Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

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Today, perhaps we'll experience a slice of normal, as most televisions in America and many around the world tune into the Super Bowl, which will hopefully give us a positive topic of conversation for a few days.

Over the past few years, Julie and I have watched more Super Bowls on cruise ships than at home.  While we loved those onboard parties with catered food and the comeraderie of friends, both old and new, we missed most Super Bowl commercials.

Commercials are snipped out of the broadcasts at sea for some reason.  Our son Jay works on putting Universal Music songs into TV commercials, so this is his biggest day of the year for his job.  As such, we would watch this game --- when all cruise ships have been sidelined --- regardless of the drama in the game itself.

Frankly, I think we've watched less than five hours of football all season, and most of that was during the opening days of the season.  One of the few games we watched --- or more correctly watched most of --- was Tom Brady's opening game as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer.

Tampa Bay looked pretty good in that game, but they lost to the New Orleans Saints, which seemed to be a much better team.  As such, I was surprised to see the Bucs had reached the Super Bowl.  Then again, this is Tom Brady, who we've become accustomed to see come from behind for unexpected wins.

 

Our friend Hammad, who has been to something like 30 Super Bowl games in a row, didn't let Covid-19 scare him off this season.  He made the cross-country drive from Redondo Beach to Tampa Bay, where he will be among the "socially-distanced" crowd stomping their feet and using noisemakers --- as per directives from Dr. Fauci --- to go along with the canned-audience cheering track that accompanied the rest of the season.

Speaking of non-spontaneous, false audience sounds, every time I happened across a game this year, I wondered why they didn't mix that clap-track up a bit.  Why not use a laugh track instead of applause sometimes?  Or put a rock album or classical music piece to accompany the video of the game?  You know, like you probably tried when you were in college, along the lines of the urban legend Dark Side of Oz, which led conspiracy theorists to say Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" had been written to be timed with the classic movie, "The Wizard of Oz."  I don't see Oz as that remarkable of a sync, personally.

In any case, this past year has definitely felt like "We're not in Kansas anymore." I'm hoping one day we'll get back to normal.

My personal optimism keeps getting punched in the gut, as Michelle Fee, the President of Cruise Planners, perfectly stated a couple of days ago after hearing Canada now plans to close its ports to cruise ships until March of 2022.  Assuming there is no special exception to the Jones Act that requires a foreign port during an itinerary or that Canada doesn't change it's ruling, that means no large-ship Alaska or Canada/New England season in 2021.

That's heartbreaking for many.  Some clients have said they will move to the same trip in 2022, but what of Logan and Mary, the wonderful 99 year-old folks who I mentioned last week just booked an Alaska cruise for this summer?

Time passes faster as we get older, but none of us knows how long we have left on this beautiful planet.

That should be inpsiring, not depressing.  It means we must each make the most of the time we have, and while government may be happy to act on the phrase, "Never let a crisis go to waste," we should each determine to "Never let a year go to waste."

Look at Tom Brady.  He will be starting his tenth Super Bowl in twenty years.  The opposing quarterback Patrick Mahomes was in kindergarten the first time Brady played in a Super Bowl.  Do you think Tom ever once happily accepted early in the season that, "I guess we'll wait until next year."

You can do that even if you move this years trip to next year by choosing something different to celebrate this unique year of 2021 that will never come again in the manner it deserves.

Then again, it is still possible to travel to Alaska this year.  There are some small ships --- yes, considerably more expensive than mainstream ocean liners --- and land trips available in Alaska.  The wonderful Princess Lodges used with their highly acclaimed Alaska cruise-tours will be open this summer, so why not stay at one of the greatest wilderness lodges in the world and tour Denali?

Or take a land trip to see our amazing national parks in the continental United States?

Or perhaps plan an all-inclusive tropical beach vacation in the Caribbean or Mexico?

Julie and I are still planning to cruise to Norway and Iceland this summer, unless the crisis shoots down those plans too.  In any case, it gives us something to eagerly anticipate.

If you blew off 2020 entirely, why not get back in the saddle at a dude ranch or ski lift in the Rockies?

I'll be happy to help you get there.

Wes