Oilpressure

This is a long and way too drawn out explanation as to why I will have no posts here before or after the Java House Grand Prix of Arlington this weekend. My next post will be the Friday of the Barber weekend on Mar 27-29. If that’s all you care about, I’ll save you the trouble and will see you here then. If you care to learn why, read on…

You may recall when I retired from my day job back in January, that I said Susan and I were going on a retirement cruise in March to celebrate my retirement. Well. It’s now March and that cruise is upon us.

If you are reading this on Wednesday morning, we are probably frantically trying to get out of the house to get to the airport to catch a flight to Miami. If all goes well with the expected delays at TSA, we will be on a flight leaving Nashville around lunchtime and getting into Miami just before 3:00 local time. We will stay the night in a very scenic (that was sarcasm, by the way) airport hotel, before catching a shuttle to the cruise port Thursday morning.

There we will board our ship – the six-month old Brilliant Lady by Virgin Voyages.

If you are unfamiliar with Virgin Voyages, they are part of the same Virgin Group started by Sir Richard Branson; which includes Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Hotels and even Virgin Galactic, which provides sub-orbital space flights for tourists.

Some of you may remember that Susan and I went on a four-night cruise back in Feb 2020. COVID was already a thing in China and Japan by then, but it had not hit the US yet. A month later, cruising came to a halt.

I had been on a cruise in the mid-90s with my first wife, on a seven-night cruise with Holland America. Except for my traveling companion, I had a blast and always wanted to do it again. Twenty-five years later, I finally talked Susan into it, even though she is prone to motion sickness. We boarded Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas in Ft. Lauderdale. It was an old ship then (thirteen years) and it’s even older now. It was a big ship (4500 passengers and 2,000 crew) and over 1100 feet long. It was too big for our liking and it was packed for our sailing. There were kids running everywhere, and everyone onboard seemed cranky and rude. Worst of all, to me, the wonderful food I remembered on my first cruise, was very mediocre on our short four-nighter. They didn’t even try to hide the fact that the food in the main dining room was all mass-produced. It was like Golden Corral at sea.

The whole thing put a very sour taste in my mouth on cruising. Needless to say, Susan was unimpressed and wondered why I would ever want to do that a second time. She would never believe me when I explained how the first cruise was such an elevated experience.

Over the next few months, we didn’t really get a chance to dwell on our bad cruise. COVID hit and we all remember the nightmare that unfolded for the rest of that year., including an Indianapolis 500 in August that none of us were allowed to attend. In July, Susan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was told she had less than a year to live. Three weeks after that devastating news, my mother dropped dead unexpectedly. You probably understand when I say that 2020 was undoubtedly the worst year of my life.

Six years later, we are in happier frame of mind. I have been happily retired for a little over two months, and loving it. Obviously Susan proved the doctors wrong and is still among the living. I booked this cruise a year ago, and it is finally here.

Why did we pick Virgin, a cruise line that few have even heard of? Because it is very different from other cruises. They tore up the playbook on traditional cruising. First of all, there are no kids. None. You must be 18 or older, with no exceptions, to cruise on Virgin. Their ships are smaller – around 2600 passengers max. Most importantly (to me) is that there is no main dining room. There are over 20 eateries on board and six specialty restaurants, which are all Michelin Star quality. But unlike other cruise lines, the specialty restaurants are all included in your cruise fare. So are soft drinks, juices and water. So is Wi-Fi, through Starlink. The only thing that is not included is alcohol, but I got $550 total onboard credit. Susan can no longer drink due to her liver issues. Most cruise lines force both people in a cabin buy the drink package, even if one doesn’t drink. Not Virgin. They have actually done away with the traditional dribk page and offer a much more reasonable hybrid-type package called Bar Tab.

In the past year, I have probably watched over a thousand You Tube Videos on Virgin Voyages – enough that I have a very clear idea of what to expect. Our cruise sails out of Miami on Thur Mar 12 for a nine-night, ten-day cruise that has Puerto Plata, Antigua, St, Kitts and Bimini as ports of call. I am hoping for us to have the time of our lives and erase that miserable four-day cruise in 2020 from our memory. I also expect to gain 10-15 pounds, that I hope to lose before the Month of May.

Since Barber is just a few days after we get back home, we have decided to skip Barer for only the second time since its inception. I imagine we will still be tired and I expect our wallets will need to recover as well.

So wish us a bon Voyage as we head to Miami on Wednesday and then the Caribbean on Thursday. For those thinking I should not publicize that we are going out of town, Susan’s son will be here the entire time we are gone.

Phoenix really got me into race mode, I don’t think it will take very long to get out of vacation mode and back into race mode. Come back for the highly anticipated “Barber Preview” on Fri Mar 27. Until the…Ahoy!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 11, 2026 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.