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Weight Loss or Bust - So did it work?

By Eric Harlan
Published: January 2, 2012
Updated: January 2, 2012

I’ve been chomping at the bit (figuratively) to write this post but I promised myself I’d wait a full year before I did.
Most of the people in my circles of overlapping communities have seen the new and improved me over the course of 2011. But just as a recap, I’ll do a quick review even though you can read more here.

Mid 2010, I was having some dizzy spells (end up being new glasses), but while at the ear/nose doctor, I was weighed by a jolly and very overweight nurse who giggled out “198, well at least you’re not 200 yet”. At that moment I knew I needed to make a serious course correction.
I’m a bit of a Yoda protégé. In that “NO try not, Do or Do Not, there is no try” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqOQLl7qmw8&feature=player_detailpage#t=48s) I’m just the type of person that if I want something I make it happen regardless of the obstacles. Don’t make the assumption that I get everything I want however, sometimes I don’t even try cause I can be lazy too but that’s beside the point haha.

Anyway, so I get the question all the time, did the weight stay off? Well here’s the proof that the system that I undertook works. Exactly one year later of my total weight loss, I have only fluxuated a max of 3 pounds +/-. Now that doesn’t sound like a big deal but when you fight as hard as I fought for 2.75 months every pound is lost ground. As I write this im currently sitting at 160.2 pounds Which is 2.2 pounds higher than when I completed my goal of 198.0.

Now granted, with Kacey pregnant, SPC, Vacation, SPC Asia, Thanksgiving then Christmas all pretty much in a 2 months span, 2.2 pounds could be a lot worse so there is perspective in that 2.2 pounds trust me.

So yes, the process I undertook (I hesitate to call it a diet) works if you are committed to it, are committed to the lessons it teaches you. That said there have some I’ve been in communication with others that undertook the same process and didn’t pull it off. There are others that did the same as I and were 100% successful then there are some still in the process and are pulling through with some serious effort.

The failures really comes from lack of effort, this isn’t weight watchers (which is a huge scam btw) or some other ‘eat your way to success diet’. This is literally a fundamental shift in your life, but a shift that happens over time and under an objective so that you don’t really know it’s happening. Then when it’s all done it’s just instilled in you.

The other big question I get when people ask is “How are you maintaining that weight?” Well quite honestly I don’t have an exact formula, really what I do to maintain the weight comes natural to the fact that I went through the process. So without a really good answer I’ll go into what is an average day for me. So normally I wake up and eat a bowl of cereal around 8:30am if I’m home.

Usually it’s a bowl of honey nut cheerios (I know I'm a big kid), or I eat a bowl of Kashi GoLean Crunch (Honey Almond Flax). You have to kind of watch out with these because they have kind of high sugars. Granted the Kashi is more simple sugars than the honey nut cheerios. Either way that’s usually breakfast but every so often I eat some pancakes/eggs/granola bar etc.

Around 10:30/11am I eat a second “meal” usually it’s an apple/orange if I'm home or one of the various bars I have in my bar drawer (you should see this thing everything from Nature Valley and Fiber Plus to Protein bars or peanut bars.

Lunch time usually comes around 12:30 for me. Most common when I'm home is a trip to Panera bread for a soup and salad pick two. (Sesame Asian Chicken Salad and French Onion Soup. I’ll get a sandwich every so often too.) When I'm not so good, I’ll make a trip to Chick-Fila or a Pit Turkey shop near me (pit is the not so good Yankee version of BBQ).

Again around 2:30/3pm I’ll have something similar to what I had at 11am. A granola bar, apple/grapes/orange etc.

Dinner time is usually a crap shoot, if I'm on the road I find it eat slightly less “good” but not too terrible to throw me off. But usually it’s a good home made meal lots of greens moderate protein of chicken/fish/beef. Usually 2 or 3 to 1 ratio in volume not that I measure it but I just literally look at how much meat I have and triple that volume with whatever green I'm eating. Usually it will be something like salad/asparagus/broccoli etc etc.

Usually I don’t get too tired of anything. If anything it’s the bars that I get kind of tired of. It’s really hard to find a good carb to protein ratio bar that actually tastes good. But overall its really easy to maintain that eating style.

One thing I find important to mention is that just because you’ve lost weight and are skinny DOES NOT MEAN that you are ‘In Shape’. In fact there are some studies that suggest that overweight people that exercise are in better shape than skinner people that don’t. Obviously the target would be working out and being skinny.

So my new year’s resolution this year is to actually be “In Shape”. Working out more, hitting the elliptical more actually taking my bike out for rides etc. I’m not sure how motivated I am just yet or what my goal is going to be but as I figure that out and build up my ambition I’ll start working with that.

Who knows, this time next year I could be posting an update that I gained 15 pounds but in all muscle. Until then, I feel great with some minor tweaking here and there for course correction I don’t think I’ll ever go back to having that discussion with the nurse. If its something you'd like to undertake, please hit me up for some advice on how to start but the most advice i can offer is really get to the point where you are motivated to make it change.

To your health.

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DavidLev - January 11, 2012
Great job, Eric - looking good!

Deanna McNeil - January 2, 2012
Congratulations! Honestly, it is true that any "diet" will work, whether it is Weight Watchers or Paleo or whatever. You really hit the nail on the head when you observed that it is the shift in your life's habits that is the difference.

I found that finding something I really like (running) and joining an event propelled me to greater heights of fitness. Can't wait to hear about your next success

It’s sick, but I love the turbulence.

By Eric Harlan
Published: November 15, 2011
Updated: November 15, 2011

10 ways to make travel suck less!

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Mike Huguet - November 16, 2011
Great tips Eric. I learned a few tips and will try them, especially the rolling one.

military girl - November 16, 2011
It never ceases to amaze me 1. how helpful you are about sharing your learned lessons with folks and 2. how you find the silver lining in all your do. As a person who learned the rolling technique to almost perfection, I still didnt pack light, and I HATE turbulence however, I am in great agreement with you about all the things you have said and taught me to use. These are tried and true for most. I just need a few more bags I think.....lol

Cruise on up to the Med

By Eric Harlan
Published: October 22, 2011
Updated: October 22, 2011

Ok time for a follow on Cruise blog post to “Cruise on up to Alaska”. My wife and I had a pretty wicked trip to South America planned this year. We were going to hike up to Machu Picchu, camp in the Amazon and wonder through Ecuador.

Well mother nature had other plans and for reason I attribute to genuinely feeling better about ourselves after our weight loss, little Olivia (currently loading) probably wouldn’t fair well to the altitude and immunizations mommy would have to go through. So we set out to find something that would give us some adventure but would be more leisurely. A baby-moon if you will (even though I hate that word). It was actually pretty hard to find a good combination of those two things.

After some research we decided on a Mediterranean cruise that hit Rome (Italy), Messina (Sicily, Italy), Athens (Greece), Kushadasi (Turkey), Chania (Crete) and back to Rome. After a few tips on the Royal Caribbean line we decided to go with them for the trip. As always I try to wrap my travel posts with a bit of lessons learned that accompany my charming wit and sense of humor[/ego].

So let’s start off with the lessons learned from the Ship/Company itself first.

- Bye Bye Passports.

When you board, you go through something sort of like airport security. You fill out any last paper work then you get your boarding cards. Then they inform you that you will be giving up your passports to some guy later in the queue. Now they very well may have had this in writing, but it certainly didn’t stand out to me if they did. Something like that to a frequent international traveler WHILE IN COUNTRY is VERY scary to deal with. Obviously everything worked out fine and the return process was very orderly and well thought out. Still don’t like giving up my passport EVER.

