I am glad I was not on

the Carnival cruise ship that caught fire off the west coast.

I know that as a trained seaman I would have pitched in and fought the fire. I also know that I would have probably helped the crew clean up the horrible mess that the fire caused. It's just boat courtesy.

Instead of sitting around moping after the fire was out, I simply would have just gotten my hands on a 5 gallon pail with a lid on it to serve as a toilet and, grabbed a little chow and finagled a bottle of Jamesons from somewhere, found a deck chair and kicked back and shot the bull with someone of similar interests.

I would have just plain been grateful that I didn't wind up in a damned lifeboat.

To me a cruise is about people and not the meals or how cool something is. I eat and I really am not a picky person. A five-star restaurant is wasted on me. A diner somewhere is just fine by me. It's fun to go in and check out thespecial or the meat loaf.

In short, I really don't sweat the small stuff.

They got the fire out, there were no storms in the offing and the tugs were en route. Everyone was safe so there were no immediate worries to sweat. There were no injuries to speak of. Everyone was OK.

The Coast Guard was there delivering basic chow so everything would be fine by me. There was food available. I wasn't going to starve.

The reason I would really not want to be on that particular cruise is because of the whiners.

Americans are the biggest crybabies on the face of the planet earth.

The moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth that must have gone on during the time they were waiting to get to port must have sounded like a major ordeal of the worst kind whe the truth is they should have been damned grateful to simply be alive. Listening to everyone feel sorry for themselves would have driven me to the door of the booby hatch.

A fire at sea is no joke. I have been trained to fight fire on board ahip and to me it is a damned scary thing. You have to act fast because if you don't get it out there is no place to go but over the side. The fact that the crew got the fire out means that everyone was going to live and the loss of power is nothing more than a minor inconvenience when you put it in realistic terms.

The average box of rocks never seems to understand that there is a time not to feel sorry for themselves and instead be damned grateful that things are as good as they are. Bobbing around in a life raft not only is no piece of cake, it is a dangerous, miserable experience.

Nobody had to do this.

When a cruise ends like this it can not be deemed to be a bad cruise.

Then again, pilots have a saying that it is a good landing if you can walk away from it. I have believed this all my life.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/