We woke up today docked at the Island of Rhodes.  On this trip through the Greek islands, the Wagnersons will be celebrating our respective wedding anniversaries.  Number 42 for Lynda and me, and number 39 for Doug and Barb.  Today is June 8^th and that means my lovely bride and I have hit 42 years of Lynda putting up with me and me still just the luckiest guy alive.  My marathon training started yesterday where I circled the top deck on the Olympia 18 times to equal 3 miles.  Today I got off the ship in Rhodes first thing in the morning and ran 4 miles into the old town and then into part of the new.  I got back on the ship after completing the run and came back to our cabin.  We all chose to eat breakfast at the ship’s buffet rather than the more formal restaurant on board.  Doug and Barb were ahead of us by about ten minutes and found a table out on the deck with their trays of breakfast and coffee.  Lynda and I went through the buffet line picking and choosing what to put on our plates and then carried our trays out of the restaurant and up to the deck to hook up with Doug and Barb.  It was at this point that everything went sideways…so to speak.

Let me start by saying at this time in our trip where we’ve been on the road and living out of a suitcase for 7 weeks already, the fatigue that we’re all feeling is palpable.  Lynda headed out ahead of me while I stopped to get a cup of coffee to add to my tray.  As I left the restaurant and headed up the stairs with my tray to join Lynda, I saw a buzz of commotion ahead of me.  Curious as I advanced towards a second set of stairs, I could see a tray of food scattered across the floor with ship staff scurrying about to clean it up.  I could also see Lynda standing there telling a ship staff person that she was just fine.  “No, no, I’m okay, I’m just fine.”  She was insisting to this person that she was okay but that she was embarrassed and that she just wanted to head into the bathroom to clean up (the bathroom was about 50 yards away).  When Lynda turned towards me to tell me she was okay, it was then that I was able to see her face.  Oh my!!!!  The first thought that came into my head was of a Seattle Mariner post-game interview where the player gets hit with a shaving cream pie in the face while being interviewed and then after he wipes some of the cream off and away from his eyes and his mouth, he stands there to complete the interview with the cream still spread all over his face.  I quickly abandoned that thought for concern over the health and safety of my bride.  “Are you alright?” I asked.  She smiled at me through her pie covered face (it was apparently Greek yogurt) and said “I’m just fine, I’m going to find a bathroom and clean up my hands and clothes.”  I grabbed a napkin from my tray and offered it to her.  Although she initially declined, I suggested she REALLY wanted to wipe her face before she made the long walk to the bathroom looking like Soupy Sales at the end of his routine. (those younger than us might want to google that reference to understand what I’m talking about).  Lynda took the napkin and headed off to the bathroom dabbing the yogurt from her face.

The toll from the fall besides the unfortunate embarrassment, was a wrenched back, a sprained and swollen wrist, and a bunged up knee.  It put a damper on our day of celebration.  Lynda came back from the bathroom to rejoin our table and sat down.  After discovering that Lynda was for the most part okay, Barb got up to go get another breakfast tray for her.  As we finished our breakfast, the four of us decided that it might be a good time to head off of the ship and explore Rhodes.  We headed back to our cabins to clean up and get ready to go.

