We are hitting the road again this weekend, and it will be fun. We have decided to take a Celebrity cruise on the newly refurbished Celebrity Solstice. It’s a round-trip sailing out of Vancouver and includes stops in Icy Strait Point (AKA Hoonah), Juneau and Ketchikan. This will be our 13th Alaska cruise. I know…then why are we going?

This one is about friends. You see…once upon a time (September 2005), a whole bunch of people were going on a cruise on Celebrity’s Infinity from Vancouver to San Francisco. It was just a short, six-day cruise with stops in Nanaimo, Victoria, Astoria, Oregon and finally San Francisco. Prior to this cruise, we had joined a Roll Call on the Cruise Critic website.

For those non-cruisers out there, a Roll Call is a message board set up by Cruise Critic just for people on a single cruise who want to meet some folks before they board. It is also a great place to discuss possible shared shore excursions or specialty dinners. We joined the Roll Call for that cruise, and it literally changed our lives.

Someplace along the line, the folks on that Roll Call started discussing martinis. Not that anyone was a big martini drinker, but Celebrity’s Martini Bar is a well-known ship destination, and for some reason, it was decided that we would become The Martini Mates.

Every roll call seems to have one of two kinds of people. Those who are there just for the cruise and those who keep corresponding and traveling together in the years between. This is the core of the group. In our case, from that original cruise, we met two other couples who would become our closest friends in the world. And we (the Martini Mates—yes, we still use that name) have sailed all over the world together. Along the way, we have picked up other like-minded cruisers who became Mates as well. We still have a thread on Cruise Critic (but not in the roll call area—in what they call the “Friends of Cruise Critic”), and as of today, we have almost 5,000 posts and growing. We have members in three countries, and we have traveled with some of the Mates more than 10 times. At one point, we all sailed to Alaska together, and there were 17 of us on board. We have also gone to Hawaii, Alaska numerous times, New Orleans for Mardi Gras and  few other places.

We added more folks, but all along there has been a core of six, including Kathleen and me, Bob and Jude from Chilliwack, BC and Mike and Carol Preisman from Boynton Beach, Florida. That’s us below quite a few years back.

The Martini Mates. In front, Carol, Jude and Kathleen. In the back, Mike, Bob and I.

Sadly, we lost Jude in 2014 and Carol in 2019. Since then, Bob has found another Judy, and Mike has found a Cathy, and we love both of them.  Which is a good thing since we are all going to travel together one more time. Since Bob hates to fly, we are taking a cruise to Alaska. And that’s why Kathleen and I are going to Alaska for the 13th time.

It’s funny that today I was watching a YouTube video about the greatest last lines in any film. Number 12 on their list was Stand By Me. In the final scene, one of the characters is writing about the death of a boyhood friend, and he writes, “Although I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years, I know I’ll miss him forever. I never had any friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was 12.” I found this interesting because I am only friends with two people I knew when I was 12, but the other two Martini Mates going on this cruise (Mike and Bob), whom I didn’t meet until I was almost 60, are the two best friends I have ever had.

One of the many cruises we all took together was back in 2009, when we sailed on the eighth voyage of Celebrity’s brand new ship, the Solstice, in the Caribbean. We sailed on her again in 2017 when 17 of us sailed to Alaska. And now, more than 15 years later, she has undergone a multi-million-dollar refit, and we will be back on board to see the changes and improvements, and I will be blogging all about it over the next week. I will report on everything from the embarkation to the disembarkation.

If you have been following me for a few years, you may remember that the last time we sailed from Canada Place in Vancouver, it was the WORST embarkation of our cruising lives. We were sailing on Holland America’s Konigsdam, and the entire embarkation process took 3.5+ hours. That’s horrid. We shall see what this cruise brings us. I do know that Kathleen (and Judy) cannot stand or walk for 3.5 hours, so both have arranged wheelchairs to get them through Customs, check-in and onto the ship. We are hoping that now that we have arranged for those, embarkation will take less than half an hour, and we will find that we really did not need them.

Once on board, we will probably not get off for any major shore excursions other than when we visit Juneau. Back in 2007, the six of us sailed to Alaska (again), and Mike found an amazing company owned by two guys—Harv and Marv. They took us on a private whale-watching tour where we saw all kinds of wildlife, including whales swimming under the boat. It was such a vast improvement over the whale-watching tours from the ship, which usually have 50 or 60 people on them. On those excursions, everyone sits down, looks out the windows, and listens to the guide’s narration. On a Harv and Marv tour, you are in a smaller boat that can really move, and you are probably with either Harv or Marv, both super guides. Once we had booked this cruise, we decided we needed to do Harv and Marv one more time, so hopefully you will see some great whale shots that day.

The other highlight of any Alaska cruise is a day in front of a massive glacier. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience (that we have done 12 times already?) and it still blows me away. On this trip, we won’t sail in Glacier Bay, but we will visit Hubbard Glacier. Just wait until you see the photos.

That’s it for now. The next report should be on Sunday (when we sail) or Monday. In the meantime, I have a lot of driving to do. Friday, I will take Keeley, our fur baby, south to Olympia for the second year of Camp Keeley (she went there last year while we were in Africa). She will spend the week with my daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddaughter and have an awesome time. Then, after that 4-hour round trip (about 160 miles), we will spend the night at home before we head north to Bob and Judy’s place in Chilliwack, BC. That’s usually a 3-hour trip, including a stop at the border (133 miles). Once in Chilliwack, I will drop off Kathleen at Bob and Judy’s and then drive to Vancouver International Airport to pick up Mike and Cathy. That’s about a 3-hour round-trip drive (142 miles) and then back to Chilliwack, where we will all spend the night before we head to the ship. So between now and dinner on Saturday, I will drive about 10 hours and 435 miles. Whew, I am already tired thinking about it. See you Monday!

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. —G. Randolf