- Smoking in places with very little ventilation (casino bars)
So Royal Caribbean is MOSTLY none smoking. You can smoke outside obviously, the Casino on board and some of the bars on board. Here’s the problem though. The areas you can smoke are adjacent or directly below (with open roofs) to main none smoking areas. Now it’s a proven fact that people who don’t smoke are MUCH more sensitive to the smell of smoke then smokers are. So you can pretty much smell the smoke anywhere congregation areas are. Some serious thought needs to be put into better ventilation or limiting smoking to above decks.

- Bed was worn out
The bed we had was super comfortable the very first night due to the fact that previously I literally flew two red eye flights in a single day (some kind of new record) and the bed was the first time I was actually horizontal in something like 35 hours. After that however it was painfully clear the mattress we had was in need of some flipping or replacing. Big valley’s etc etc.

- Buffett food mediocre while exclusive seating was quite good
The galley style mass trough feedings were iffy. The food in the common areas were very repetitious and pretty low quality. Granted I’ll give the benefit of the doubt there were plenty of other options readily available but if you wanted to grab a quick lunch or an off hours breakfast, it was pretty lame.

The other options on board range from a steak house to Italian so like I said if you’re tired of the buffet don’t get “My Time Dining”. My time dining essentially lets you eat whenever you want which basically means buffet food. If you get a set time assigned to you, you get placed in one of their nice rooms to eat that have an actual menu and pretty decent food.

- Room was large with balcony
Our room compared to the Holland America trip we took to Alaska was exponentially bigger. The stateroom with a balcony cost WAY less than the option on our Alaska cruise. I think mainly because of the sheer number of balcony suites available. Looking at the side of the ship it just seemed the entire boat was balconies.

- No espresso package
So a few tips about beverages on the ship. First like anything else all alcohol was extra, no freebies (at all). And the beer options left a bit to be desired especially in terms of draft beer. But you could order these drink packages. They had one for bottled water, one for soda and one for wine. Coffee, tap water, hot/ice tea were all free. The only thing that kinda sucked was that there was no package for premium style coffee drinks (cappuccino, latte, espresso etc). If there was I would have

been all over it.

The other thing to note, the soda package. You get this tumbler thermos style drink cup when you get the package delivered to your room. The package is like 45 dollars however the EXACT same cup is sold dock side when you board for like 5 bucks. Granted you also get a card marked with the fact you have a drink package but as long as your filling up with that cup, no one really gives you crap because it’s basically a self-serve fountain you use yourself. I’m not constituting stealing, just saying. That said you shouldn’t drink soda in the first place .

- Bathrooms kinda sketeched (smelled)
The toilets on the ship were all airplane suction based systems. In that when you flushed it could technically give your butt a hickey. That said, they failed to work a little too often in my opinion. Sometimes it wouldn’t flush sometimes you’d randomly smell things you just didn’t want to smell wafting around the ship.

-Hey stateroom attendant; do not disturb does not mean stand outside my door and call my room phone asking me to come to the door. It means don’t bother me.

Ship Summary:
Honestly the ship was beautiful and had a lot to offer. It had a freaking ice rink for goodness sake. However it doesn’t matter how cool it is a confined space gets boring after the 7th day on it regardless. Compared to my first experience on Holland America I would cruise with Royal Caribbean again in a heartbeat. Between the on board Johnny Rockets, Ben & Jerry’s, Arcade, separate supervised sections for kid age ranges there was plenty to do. Minor tweaks from the above would make it outstanding and honestly I had to dig kind of deep to come up with less than positive things to say.

-Rome and port of departure.
The only moderately annoying part of the vacation was getting from Rome to the port where you actually leave which is in Civitavecchia (“Chivie-Ta-Veck-E-Ah”). You can book private transportation that will cost you a pretty penny or a taxi which will utterly take you to the poor house. Or you can do as we did and take the train. It takes about an hour to get from the main train station in Rome (Rome Termini) to Civitavecchia and will only cost you about 18 euros a person for the round trip.

Now just like any other train system there are many other ways and lines to get to where you need to go so your best bet is to find where you are whether that is your hotel or the airport, and where you need to be train station wise and get a connection that will either take you to Civitavecchia directly or get to Rome Termini first (which is a directly line to the port). We actually purchased a ticket to get from a train station near our hotel, to a station a bit further down the line from Rome Termini but due to a translation bug in the system we ended up at Rome Termini and had to improvise. It cost a little more in taxi fare but ended up being more convenient in the long run.

First you need to decide if you want to purchase tickets in advance as I did or to purchase them when you get there. Since the station we were originally going to go to didn’t have a teller I bought mine on line, however if you go to Rome Termini first you can purchase them either at a kiosk or they have a “TrenItalia” customer service desk . I found this desk because of said language snafu and needing to change the tickets to leave from the new station. If you find you need to purchase tickets from an English speaking person, or you need to get info or just adjust tickets, this is what this desk looks like that you want to make your way to.

The train leaves usually from track 25-27 which is their regional tracks. The station at ROME Termini is divided into 3 areas. A bunch of Kiosk’s and travel desks, a main center waiting area that has the large ticker style departure/arrival times and

tracks as well as some shops, and then the actual business end where the trains come in and out. My opinion is it is best to go right to this 3rd area where the trains are after you get your ticket and find wait for your train to be posted a track.

VERY IMPORTANT – The last stop on the train you’re getting on is “PISA” so the train that gets posted looks something like this “PISA Cht” which means basically “going to Pisa by way of Civitavecchia” so once that posts, take your ticket and validate it. To validate your ticket you walk up to one of the many yellow machines on the support columns of the building and stick your ticket in. It then gets stamped with a time and date once you have that, go to that track number.

It takes like 5 mins to walk from that area to where the train actually departs from so walk with a prudent pace. Also the train we took going out has much less storage then going back into ROME. So be ready to jockey for space for your things.

Now once you get to your stop (Civitavecchia) you don’t need a taxi (if you’re able bodied). You walk out of the building which looks like this, turn right and walk down that street straight for about 3 blocks. No turns, no deviations just straight down. It’s a very nice sea side walk with vendors, shops and the best Pizza I ever had at “Pizzaria da baffone” (get the Margarita pizza, tell em Eric sent you….. he’ll look you like you’re insane but it will be funny anyway).

Once you walk to the end of that road there will be a McDonalds on the right and side and a gate straight ahead with an opening to the left. You just walk right through and they will have buses lined up to take you to the ship itself (don’t walk it’s pretty far from this point). Just look for your ship name on a sign in the front of the bus.

Boarding took 20 mins total which was very fast and efficient. Only complaint here is the space at the counter is completely mobbed and it’s hard to get in to talk to your rep, you kind of have to fight your way in. A little organization on their part would go a long way here.

That’s it; you’re on board at that point.

The only other thing to note is that when you get off the ship, at least on our itinerary it was pretty early in the morning. And we wanted to spend some time in ROME without going to our hotel first. So we did some quick research on luggage storage. Train stations in Europe are nice in that you can dump your baggage in a locker and go check out the city you’re in.

Under Track 24 at Rome Termini there is a baggage check called “Deposito Bagagli” you can take the elevator down and there are stairs as well. Here are the prices for it, kinda steep but worth it to not get a taxi back to your hotel or lug around your stuff all day.

Here you can see a photo I took of prices.

-Messina and Traffic Free for all

I’ve been to a lot of places in my travels the common theme is that everywhere outside the US it’s basically a traffic law, free for all. In that there are pretty much no rules in when to stop or go, when to switch lanes even which side of the road to drive on. Messina didn’t disappoint. Which is to say kind of fun to watch and amazing at the same time, kind of like ordered chaos.

