Around the World in 180 Days. Or so.

There are different types of cruises. Booze cruises are the ones everyone is most familiar with, last a week or less, and are not well remembered by those who were on them because, well, there was drinking. Then there are other one week cruises to Alaska, through the Caribbean, up the Rhine, that kind of thing. The Fletcher family did one to Alaska in 2011 for my parents' 80th birthdays and 60th anniversary. It's a great way to spend time together as a family - nobody cooks, cleans, shops, makes beds, everyone gets their own room, you can spend time together and apart, and for old folks especially, it's just great.

Then there are the longer cruises, the ones that most regular folks are unaware of. The one I just ended was a 73-day circumnavigation of South America, Fort Lauderdale to Fort Lauderdale, with over 30 ports. In October, I was on a 74-day circumnavigation of Africa, again Fort Lauderdale to Fort Lauderdale, through the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal all the way down to Cape Town, South Africa and back up again. I was on-board for the first 14 days of the Grand Africa and the last 14 days of the Grand South America. More on that in a bit.

There are also the World Cruises, one of which I started with nearly a year ago on the Fort Lauderdale to Tahiti leg for two weeks. The infamous Covid cruise that Kam and I boarded on March 1, 2020 in Auckland was a World Cruise, Fort Lauderdale to Fort Lauderdale, though it was forced to end in Perth on March 19. They are much longer, on the order of 125 days. I heard of one that is 225 days.

What happens both by intent and as a part of the natural order of events on the long cruises is community. People bond. They form friendship clusters. They also bond with the staff, crew, and entertainers like myself on the long cruises. I was invited to a birthday party on the most recent cruise. The ship has events, parties, celebrations, sail-away dances, and a huge party at the end that is much less about boozing and much more about celebrating the friendships that have been made along the way. The cruise begins with everyone wanting to go to exotic lands and check off their bucket-list items, but as it progresses, it becomes as much about the people that are sharing it all together.

And as I met and spent time with people, I learn that, for all of its negatives, there are fascinating positives to cruising for some, especially on these Holland America cruises which are mostly for older people. I mean, 80s and up. My 70 years is a bit on the low side.

I talked about Richard and Irene who shortly after disembarking the Grand South America will embark on a 180-day World Cruise. Richard told me they have spent 248 days in 2023 on ships, which sounds like an obsession, until you learn the reason. Irene has Alzheimer's. She is safer on a ship where, as people get to know them, she is watched over and cared for by other passengers and crew members. She wanders off and gets lost, and is returned to Richard. He doesn't have to worry about shopping for food, taking care of a house and cars, keeping the doors locked, or being with her at all times (he said that if she is away from him for 15 minutes at home in Arizona, she calls the police.)

Another man I met at the last breakfast before disembarking. He is hunched over, old, walks with great difficulty with a cane. As he sat down at my table, he asked one of the staff to get his breakfast for him. We talked. I asked him if he was sad the trip was ending. No, he said, he wasn't getting off. He's staying on. On the ship, he doesn't have to shop, cook, wash clothes, make beds, find transportation. His every stress point is removed. He's never married, no family, on his own, frail. The ship cares for him in a way that dry land cannot so easily or entertainingly do.

There are dozens of older people in electric wheelchairs turtling around the ship in similar circumstances. It costs about the same as a senior center, but every need is cared for by lovely and charming Filipino (-a) and Indonesian workers, rooms cleaned daily, beds made, laundry done, excellent and varied food prepared and served. They inevitably make friends, have dinner together, hang out on the deck, take little tours in the ports, wake up somewhere different every day.

My own Dad, in his second senior center in Texas, tells me the food is serviceable at best, repetitive and dull. He knows nobody in the building. Nobody checks up on him. He watches sports all day, aged 92, waiting for time to catch up with him. I hurt for him. Lonely on his behalf. My brother and his wife are nearby and are wonderful, but the days are often long and empty for him.

The first days of a Grand or World Cruise are those during which the ship makes every effort to enable the forming of friendship on board. There is a Block Party wherein we all came out in the halls to meet our neighbors. Our room guys are serving appetizers and drinks. It's meant to last awhile, and it does, over an hour. Later on the Main Stage (the auditorium where I give my talks and all the main entertainment takes place), the captain and crew meet the passengers, making periodic reappearances throughout the cruise. People bond over puzzles, Mah Jong, bridge, Bible studies, Hanukkah events, mass, church services, AA meetings (Friends of Bill, they are called). There are trivia contests daily, ballroom dancing, yoga classes, walks on the deck for charity, boat building competitions. Happy birthdays are sung by the wait staff in Indonesian and Tagalog in the dining room. It is all about community, about being together, about caring for each other.

The last days of a Grand or World Cruise enshrine those relationships between passengers and crew, staff, workers. A massive on-deck farewell dance with free drinks and appetizers by the pool. The room guys make dozens of towel creatures and populate the pool deck with them. The entire crew parades into the Main Stage and waves goodbye from the stage to all of the passengers. The cooks and servers parade through the dining areas singing songs in Tagalog and Indonesian. Without two and a half months of community together, it would be gimmicky and glib marketing. But it is warm and wonderful in all of its parts, genuine and authentic.

It is not perfection, of course. These passengers are humans, after all, and frankly, very often they are among the most entitled humans on the planet, petty, demanding, whiney, with huge expectations over trivial matters. That is not to be overlooked or excused.

But it is all very much like life. There are wonders to be seen, and they are better seen and experienced with loved ones, with friends and family, and just like friends and family everywhere, there is cruelty and pettiness.

My talks finish scientifically with the reality that the universe is not really about stuff - matter, energy, stars, planets, galaxies, humans, aliens (yeah, not yet). The universe is about interactions, about relata, about relationships, about how we are all enmeshed in a cosmos-wide web of relationships, and that in large part that is how our own personal lives are defined; by the relationships we have with nature and with each other. We are more than just the relationships we have, but we are enriched and enabled by them to be both spectacular, and spectacularly petty and mean.

Let us aim for the former rather than the latter.