It is at this point that I make my entrance into this modern day Greek tragedy playing the village idiot.  We have not needed our wallets while on board because all we have needed was our ship issued ID card which we utilize for any food, beverage or store purchases in addition it functions as the key card to enter our cabins.  I had left my wallet in my pants which were hanging in the wardrobe closet. I go to the wardrobe to get my wallet out of my pants so we could leave the ship, and I could not find it.  I checked all of the pockets and it was gone.  I asked Lynda if she had seen it and no, she had not.  She also checked the pockets in my pants and could not find it.  We checked through all the drawers in the cabin and the wallet was nowhere.  We checked my backpack and her day bag without success.  We pulled out our suitcases and emptied everything out on the bed searching for the lost wallet.  It was not to be found and we repack our suitcases.  I am now starting to panic.  We retrace our steps.  I again searched my pants hanging in the wardrobe.  No wallet.  Lynda does the same with identical results.  We look under the bed, undo all of the items in our suitcases once again including my backpack and her day bag.   We repeated this process another two complete times to no avail.  With an ominous tone in her voice, Lynda tells me it is time to go down to the reception desk and report my wallet missing.  I agree.  We head down the elevator to the reception desk and tell the desk clerk that I am a dumbass.  Actually I think I just told her that I cannot find my wallet and wondered if anyone had turned it in.  No, no one has turned in a wallet.  Where and when did you last have it?  I told her it was in my pants which are hanging in the wardrobe in my cabin.  She contacts security and the head of housekeeping who quickly arrive and we go from there to return to our cabin.  The security guy asks me where I last had my wallet.  I open the wardrobe and show him my pants hanging there.  Lynda and I step away and go out on the deck to await the crew’s direction.  We had no more than stepped outside when the security guy called me back in.  “It feels like there is a wallet in these pants” he says.  As he steps aside to let me look I reach out to those same pants that Lynda and I had checked no less than 4 times each and sure enough, my wallet was in there.  I look inside the wallet and find everything intact with nothing missing.  Joy, wonder, embarrassment and a realization that I indeed have been awarded the status of the ship’s village idiot were emotions that washed over me at that time.  Wow, Lynda and I are making history on this our 42^nd wedding anniversary and we haven’t even hit 10:00 a.m. yet.  What more could possibly lie in store for us today?

With all of our wallets in place and on our persons, we walk off the ship to head into Rhodes.  This is a beautiful city, with a tall rock wall surrounding the old town and seven city gates to enter.  Apparently it is the oldest walled city in Europe and 3,000 people live here according to “George” a taxi driver we met later on in the day who took us on a tour of the city.  We had a great personalized tour of Rhodes, stopping at various locations while he told us the history of these places.  George told us that what he liked about us was that we were two couples who “had a low profile”.  Now I don’t think that George knew that in these present times here in Europe, that was the posture we were trying to adopt, so his unsolicited consistent assessment of us was music to our ears.

After our city tour, George took us to Faliraki beach, a beautiful quiet beach about 20 minutes south of Rhodes where we enjoyed a beverage or two along with some lunch as we sat and soaked up the ocean breeze and the sun.  I was able to use the restaurant’s Wi-Fi to upload the previous two blog posts.  After a couple of hours, George returned to pick us up and drove us back to the town of Rhodes where he let us out to explore the old town where we could have an easy walk back to the ship.  That is exactly what we did, having a leisurely walk through this ancient city and then back to the ship around midafternoon to rest up before the ship pulled out and headed towards the island of Crete.

Some afternoon naps left us all feeling rather refreshed.  Doug and Barb had purchased a bottle of Champagne to celebrate our anniversary and invited us to their cabin to enjoy a celebratory toast.  That was so nice and Fergie, our personal steward came into the cabin and took a photo commemorating the occasion.

Our night was not finished.  The winds had picked up and we headed to the lounge which said it was on the 12^th deck.  Since there was not an eleventh deck, we knew we were pretty high up.  By now the ship was rocking back and forth pretty good.  30 knot winds and we had seas of about 15-17 feet.  Dinner was in the restaurant as the buffet was closed.  The waiters and waitresses were having to pause in their steps as they carried trays in order to flow with the roll of the ship.  As an appetizer Doug ordered fried octopus balls, at this point an unknown delight.  Now I don’t know anything about the reproductive system of octopus, but I can tell you that what arrived on his plate were a couple of items that looked like meatballs but tasted like octopus.  When it comes to Greek food, the wisdom of retired Brigadier General William Brookshire, a former boss of mine at Westinghouse Hanford Company came to the forefront.  He always said never ask a question unless you’re fully prepared to hear the answer.  Nobody asked any questions about the octopus balls.  They were actually quite tasty.  We just enjoyed them and let any remaining questions in our minds about them remain unanswered.

After dinner we headed back to our cabins for a night cap.  The ship was rocking and rolling pretty good by this point and it seemed the best thing to do was to simply retire to our beds and let the ship sort of rock us to sleep.