Anyway…

If you notice in some of my photos, I like to taste the local beer or where ever I go. Granted I’m sure there are MUCH better beers available in these locations but I usually get what is readily available. Honestly I’m usually let down. Just like most default local “main stream” beer, Messina beer is like an American medium ale. If you’ve tasted stella, miller lite, budweiser etc etc. It’s pretty much all the same.

In terms of what to do in Messina there wasn’t much to do in terms of shore excursions so the wife and I decided to “Freestyle”. When we walk around with no real plans and no real direction we call that free styling. Don't get excursion you can walk to most places. You cannot however walk to the volcano Mount Etna which is about 35 minutes outside of the city. So if you want to go walking on a volcano get the excursion. It was a nice town to walk through, they have one of the most ornate clock towers that I’ve ever seen and has some pretty cool moving parts. You can check that out here. (cliff notes, Lion roars, rooster crows, people die, church is displayed etc etc).

We hiked to the top of a pretty cool over look that looked out over the city took a bunch of pictures and just genuinely enjoyed our time together. Honestly, free styling is one of my favorite things to do; you just never know what you’ll come across, good food you’ll have etc.

- Greece and the Temples
We were really looking forward to heading up to the Acropolis I didn’t do the proper research to find out what the state of the site would actually be. Turns out they’ve been working on it for years filling in some of the holes that have come with time. With that, there were TONS of cranes, scaffolding and workers running around the entire time. Granted I understand why it’s being done, but man it really ruined the opportunity to take photos.

The cool thing is that the day we were there was October 12th 2011 was the 60th anniversary of when the Nazi flag was ripped down from the Acropolis and Greece was returned to the Greek people, essentially liberating them from Nazi occupation. They had a pretty cool ceremony to mark this which consisted of raising the Greek flag and having the president on hand etc.

Given the state of things in Greece economically there were quite a few protestors at the location as we exited. Kinda glad they don’t go through the same security measures as they do in the states. If so we would have never been able to get in on the same day. As we arrived so did about 3 other cruise ships, plus the ceremonies; it was a freaking mad house. Just getting in took about 30 mins.

My advice for the Acropolis and the Parthenon is that to make sure you have a good 3 hours to spend up there. We only had about 1.5 hours and it just wasn’t enough time. We wondered around a bit and before we knew it, it was time to leave.

We did the “Athens and Sonora” trip which also took you for a 45 minute trip around the coast out to the Sonora peninsula where legend has it the Athenians dedicated the temple to Poseidon after he lost the peoples favor to the Greek God of Athena (hence “Athens”). Well not so much lost favor but lost the campaign between the two of them to see who would be the favorite of the people. The first democratic vote in Greek mythology and the first guy to get laughed at by his friends for losing to a chick.

The drive out was beautiful and totally worth the extra time. And the Temple was pretty cool as well, very well preserved. And to boot, Kacey and I got to stand on the furthest point south in main land Europe (that’s two continents for me).

A few tips:
- If you don’t go through a tour, it costs 12 Euros a person to get into the Acropolis
- If you do take the tour be warned there is an “optional” yet forced visit to a local swag shop where they sell nothing but tourist junk and serve you orange tang. The bright side; it’s been like years since I’ve had a glass of tang!

- Turkey, Ephesus, Saint Paul and First footsteps on Asia
Kushadasi is on the west coast of Turkey and used to be part of the Greek empire. It’s also the site of Ephesus which biblically a ton of stuff happened that involved Paul and the Ephesians. Regardless, it was just a really cool place to go wondering through. It was actually more fun to explore than the acropolis and the Parthenon was.

Here you could actually have free reign to move through most of the old shops and houses that made up ancient Ephesus. Ephesus was hailed as the gateway to Asia. It’s where the Temple of Artemis and the statue of Diana was (one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient world).

Believe it or not, this budding world traveler set his first step into Asia at this stop. That’s right part of Turkey is actually in Asia. I was hoping to run up to Istanbul at some point though. That city (and the country it resides in) is the only city/country that resides on two separate continents (Europe and Asia). Well maybe next time. The important thing is, new continent :-D. Granted I’ll be hitting Asia pretty hard in the coming weeks, it was still cool to do it there.

Some notes:

I always wanted to hear an authentic Adhan (Muslim Call to prayer). I found a great little café, had some Turkish coffee on hand and waited. I looked up possible prayer times on the web and found it listed at like 1:11. So I sat until about 1:30 and it never came. I was pretty bummed, so my wife and I continued about our day and explored, only to find that in Kusadasi the closest Adhan for the time I was there was at 4:11 pm. The good news is I did end up getting to hear this walking back to the ship. In a parking lot, ticked that I was hearing it for the first time surrounded by noisy Americans (no offense), taxi’s and a 12 deck super liner. It sucked. Maybe next time.

Free WiFi main bazaar named TP_LINK_BA0BCE. It’s near a Pandora shop… just saying, if you need a fix. There is also a café where I had some more coffee called “Lisa Café”. The WiFi password for the Lisa Cafe in the main bazar is "lisacafe090909". Again, if you need a fix.

The only bad thing about Ephesus, was that we didn’t have enough time to REALLY look around. It felt very rushed. We took the tour called “Ancient Ephesus”. My suggestion is to really try to arrange some private transportation beforehand and spend a good 4-5 hours there. We only got about 1.5 hours which was definitely NOT enough time.

That said, don’t take a taxi to and from Ephesus is about 60 Euros, you can arrange private transport for 20-30 euros. Save the extra few euros for renting the self-guided radios. They even have Ipod tours. If you get a tour and they take you for a tour of Matis which is their local rug emporium, they will take you down for a “demonstration” it’s actually quite informative, however the second it’s over you get mobbed and shuttled off to individual rooms where they start rolling out rug after rug and start with the hard sell. Do yourself a favor, unless you REALLY want to buy a 3,000 dollar rug (and that’s the very cheap end) as soon as the demo is over, get up and walk out quickly, its a tarp!

Bad Turkish coffee is just bad coffee! I mean… really bad. And NEVER and I do mean EVER, drink Turkish coffee to the bottom of the cup. See, the grounds stay in the coffee. They bring the grounds, water and sugar to a boil three times. Then they pour it, grounds included. So if you drink to the bottom of the cup, you get a mouth full of spent coffee. Not good. Take my word for it.

Saffron is really cheap about 10€ for 10 grams (for the good stuff) 20 grams for the ok stuff. When we came home, my wife showed me the pinch she purchased a few weeks before for something like 8 bucks. So yeah we loaded up.

-Chania Crete
Looking on the list of things to do in Chania (hun-ya) it seemed like it was going to be a complete bust of a day. We were only at dock for about 6 hours which was very short compared to the 10-12 hours we were at other stops but I had a good sign as we sat for breakfast. We’re sitting at the table at the stern of the ship looking out over the water. And literally I watch a submarine surface right in front of me. It was the first time I’ve ever seen one do that in real life. At first I thought it was a buoy, it got larger and I figured I just didn’t look at it well enough then assumed it was an out cropping with some sort of warning light on the top, next thing I know it’s moving and has the entire deck above the surface. VERY cool thing to watch happen over orange juice and fake eggs.

Based on the things we saw available to do (or lack thereof) we decided yet again to free style and boy was that the right choice. Don't get an excursion the bus that comes right next to the ship is only 3€ per person round trip and takes you right to the city center, you can’t walk because it’s a 20 min drive.

Forget turkey if you want hand crafted leather bags Crete is the place they make them in the shops. I mean incredible craftsmanship goes into these things. Everything from diaper bags, to purses, sandals, to laptop bags.

