Tuesday, January 4, 2022; The Journey Home

 Tuesday, January 4, 2022;  The Journey Home

We had our final breakfast at the Embassy Suites and checked out.  We ended up racing the hotel shuttle driver who charged $8 per person vs our Lyft driver who charged us $9 for two.  We ended up at the airport at exactly the same time, and he only had one passenger in his massive Sprinter van.  

Delta Airlines managed to get us boarded  on time, although there was a huge back up at the luggage check counter.  We spent nearly 30 minutes standing in the Sky Priority line to get our bags checked.  It doesn’t seem like First Class on Delta domestic flights gets you much in the way of benefits other than more elbow room vs comfort plus economy.  We didn’t even have access to the Delta SkyClub lounge.  Only First Class international passengers get to use the Delta SkyClub lounge.  Everyone else has to have an expensive American Express card or outrageous yearly membership.  Our flight connected in Atlanta, where we had a less than one hour connection window.  We made our flight largely because our connecting gate was only 4 gates away from our arrival gate, and we didn’t have to go through security again.  

We did get a light lunch box and 2 drinks on our 5-1/2 hour cross country flight.  It was enough time to get a couple of movies watched.  Ben watched Queenpins, featuring Kristen Bell as a coupon addict who ended up running a multimillion dollar coupon redemption scheme.  She got caught in the end, and only ended up with less than a year in jail because the big companies she defrauded (P&G, J&J, etc) didn’t want the bad publicity.  It was based on real events and was pretty funny.  Vince Vaughn placed a postal inspector Rambo character.  It was worth watching.  He also watched Superintelligence staring Melissa McCarthy as a middle of species subject that a self realized artificial intelligence being decides to study to decide if humankind should be allowed to exist, or be exterminated to improve the planet.  It was pretty funny, and also worth watching.  James Corden plays the AI, and of course, her husband had a bit part as a NSA agent, and Jean Smart got to play the President of the US.  

We arrived at SeaTac just late enough to miss the 4pm Whidbey Sea-Tac Shuttle, so we had to wait for the 7pm shuttle.  Surprisingly enough, our luggage made it to Seattle, although one bag ended up coming out on a different baggage carousel 20 minutes after all the others.  That container must have gotten stuck in the plane for a bit.  

As we flew in, Seattle was back to it’s usual January weather of rainy with gusting winds and temperatures in the upper 40’s.  We had missed out on a historic freezing spell, although our master bedroom sinks appear to have suffered some freezing damage.  

In summary, we were able to successfully complete our first late pandemic era cruise in the Caribbean, and return home safely and without contracting Covid.  Ciara learned that one of her room mates was diagnosed with Covid, and was self isolating in the house.  

Cruising in the post-Covid era was signficantly impacted by Covid mitigation measures, but it ended up being an enjoyable and fun trip, even with all the mitigation measures.  Cruising in the pre-pandemic era was certainly more fun and more enjoyable, but this was fun and enjoyable enough to justify the trouble.  

The Omicron variant has been causing a huge spike in Covid cases, but the vaccines and mutations in the virus itself seem to be leading to less severe disease, so we may be seeing the tail end of the pandemic as community immunity builds and the extremely infectious nature of Omicron infects the last anti-vaxxers.

We are scheduled for our next cruise in December 2022 which will be to Easter Island and Antarctica, but it seems unlikely that we will schedule any other cruises before then, given the way this Pandemic has been throwing curve balls and monkey wrenches at every turn.  We were very fortunate that the Regal Princess was able to complete her cruise to the ABC islands without any cancelled ports of call because other ships were not as lucky even while we were out there on the Caribbean.  Pre-cruise testing proved to be the biggest stressor and headache.  We’re hoping that by next Christmas, those lumps will all be worked out.