, Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The shipped docked in Houston on Sunday, November 3. Their plan was to get everyone off the ship by 9:30 am so that the ship could quickly sail to Galveston to pick up the next passengers.<\/p>\n

Usually, there’s people waiting to embark as the weary passengers disembark so it is complete mayhem at port. Since embarkation was going to take place in Galveston, disembarkation was only slightly chaotic. I’m kidding. It was pretty orderly actually and, much to my surprise and amazement, by 10 am the ship had already started sailing for Galveston.<\/p>\n

“I sure hope everyone was off the ship,” I told Brian. LOL. Anyway, here are some of the photos I took on Sunday during the whole disembarkation thing. (I don’t think I was allowed to take pictures in the port building, but I had already snapped a few by the time they told me otherwise.) <\/p>\n

Brian waiting to disembark…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

Zone 7 was one of the first zones called, but the zone by zone thing didn’t start until after the self-assisted luggage passengers got off the ship. They took forever! It must have taken almost two hours to get all of them through. <\/p>\n

Self-assist is ideal for people with very few bags. For instance, Brian and I could have done the self assist thing. =P Some people had no business doing it, though. I think some people either didn’t hear the announcement about the luggage (that bags needed to be put outside your stateroom by midnight) or chose not to pack because they were busy doing some last minute partying the night before. I think that people who had multiple bags trying to self-assist caused most of the delays.<\/p>\n

Then again, there were those people who wanted to come down to the disembarkation area before their zones were called. Some people just can’t seem to follow instructions. We actually saw some people get turned away because they were a higher zone number and they tried to disembark before they were supposed to… Anyway, those people ended up bogging down the hallways. <\/p>\n

Other passengers waiting to disembark…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally off the ship…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking for our suitcase…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

The suitcases were laid out by zone. That’s why you had to disembark in the proper order. The idea was to have say zones 1 through 10 disembark first and then all the luggage in those zones would get claimed and cleared out then the next few zones and so on.<\/p>\n

It didn’t quite work that way because instead of claiming their luggage and filing out like they were supposed to, some people were just standing there like lumps of log (I guess waiting for their friends from zone 35 to come out) getting in other people’s way. We, on the other hand, had a system.<\/p>\n

\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

Brian and I figured we had the lowest zone number out of our entire group so we would be out first. Our plan was to have me stationed at the building entrance and watch as people from our group exited. Then, we would direct them to the meeting area where we could bring the van and truck over for loading. Our system worked pretty well actually because by about 11 am, we were on our way back to Wichita.<\/p>\n

Nubia and James disembarking…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

We had to wait forever for the rest of our gang. I think the riviera deck (deck 1, where most everyone ended up except for the bosses who had better digs) got to disembark last. Anyway, I came across our favorite couple James and Nubia while I was waiting so I had to take their photo. Naturally.<\/p>\n

Kurt, Kathy, Shane, and Jen were out next. They had all the table toppers ported to our designated loading area. Everyone waited as Kurt went to get the truck from the parking lot. <\/p>\n

Photo of the Jen and Kathy waiting…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

I think Brent and Dan were the last ones to get out. Brent had the keys to the van. The loading of the truck was in progress as Brent went to get the van from the parking lot. <\/p>\n

Loading the truck…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

I think the guys did a much better job of loading the truck this time around. The mountain of luggage on the back of Kurt’s truck wasn’t as tall and the suitcases were packed much tighter. The tarp was taught and didn’t flap around as much as on the trip down either.<\/p>\n

Group photo…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

I had to take photos while we all waited. LOL.<\/p>\n

Brian setting up Wilma, our GPS…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

\"0_200811021606_127.jpeg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We’d had our GPS for a while now, but we never named her. Brent actually christened her Wilma. Honestly, we didn’t need our GPS going down or coming home because we were behind Kurt’s truck the whole way. I think we had it as a back up just in case the two vehicles got separated, but that was unlikely because Brent is a fantastic convoy driver. =P I think we mostly had it for the entertainment factor. Everyone loved to hear Wilma get pissed off whenever we made a stop somewhere that is not on her planned route. “Recalculating,” she would say indignantly. It was pretty amusing. It kept Brent on his toes, for sure.<\/p>\n

Brian and Kurt at one of our stops…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

Sleepy passengers…<\/strong>
\n\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Misc<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t know how they managed to sleep with Brent swerving in and out of traffic to keep up with Kurt and Shane. =P Well, Brent did do so expertly. <\/p>\n

Actually, I got a couple of hours of nap time too myself. It was a long drive home, but we made it. We arrived in Wichita about 9 pm. Brian and I were back home by 10 pm… And that is the end of this very long poker cruise recap. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The shipped docked in Houston on Sunday, November 3. Their plan was to get everyone off the ship by 9:30 am so that the ship could quickly sail to Galveston to pick up the next passengers. Usually, there’s people waiting to embark as the weary passengers disembark so it is complete mayhem at port. Since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,21],"tags":[144,2488],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1688,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}