Cool to walk to the fort through the side streets we had a map but it wasn't needed, you can pretty much roam and find your way, just keep walking down hill until you get to the Venetian harbor.

We had a great time here walking through the narrow streets, again coffee and chill time is a must I really enjoyed Crete the most in terms of freestyle-ability.

- Summary
I’ve worked myself into a bit of an odd corner. I’ve inadvertently set the bar very high in terms of what interests me while traveling. When we found we couldn’t safely do our South America trip, we were trying to find something “Fun, Exciting and Adventurous” yet easy on the body and relaxing. That was WAY harder than I ever thought it would be to find.

Once we did, we had an absolute blast; my wife is a freaking mountain goat (in a good way). That chick hiked up and down the acropolis, all around Ephesus, down through the streets of Crete and dodged the crazy drivers in Messina. I was seriously impressed. With all the walking she did, we might just have been able to do Peru after all. Ok, well maybe not but still pretty impressive.

I would certainly sail on Royal Caribbean again, like I said I had to work pretty hard to find negative things to say. It was a pretty tightly run ship (giggity) and overall was a pleasant experience.

Definitely get maybe 2-3 days in Rome collectively. There is a LOT to do it’s a place I wouldn’t mind going back to and exploring a little bit more.

If you’re looking for a little adventure while still having a nice quite SMOKE FREE (talking to you Holland America) room to go back to. You should check it out.

Hope that was helpful and as always, some more.

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Ebay, you reek of Idiocy

By Eric Harlan
Published: July 2, 2011
Updated: July 6, 2011

Ebay, you reek of idiocy.

I try REALLY hard not to post complaint blogs, it’s usually a waste of energy. But in this case, I'm so damn annoyed I need to get it out. Back in the day I used to do quite a bit of business on Ebay. Everywhere from computer parts, to garden tools. My very first digital camera, I purchased on Ebay, it was a sweet Sony Cyber shot with a whopping 2 megapixels of photo taking technology.

I used to LOVE Ebay, as pretty much every techie that didn’t have the cash to really go big back then did. Aside from buying stuff, I occasionally sold things as well. There was a time early in the Ebay days when people actually cared that they had an account tied to their bank/credit card and would follow through with their commitments. Ebay used to have a pretty strong stance against people that would bid up an auction, win it then refuse to pay. If I recall they would cancel their Ebay account and in turn their paypal account making it difficult to purchase anything online much less through Ebay itself.

Well in the last 2 months I’ve attempted to sell two separated items. Each time the &*$&$@$holes bid, they didn’t just bid once by mistake they would bid 6-8 times throughout the course of the auction then refuse to pay up. Now I could go into a rant about how sleazy people have no respect for others or, get downright nasty in my words. But that’s a general annoyance with people anywhere not just in this situation. No my issue is with Ebay. And trust me; this is where “Sailor Tongue” would make a remarkable appearance.

So here’s the deal, there is ZERO and I mean absolutely NOTHING in place to protect a seller against idiots like this. Here’s the process Ebay expects you to follow through with. With someone denies payment your sorry ass needs to wait for 5 days after the auction, and then file a formal complaint. That then goes into some system somewhere and eventually someone gets back to you and pretty much congratulates you because they’ve refunded your listing fees. That’s all well and good, you’re not out any financial loss but what Ebay could care less about is that the sale is pretty much a wash, because as that initial idiot was jacking up the bids, he was also beating other people out. Who, since having lost have gone on and purchased something similar to your goods from another auction.

At the end of the day you lose out quite a bit; TIME, FRUSTRATION, a potential sale etc. Here’s the awesome part. If you file a complaint, you can’t leave any feedback on the buyer that screwed you and wasted your time because the only way a seller can leave feedback is if they mark the auction as followed through and purchased. So they are free to do it over and over again until Ebay steps in and cancels their account (which they promptly create a new account tied to a new credit card). And that includes leave bogus feedback on your account because you called them out and told them pretty much where to go.

You are literally 100% powerless as a seller on Ebay, their policies have NO TEETH whatsoever. However if you’re the buyer, you pretty much have free reign. The only thing I can figure I can do in any sort of retaliation is to “bid snipe” the person that screwed me over on anything they list (and trust me I'm gonna do it, just to show how much of an annoyance and waste of time it is… just to spite.)

So here’s the skinny (like it effin matters). Ebay you can PISS OFF, I’ll never sell with you again nor will I buy from any seller on Ebay. I’d rather just pay the extra few bucks and shop on Amazon (you know the retailer that’s kicking your ass).

(ps, that’s is the absolute nicest way I could have said what I really think about you and still be readable by women and possibly small children…I'm waiting for that call back so I can REALLY tell you how I feel *evil grin*)

Update: I was finally able to open a "case" today to report the unpaid items. And this is the pop up i get. Hey Ebay, something is pretty wrong when you have a bot that will open and close cases for unpaid items for you. How about putting some umph behind your policies cancel some accounts garnish some paypal accounts? Yeah, I know why would you do that, it will eat into your bottom line right.

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Yellow Lizard

By Eric Harlan
Published: December 2, 2010
Updated: December 12, 2010

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea……

Actually I have no idea, I looked around under the sea and I didn’t see a single pineapple. I will say this though; Tahiti has some of the best pineapple I’ve ever had.

This year my wife and I hit a seemingly monumental achievement. Our five year wedding anniversary was back in July of 2010, as a result of all our hard work we wanted to treat ourselves to a special vacation. Now if you’ve read some of my travel posts you’ll note that I'm not the luxury sit on the beach for hour’s kind of traveler. That said, my wife, who grew up on the shores of the Florida gulf has always had her eye on one of those huts over water do-hickies.

We have pretty wide differences in opinions on vacation destinations and activities. So a few years ago we came up with a system that seems to be working well for us. We group our holidays in groups of threes. For example, the first vacation in the rotation is “hers”, the second would be “ours” and the last would be “mine”. With a few simple rules of common curiosity we can pretty much pick what we want to do with in reason. Our last trip to Alaska was “ours” (which reminds me, I’m up for two now, but I digress). Bora Bora or Fiji was always the apple of my wife’s eye in terms of get away locations so we started looking into them seriously for our five year.

We settled on a location sort of in the middle, it was going to be Tahiti but it would be the island of Mo’orea (yellow lizard) in the society archipelago. Believe it or not the area alone of the Tahitian archipelago covers more area physically than the European continent….only most of it is water. The island had a bunch to offer, it had the luxury style over water bungalows, actual activities to do (Bora Bora actually has very little to do), it reduced our overall travel time by about six hours as well as had interior roads so we could go off and explore on our own.

Now, you know you travel A LOT when you think total flight time to Tahiti “isn’t that bad”. The trip there was actually fairly pleasant. I was going back in time zones so I slept my normal sleep schedule, woke up and I'm Tahiti, not too shabby. Coming back was kind of a haul, or at least it felt that way. I think knowing I was looking at a solid time home from work and traveling I was just ready to get home.

Ok enough of all that, you’re reading this because you want to know what Tahiti is like. When you think “over water bungalow” you will have certain images in your head. If you ever find yourself trying to pick which hotel to stay at on Mo’orea and you want that hut feel you’re looking at one of two hotels in my opinion. The Sofitel hotel and the Hilton are the only two on the island that have true over water bungalows. The intercontinental has beach side bungalows that actually have decks down to the deep water but they’re not over a lagoon like you might have in your head. Looking at both the Sofitel and the Hilton there wasn’t much difference, however overlooking their lagoon areas I think I would have rather stayed in the Sofitel. We stayed in the Hilton.

