Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 96

Day seven

Yesterday we didn't have a port of call, but just steamed up Glacier Bay for our rendezvous with ice. In the morning Gay and I sat in the Crow's Nest lounge and listened to an explanation of glacier science and history as we went north from the Icy Strait past Reid Glacier and Lamplugh Glacier to the huge pair, Margerie and Grand Pacific Glaciers. Margerie is brilliant white, shot through with cerulean, the typical glacier coloration; Grand Pacific is black as coal, from ground-up volanic rock

Day six

Gay and I went our separate ways Thursday morning, since she was not enthusiastic about hurtling down the side of a mountain on a rent-a-bike. I worked and read for a bit -- not hitting the gym for the first time afloat -- and then around seven I went down the gangway to take a short van ride to the railroad station.

The narrow-gauge railway up the mountain from Skagway to the Canadian border is one of the most beautiful rides in rairoadery. We did it with Rusty the last time we were in Skagway

Day five

Writing up on the Lido Deck was eldritch this morning. It had started to get light before I got there, around 4:00, and huge misty shapes kept looming out of the fog. While I was working out on the machines and reading, the fog broke and we eased into a sunny morning berth at Juneau.

The Juneau waterfront doesn't look too promising. It's all shops selling high-priced souvenirs and "bargains" on useful things like showy jewelry and imported china. We managed to avoid them and go to the van tha

fourth day

I've written a couple of [small:] pages on the novel each morning. There's a coffee machine going all the time on the Lido Deck, and that's where breakfast is prepared. Rolls and pastries come out around 6, and they start making omelets about 6:30. I was first in line today. Wrote until about 5:30 and then chatted about writing with a couple of the songwriters. After breakfast I ran on the machines, reading GUARDIAN, for 250 calories. Will finish the book tomorrow. Brought some work and a

third day

We spent all day yesterday at sea, which was pleasant. Very slight rolling as we plied north, usually within sight of Canadian mountains.

Didn't do much in the morning but read and write. At one o'clock I entered a low-stakes Texas Hold-em tournament, thirty bucks. I lasted about an hour, betting on five or six hands and winning three. The last one, I was sure the guy was bluffing and went all in. He _was_ bluffing, but his small pair was bigger than mine. Interpret that as you will.

At four

Second Day

Everything has gone smoothly. We had a three-hour bus tour of Vancouver yesterday morning and afternoon, which was interesting -- a great town, which has grown large fast since we were here in '86. We saw the places where Errol Flynn died and Howard Hughes lived (for six months less one day, to avoid Canadian taxes). Two nice gardens and lots of redwood trees.

The bus left us at the terminal, and we went through the usual excruciation of lines and red tape, but considerably faster than other t

Prepare to board, maties!

Uneventful flight. In first class (freebie for points) we had a decent hot chicken sandwich and disappointingly ordinary wine, though it was "free." I read a bit and napped a bit. Bad timing on my part; got within 15 pp. of the end of a silly but fairly engaging novel, The Topless Tulip Caper by Lawrence Block. It's a pastiche of Nero Wolfe, and as such ends with everybody sitting in a room waiting for the Great Man to expose one of them as the murderer. Could be anybody; depends on what th

North to Alaska

In Vancouver for the night, ready to get on the Statendam for our Alaska tour. Timing couldn't be better; it's getting up to 101 in Gainesville today.

For our last fling in Florida, we went out with Brandy and Christina for an early movie, a new adaptation of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue. All very suave and knowing, with an undercurrent of rawness, of horror and despair lingering from the Great War. With a wonderful fuck-you-all happy ending, the beautiful girl racing off in her roadster to a new

luck

Thinking about doing a poem about the varieties of luck. Because I consider myself a very lucky person, and wonder what that actually means.

"You make your own luck" is the American simplification, and of course it has a kernel of truth. We know people who continually sabotage themselves, and seem able to screw up any opportunity. And there are those (I think like me) who have a generally positive attitude and are willing to take a swing at anything that comes our way, and not be too disappoin

an "up" movie from Pixar, surprise

We met Bob and Patience yesterday afternoon to see the new 3-D animation film UP. It was a charming, impeccably made film with many surprises, not the least of which is its main theme, coping (or not) with aging and disappointment.

Of course there are heroics and melodrama along the way -- it _is_ a cartoon -- but the characters are drawn well, in both senses of the word. The main character is an old man whose life we review in a compressed opening sequence, starting out with a tomboy childho