We did a few of the excursions offered by the locals, the first was probably the best one we did. It was a snorkeling/picnic on one of the nearby atolls. We got to swim around with some black tip sharks as well as some rays and other fish. Nice bbq/picnic on the beach, got my first taste of Possion Cru (raw fish, lime juice, coconut mild, onions and cucumbers). We also did an island tour which was ok, but we rented a car after so it wasn’t as helpful as I would have liked it to be. Although we did get turned on to the best place to get black pearls and other island local made swag. Lastly we did a tiki village show/feast sort of thing. I thought this was going to be the lamest part of the trip but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was quite enjoyable. The food was amazing as they cooked all the food in an underground oven and the show, which I thought was going to be super cheesy, was actually very well put together and enjoyable. It was very obvious that the locals have an extreme pride for their culture.

Of all the good things readily available on the island, nothing… and I nothing beat waking up pulling the curtains back of your hut windows and walking out to the views we had from our bungalow. Sitting there on the deck trying to overcome this pasty geek disposition doing nothing for hours in between LITERALLY rolling off the deck into the lagoon to do some snorkeling or kayaking was a God send. At night watching the thunder heads out at sea float by giving off their own fireworks. We even saw shooting stars from our porch.

Overall it was a great trip high on the cost side of things but still manageable. Great chance to get away and do nothing but play in the water and fish watch. I’d recommend it but if you do, you should plan for some time in some of the other archipelagos such as Tuamotu or the Marquises life is even slower there, most rustic and less fru fru…right up my alley. Next time.

As always, some lessons learned.

EVERYTHING and I mean absolutely everything other than pineapple, breadfruit and taro is imported to the islands, so EVERYTHING is expensive. There are 3 grocery stores on the island that I saw and probably a few I didn’t. A 5 litre jug of water in the grocery store was 5 bucks, a .5 (don’t decimals make a huge difference) at the hotel was 6 bucks. The first thing you should do is hit the grocery store for essentials otherwise… leave your wallet in a constant open position at the hotels.

Did you know pineapples grew on the ground, not in trees? I did, amazing how many people visiting there didn't know that.. just saying..

Tahitian children are taught three languages in school. In order Tahitian, ENGLISH then French. This is French Polynesia we’re talking about. Found that interesting.

Pineapple rum from the local pineapple plantation harvesting and distillery was amazing!

There are 2 types of desirable black pearls A and B. They’re gauged totally on the sheen of their coating, not on their size. However if you can find an A quality that’s big it’s a double bonus.

There are TONS of shops on the island to buy pearls. All I’ll say is if you can buy them loose and have your own jewelry made, you cut down a lot on the normal 1000% markup of jewelry. Buy from the local none traditional shop owners (ie. Shack on the side of the road).

No one can own Tahitian land except for a Tahitian OR someone who marries a Tahitian. Most land is handed down from family to family over thousands of years.

“CFM” and “XFM” are the same currency, French Polynesia Franc’s. Just to avoid the confusion.

When you rent a car and you’re driving around at night, keep in mind the coconut crabs are out and on the roads. Think “Seafood Slalom” .

To know if a coconut is good to open and eat, shake it and listen for water.

Fresh coconut tastes NOTHING like you think it would.

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Oktoberfest

By Eric Harlan
Published: December 2, 2010
Updated: December 4, 2010

What is Oktoberfest for a first time visitor? Visions of Litres of the gold stuff, fräuleins as far as the eye can see and brightly colored beer tents with row upon rows of drinking gamed picnic tables!

Well, you’d actually be pretty spot on actually. This year I got to fulfill two fantasies of mine, going to Oktoberfest and doing a European beer tour with my father.

I was due to speak at The Experts Conference in Dusseldorf Germany on a Tuesday. One of the great things about being a traveling SharePoint geek is that when you plan things correctly you can actually have some spare time in any given place you’re going to be. I worked some magic, figured out flight times and schedules and realized I could take my dad over to Munich, enjoy quite some time at Oktoberfest.

So time came around and the Harlans were off to Germany for a small, but at the same time, large taste of the original European beer scene. The flight landed and we were off to a running start, we didn’t have much time after all. We literally sprinted off to our lodgings, which was just outside of Munich (Garching).

One of the first things you will need to do when planning a trip to Oktoberfest is to work out your lodging WAY (and I mean WAY) in advance. For example “Jaegers Hostel” which is one of the more well-known hostel for its non-hostel like conditions is already sold out for the 2011 Oktoberfest at the time of this posting. That’s ten months in advance.

Hostels for Oktoberfest are a tricky situation. On most nights you can get a room as little as 5 bucks a night. Since hostels aren’t regulated and they’re, in most cases, a knock down version of a bed and breakfast they can charge what they want, and they charge a pretty penny for Oktoberfest. You best bet is to find a low key hotel, hostel or B&B outside of town close to a subway line. We stayed at the “Park Residence”.

When you get to the actual festival the first thing you’ll realize if you didn’t do any research into anything other than the beer tents (I'm guilty), is that the festival grounds is a full on town world fair. Farris wheels, snitzel stands, pretzel stands, games and prizes to be won by one and all. It’s actually extremely family friendly.

As for picking a tent, there is some finesse, luck, strategy and research involved. First you need to know what kind of Golden stuff you want to drink. For me, it’s usually not golden at all. Usually a dark red hue or a dark brown is what I gear towards. I really enjoy the Hofbrau dunkle (dunkle=dark). However I knew through my reading up of the Hofbrau house tent, that you can pretty much expect to find all the non-locals there (check out the original Hofbrau house when you’re not at the festival). I wanted the real deal; after all how many times in your life do you get to go to the 200^th anniversary of Oktoberfest with your dad? So I searched and searched to find the perfect tent. After sifting through all 14 beer tent descriptions I narrowed it down to “Bavarian Heaven” (Hackerzelt). Or the other tent frequented by local Bavarians the “Augustinerzelt” tent, which is right across the street from the Hackerzelt. Here is a list and discription of all the tents.

The second part of this trick is to be as swat team like as possible. You see it’s possible to reserve your table in advance. You can only reserve it after 17:00 hours so before that its first come first serve. My father and I got to the fairgrounds around noon thinking for sure on a weekday at noon there would be plenty of places to choose from. HA! I couldn’t have been more wrong in my speculation. To our advantage however, we were only two and finding seating room, or convincing some inebriated folks to scootch over for us wasn’t that hard. And let me just say, my father found the table, and he picked the greatest Oktoberfest table that ever could have been.

We had the perfect mix of young bucks itching to show their worth, fräuleins trying to be in as close to authentic as possible in their period dress and the veterans who have literally been to 50 years worth of Oktoberfest’s. We were two rows from the center of the tent where all the music was played in a huge gazebo.

We made quick friends with the locals at our tables, the older couple cursed Hitler multiple times declaring Germany was an amazing place before that “idiot” got into power. It has never been the same since. He captivated my father with the story of his Gamsbart, how in his day it was a right of manhood to go up into the hills of Bavaria and hunt the Chamois and create the hat worn accessory. He was blown away after the man gave him a medallion sized he wore on his hat made from the same material he had hunted as a boy.

Beer being distributed like bottles of water on a hot day, pretzels the size of your head (literally) making their way down the aisles, music playing, and chanting going on in the orchestra like drunken symphony. Hours and Hours went by, it doesn’t matter if you don’t drink, take a break for a while, drink water, eat some pretzels or one of the FABULOUS half chickens. Wow, slow roasted brined chicken was probably the most amazing chicken I ever had. Granted it could have been the atmosphere, the mood I was in or hell let’s face it, it might have been all the beer. Regardless, it was by far the most memorable and fun time I ever had drinking a beer.

As always I leave you with some words of wisdom.

- Don’t be afraid to ask. If you don’t read German, don’t stare at the subway map and think somehow you’ll figure it out. You might but by then 5 trains of come and gone. I didn’t do this, I’m not ashamed to just ask.

- Don’t stand on the tables, its ok to stand on the bench just don’t stand on the table ask @joeloleson about that one

- The Munich subway is a strange one. You buy a ticket to your destination via an automated machine. Through loss of translation we thought the ticket was good for a week or a certain time for two people. Later we found out that it is good ONE WAY for two people or round trip for one person. We bought one ticket the entire time we were there and were never asked to see our ticket.

- Munich is my favorite European city by far. Nowhere have I ever been where you can walk the streets, get a doner kabab, listen to a guy play classical piano on the street, and a British guy that plays the didgeridoo. The people are insanely nice and will go out of your way to help you out.

- When in Munich refer to everyone or where you are as “Bavaria”. Some hard core locals denounce being a part of Germany rather a part of the old kingdom of Bavaria. Good thing is no one will scoff at you if you call someone Bavarian even if they consider their self German first.

- Did I mention to plan your trip to Oktoberfest really far in advance?

- Marienplatz is the city center, both via subway and via taxi. Its where it’s all going down.

- There are only 6 types of beer sold at Oktoberfest. They have all been around a very long time and adhere to German Beer Purity Order Reinheitsgebot. It might be wise to try them before you get over there or before you go to the festival to choose which beer you want to have and thus which tent you want to go to.

- If you randomly hear people chanting and clapping and you see heads turning and people standing on benches it is either a one person chugging or a chugging contest. If you choose to do this, you better damn well finish without stopping. If you do stop, you will be booed by a thousand people. It isn’t a pretty sound. Ladies, you are not left out of this practice. If you have it in you go for it, you wont be the only one!

- I almost forgot an important one. Beer only comes in one size Litre and only one type per tent. To order them simply raise the amount of fingers that you want. Its that easy. Don’t try to have a conversation just hold up the fingers and a few mins later you have your beer. And they only take cash.

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One Fifty Five or Bust

By Eric Harlan
Published: November 7, 2010
Updated: November 8, 2010

Mission: Lose 45 pounds by end of February 2011

(Follow up to this post on how the weight was maintained)

I haven’t posted this up till now and only very few people I’ve been making some pretty big lifestyle changes outside of trusted friends and family.

I’ve finally started my program and I figured it was a good idea to make it public and therefore hold me somewhat accountable for success.

About 3 years ago I met a guy by the name of John Collins at the Baltimore SharePoint Users Group that I co-founded as well as co-run. When I first met John I knew he was a special kinda dude. He had a lot of passion for technology and SharePoint. He was one of the very first members of the group and we had many of beers after session nights.

After a few months I realized I saw him less and less at meetings. When I did see him I noticed a pretty drastic weight loss. Honestly I feared the worse and finally after the 2010 Baltimore SharePoint Saturday I asked him .. “Hey man what’s up? Is everything ok.. you’ve lost a lot of weight.” A huge smile came over Johns face and he said, everything is wonderful I’ve been purposely losing weight. John went on to tell me his story (which I’ll let you read on the link provided if you’re interested). Bottom line, he lost over 90 pounds! http://johnsoptimalhealth.blogspot.com/2010/07/lorem-ipsum-dolor-sit-amet-consectetur.html

Fast forward a few months, after trips to Oktoberfest and Sweden and I was ready to lose some pounds. It really came when I went to the doctor to look into a possible ear infection. Thankfully it ended up being just a new eye glasses subscription and being tired. But as part of the process I had to get weighed…. 198 pounds. The overweight nurse joked, we’ll at least you’re still under the 200 mark. I was horrified. I’ve always been a pretty small guy. I think I “carry my weight well”. I don’t consider myself unhappy but I certainly knew I was overweight. Before I did get to that 200 mark I figured there was time to make a change and get back to my ideal weight.

I said to myself that if I can get to 160 I would be very happy. That’s 38 pounds from day one. My Body Mass Index (BMI) puts me at 143 as optimum. Honestly I don’t want to get that small. In my mind’s eye 155 is ideal for me.

I'm using the Take Shape for Life program. Not for the speed factor (which is a huge bonus) but I like the idea of eating more, but less. It’s something I know is at the core of staying healthy and I need to set some good habits moving forward. Same with John, I’ll let you do your own research into the Medifast program. I love it so far so I know this could turn into a post about how awesome it is.If you're interested in it let me knowI'll turn you on to John and he can tell you much more than I can.

That said, here I go. I'm going public with the change and I’ll be keeping track here.

Week 1 Nov 1st - 8th: 9.5 pounds lost

Update: I went on vacation to Tahiti came back to find i actually lost a pound and a half. I was hoping that the strategy that the "Take Shape For Life" method teaches you would pay off. I ate very sensibly the entire trip, had mostly fish, lean beef and chicken for main meals. I didn’t stay on plan 100% I had a few French fries and some breads etc. I thought I’d pay for this, I was under the belief that if I came back and only gained a pound or even two I would be ok. I’d be ecstatic if I maintained weight.

Did a lot of swimming, hiking and kayaking so...When I came back to the US in through L.A. the border agent looked at my passport, looked at me and says "Dude you've lost some serious weight..." I could have kissed him if i wasn't afraid the TSA would have tackled me from the behind.

When I saw I lost weight I was thrilled. Twenty Pounds down 23 to go.

Update – End of Year

Well one of the most dreaded days of the year for anyone trying to watch what they eat came and went this year. Christmas day was not like an average day for me considering what I ate while on my program. I had some lasagna, a staple of the Harlan Christmas that cannot under any circumstances be turned away. It was my Great Grandmothers recipe, that was handed down to my Grandmother who handed it down to my wife who has carried the torch magnificently.

I also had some turkey and ham, lots of salad as well as some green beans and venison. Not exactly on plan but I went into the day feeling very confident and ok with the fact that I wasn’t going to stay on plan.

Why is that Eric? You may ask… Well that’s because Christmas Eve I weighed myself and I officially hit 168 pounds. What’s that mean? Well that means I’ve officially lost 30 pounds!

Pretty excited as you can probably guess. I think 160 is my official transitioning point. I may creep down to 158 so I can have a nice round number of 40 pounds lost but who knows. I do know this however, Old Navy had a sweet after Christmas sale on Jeans. Most on sale for 15 bucks, I had two gift cards and my jeans just don’t fit anymore. I went to old navy and scooped up on 7 friggin pairs of jeans lol. I lost 3+ inches off my waist.

Eh, anyway, enough of the bragging. I'm SUPER STOKED so far, and honestly… I'm looking forward to that chick fila sandwich… In moderation of course.

Next update will probably be my goal weight

Update: Track, Wall, SEE YA LATER!

FINALLY. I'm at my goal weight. On January 22^nd 2011 I got there. I started on November 2^nd beating my end date of Feb 28^th by more than a month. Overall on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hardest thing I’ve ever done) this was probably about a 4 (honestly). It took only a few times of stern will power to curve my cravings. I ate a good bit of sugar free Jello to get me past those. I imagine I’ll drift down to around 158lbs (an even 40 pounds lost) while I try to figure out the best way for me to transition I have to do it systematically or I’ll just regain weight fast. I think it’s going to entail supplement meals and regular meals however I’ll need to figure out something convenient or it just won’t happen for me.

So I'm 22 days into my new year’s resolution and I'm done. Feeling great. A few friends and family are on the same program and their seeing just as good of results. Good times, now to keep it off. Oh and to have a chickfila sandwich with freakin french fries! Oh baby..

If you're interested in how I did this specifically please reach out to me. There are a lot more intricate details that I leave out because it's just too specific for the audience. However it may not be to specific if you want to try this plan out for yourself. In fact I highly recommend you reach out. Its fast, its easy its safe, being overweight isn't.

Update: I hit 158 while in transition so thats an even 40 pounds. We'll see if i can maintain some sort of consistancy. My hope is to float around 158-168 with a eye on 160ish as a foundation.

Start of the process: Start weight: 198 lbs End weight 160

4 Weeks in and 20 pounds down:

Here is a picture of 3 days before Christmas in 2009 at Ryans Daughter pub

Here is the same place, same booth, same dad, 1 year later 2010. Week 8, 30 pounds down (sorry the red eye reduction made me look ghostly)

3 Months 1 week - Down 39 pounds "GOAL" weight of 38 pounds total of 160lbs

Quest to find good engergy/protein bars to get me off the 2.5 dollar protein bars from MediFast. Need more carbs for intake but want to find something that tastes good and has a good balance of carbs/protein/fat/calories.

I will rank them to my personal taste (Terrible, Edible, Good, Awesome) as well I'll list the main nutrition facts (Calories/Fat Calories/Carbs/Protein)

Medifast Chocolate Crunch: Awesome

Zone Perfect

Cookie Dough: Terrible
Double Dark Chocolate: Awesome (190/50/22/12) *tastes just like the medifast choc. crunch bars*
Fudge Graham: Good (210/60/23/14) *a little too sweet*

Balance Bar

Chocolate Peanut Butter: Good
Almond Brownie: Awesome (200/70/21/14) *Taste real great, huge fan. Now i gotta find more.*

Atkins

Chocolate Chip Granola Bar: Good
Caramel Chocolate Peanut Nougat: Good (170/100/19/10) *not bad at all, good amount of peanut and caramel*
Caramel Double Chocolate Crunch: Good 160/80/22/10 *pretty good small amount of caramel adds a good bit of change, low suger too only 1g*

Kashi

Cinnamon Coffee Cake (crunchy): Good (160/40/26/8) *seems to have "better" carbs but also has a lot of sugar 13g)
Dark Mocha Almond Granola Bar: Awesome (130/35/21/6) Low calorie great crunch

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Nedra - January 14, 2011
Great job Eric, you are an inspiration :-)

Tommy - December 29, 2010
Skinny!

Kanwal - December 1, 2010
Eric this is awesome motivator! Great job and I'm going to have to check out the medifast program myself. Keep the updates coming

Wor Tony - December 1, 2010
Best of luck to you - we'll hopefully see a lot less of you at the next SharePoint Saturday ;-)

Smitty - November 12, 2010
Grats bro! Remain vigilant! However, I'll still hold you accountable for ONE Anderson Valley Winter Solstice next time you're in the 'Burgh!

Eric - November 8, 2010
Thanks bro!

Mark McGovern - November 8, 2010
Good Luck Eric - 9.5 the 1st week is a great start out of the blocks

Cruise on up to Alaska

By Eric Harlan
Published: September 17, 2010
Updated: September 17, 2010

The thought of a cruise never really interested me. The thought of sitting on a boat for a week or more putting around the ocean stopping here and there for a few hours wasn’t extremely appealing. The one and only condition to ever take a cruise would be a trans-world cruise for months or a cruise to Alaska.

Well before I have the chance to take a few months off work for a trans-world cruise, I finally got a chance to take the cruise to Alaska and here’s the low down.

First some of the facts:

We took our trip on the Holland American liner the “Zaandam” (“Zon-dum”). The ship was pretty nice a very middle of the road ship. It wasn’t crazy over the top extravagant and it wasn’t bottom of the barrel budget liner either, at least from my limited knowledge of cruise ships go (See “Titanic”).

The boarding process resembled something of an international flight out of an airport. First check was passport and boarding pass, second check point the same, then you go through security the same as if you were in an airport. After which, you fill out a quick health questionnaire, get your boarding card and you’re off to the ship to dump your bags.

The card is basically your pass to everything on the ship. Prior to boarding, you are expected to attach your credit card to your ship card. I was pretty nervous about this to be honest. I'm not too keen on putting my card out there for anything to be charged to it. I will be honest it makes life pretty easy; the alternative is that you have to bring cash and deposit that cash to the card. Either way the ship is completely cashless.

There are two ways to eat on the ship. The first way is the “Main dining room”. Now what they don’t really come out and say or at least wasn’t very clear to us, is that the main dining room is free buffet style. So with the price of admission, food to an extent is all inclusive.

The second way to eat is by reserving a table in one of the restaurants there are 5 total and so far from what we could tell you only have to pay to eat at one of them (the Pinnacle Grill) as the quality of food is notably better. But again the ship is cashless so you are charged, in our case, 20 dollars per person to have a meal at the restaurants. What did twenty dollars get me? 9-10oz Filet Minion, over a thin layer of whipped potatoes in addition to two huge prawns, steam asparagus and a scoop of French vanilla ice cream. And I went light so in a word, it’s worth the twenty bucks.

At the end of the trip the cruise line automatically puts 11 bucks per person per room on your card for gratuity that includes both room cleaning, food prep, food serving etc. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problem giving them a 176$ tip for 8 days of great service. However again, I wish this was made clear and transparent to us before we left port or when we booked. Again don’t like things just being charged to me without my consent. You can add additional tip to this 11 bucks a day or you can actually have it removed if you are so inclined.

Everyone so far on the ship is extremely nice. From the servers to the staff to the bar tenders. Everyone so far was awesome. Most of the crew of this voyage is from Indonesia and have the respect and kindness as such. Even if the rude weathered Americans they are catering to aren’t. Kudos to the staff.

The ship is surprisingly easy to navigate, at first it seems very large and daunting but in no time flat you are remembering which restaurants and shops are forward of mid-ship, which are aft and if it’s starboard or port side.

Live music throughout the ship, from Elton John cover piano men to string quartets certainly a classy touch when you’ve been on the water all day whale watching. There are few things better in life than having a water tan, sipping back a potent cocktail and listening to Rocket Man (giggity). There’s also a DJ that “spins the wheels of steel” up on the crow’s nest at night. I honestly don’t mind 30/40’s era big band music.

Some of the negative:

If you would have asked me before I took my first cruise, if I thought that cruise liners allowed people to smoke inside a ship. I would have said there is no way in the world, especially because one of the biggest dangers on a ship is fire. And with all that pure oxygen on board (yeah I said it…I said it..) I can see that being a risk.

Apparently you can smoke in the ship including in your room. For a nonsmoker this is a major issue. Every single room is a smoking room. You know it the second you walk in the door. Honestly every single breath can be miserable. If anyone from Holland America reads this. Seriously, designate smoking areas and have nonsmoking rules. People who don’t smoke shouldn’t have to live in a closed box for a week with people who do. IMO unacceptable and I’ll consider that next time I go to take a cruise.

That said, they did go through “reasonable” attempts to make it better for us. There apparently are stages; you first get a room deodorization machine which does basically nothing at all. Next they come in and tear down all the fabrics in your room from the curtains to the sheets, towels robes everything goes and is washed and replaced. Which in itself is quite the effort that I certainly recognize. However the root of the cause being smokers in the next cabin over and years of smoke in every single fiber of room really can’t take the smell away.

Lesson learned, find a nonsmoking ship.

Don’t scoff at me because you’re going to say “Well you’re on vacation you shouldn’t need it”; but wifi on the ship is CRAZY expensive. Fifty Five US dollars for 100 mins or pay as you go for something like .25 cents a min. And that doesn’t exclude loading time which crawls along at blazing ADSL speeds. Do yourself a favor. Write all the emails you need to at once, when you get to port tether with your cell phone (since you are on US shores, and they do have cell phones in Alaska) and send out all the stuff you need. Better yet, disconnect completely and enjoy your quiet time.

Excursions:

Every single port of call we pulled into was inundated with peddlers of excursion wares. You do pay a premium to be able to have a ticket and just get on a bus and be whisked away with little to no thought. However, if you wanted to save a buck wait until you get to port and literally step off the ship to plan what you will be doing that day. It makes life more interesting and you never know you might just have more fun.

That said, I will recommend highly “The Best of Juneau”. Pick you up ship side; take you to another harbor to drop you off at a whale watching boat. However in transit you get a full low down of Juneau and its history. The boat goes out to the channel to an island where you have a fresh salmon bake. And when I say fresh, I mean it was literally caught out of one of many creeks that day.

The Undersea Adventure (Semi Sub) in Sitka was an absolute waste of time. And I say that with the utmost love. The people, the sub, and the passion they had for their area of the world and its wild life was great. However I can only look at kelp and star fish for so long. The best part of my under sea adventure was the Bald Eagle I saw pulling out of the harbor.

The Jeep and Canoe trip in Ketchikan was freaking awesome. The staff was great the experience over all was just a ton of fun. They had freaking CB’s! Do you know how awesome it is to be in a convoy of jeeps in the back woods cracking on each other with CB’s!? Everyone got a call sign, us, in our 4 banger automatic red jeep took on the name Hot Tamale. The canoeing part was kinda “meh” you went to a very pretty lake paddled out about a half mile to another spot on shore and took a VERY brief nature hike. The information was pretty neat though. After which you had a pretty meager meal of smoked salmon chunks and rolls. It was in a campy type setup so it kind of worked for it.

If you ever get to Ketchikan and take the jeep excursion, tell Toby that “Hot Tamale” says… “MONEY!”.

Warning about the excursions, none of them are planned longer than you are actually in port so you don’t have to worry too much about missing the boat however a lot of them are planned up to the last 30 mins before you need to be on board. We literally didn’t get to see anything but two shops in Ketchikan and from what I could see, it looked like I would enjoy that town the most of all the stops we made. Bummer.

Wildlife:

Well it’s Alaska what do you think I’m about to say. Again, as I stated in some of my other posts, I'm not really in the trips for the wildlife however when there is such an abundance of it and their really cool animals, it makes talking about the wildlife a very important part. On the trip we saw: Wild Salmon (Chum, Sock-Eye, King, Silver, and Pink.. what you didn’t know there were many kinds?), Black Bear, Humpback Whales (breeching), Killer Whales (Orca), Sea Lions, Harbor Seals, Bald Eagles, various other fowl, dolphin (or porpoise not sure), a bunch of undersea life, etc.

I was REALLY bummed to find the photo of the humpback whales breeching 50 yards from us came out blurry. It was quite literally the best potential photo of the entire trip (you can see it below) but catching a jumping whale, on a rocking ship in a 400mil lens is pretty hard to do and alas I will only have it clear in my mind’s eye.

Enough facts, was it a good time?

Honestly I had a great time; finally being able to slow down and force myself to chill out for a while was priceless for me. In my traveling I sometimes get wrapped up in the thought of going and doing as much as possible in the time I have. Well you can’t really do that in Alaska without renting your own personal puddle jumper to fly you around everywhere. Even then, Alaska is 3x larger than the state of Texas (p.s. See: “Size does Matter” tee shirt in Juneau ha ha) so getting around with any agility would be difficult as well.

Which really brings me back to the thought of doing Alaska by cruise. You have a floating jumping off point of sorts. You wake up and bam you’re in the next port or next scenic area and you’re forced to slow down much faster I’ve noticed this more than going on any other vacation (at least for me which has always been my biggest hurdle). I even noticed myself getting adjusted to the 4 hour difference in a mere two days which in most cases it would take a solid 4-5 days.

Would I do it again? Well maybe, maybe if I went further north up to Anchorage or Kodiak etc. I’d like to get back to Ketchikan and give it some more of my time for sure. Overall I had a good time. We ranked it a 3 out of 5 star trip. I’ll leave you with some final tidbits.

Bits of Wisdom:

The ship’s age ratios were as follows (estimated):

55-100: 75%

45-54: 20%

35-44: 3%

>34: 2%

Based on these numbers there is a strategy to getting food. That strategy is sleep in and stay up late. Think about it, look at the numbers and think about it. It will make sense in a minute.
Riding in an elevator going up or down while pitching left, right, forward and back is very very odd.
Stay away from ship foie gras. I was smart enough to think of this. From what I heard some others were not.
I totally forgot how awesome a nap can really be. I haven’t had a real nap in years I pretty much took one every other day.
Find out what “formal night” means on your ship before you pack. Formal night on ours was pretty much slacks and a blazer. It can go all the way up to a Tux though.
The stars you can view while out to sea on a dark ship deck is un-freaking-believable
I can finally say I saw the Aura Borealis (Northern Lights).

When booking your Alaska cruise take note of where your room is located. If it is near a deck door, pretty much assume the wind whipping down the decks and slamming that door for people not smart enough to hold on to it and let it close slowly will enemy of that sleeping in notion if you don’t spot it beforehand.

Sitka has free public wifi, if you REALLY need to sync up (which I didn’t) you can take your device ashore with you. Makes it nice to find “What to do in Sitka” via wifi from my WinMo phone.

Be ready to be passively up-sold your entire trip. From services on the ship to excursions and deals the liner has with individual stores in port. It gets pretty annoying after a while but is just under the bar of “Ok this is getting to be too much”.

The elderly (at least the ones on this ship) can be just as devil tongued as 14 year old teenaged girls. Amazing some of the gossip and terrible things I heard coming from them when they think no one is listening. Something to aspire NOT to be like.

After a few cocktails, walking on a pitching ship is quite difficult and expands the notion of said buzz.

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5939 Views - View Comments (1)

Tasha - September 19, 2010
Awww! it looks like you had a pretty good time! I'm glad you didn't get bored ;-)

in case you ever think of doing it again, cruise ship lines can vary DRAMATICALLY in what gets automatically charged to you, and I think both Royal Caribbean and Carnival have dedicated non-smoking ships. Something to consider.

Some important lessons have been learned over the past two days. The first one, at the end of the first blizzard of the winter season you say “I should get a snow blower; they’ll be cheaper now”. Then you proceed to procrastinate.. lesson 1.

Lesson two: never ever say “We won’t have a snow like that for another 6 years”

Lesson three: 4x4’s are the greatest thing to own in a blizzard (except a snow blower). Trips to the store have never been so much fun.

None the less, here is an updated snowfall time lapse. 34.3 inches of total snowfall accumulation in this one specific spot, however we did have blizzard conditions with a lot of snow drifting, it is very possible there was more and it blew off the top.

No video of the clean up this time, I shoveled 5 times over the course of 2 days just to get out.

Exciting news, Starting March 1^st I’ll be starting hopefully a long career with Microsoft. I’ll be a SharePoint PFE for the East Region. It was bittersweet leaving behind a great team at Sogeti Baltimore. A great group of people and I sincerely wish them the best of luck. With the leadership they have at the helm I have no doubt only success is in the future.

Update: I will still hold my positions at BSPUG/GSPUG and SharePoint Saturday. Thanks to all the well wishers!

Btw Sogeti is hiring, let me know if you're intersted, I'll get you in touch with the right people.

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