In this episode we examine what happens at sea in the middle of the night, culminating in a crazy night in a Frankenstein-themed nightclub. Join Scot on a discussion of boats, water, staying up all night, and then join him aboard a ship in the middle water and in the middle of the night for this topic. Check out all pics, videos, and transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://perfectshowpodcast.com/13-cruise-ship-3am/ Music from this episode by: Simon Carryer - https://www.simoncarryer.com/ Bastereon - https://www.fiverr.com/bastereon Brrrrravo - https://www.fiverr.com/brrrrravo kgrapofficial - https://www.fiverr.com/kgrapofficial dawnshire - https://www.fiverr.com/dawnshire desparee - https://www.fiverr.com/desparee rito_shopify - https://www.fiverr.com/rito_shopify Aandy Valentine - https://www.fiverr.com/aandyvalentine From the Free Music Archive and used under a Creative Commons License: Komiku - "School" - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/Captain_Glouglous_Incredible_Week_Soundtrack/school/ AI-Generated Transcript: Speaker 2: 0:24 Hi and welcome to the Perfect Show. I'm your host, scott Moppen, and what you might call a perfection prospector, sifting through life looking for little things or experiences that can be considered perfect. Join me each episode as I present one topic that I'm presenting as a little nugget of perfection. I've always been a very land-based human. I grew up in Kansas where, from the right vantage point, you can see oceans of land, with waves of crops blowing in the wind Really the only form of ocean I knew growing up. Other people tell me that looking out over the water makes them feel at ease and gives them a calm sense of peace or serenity, but I've never really felt that. To me, oceans are the home of monsters who can all breathe where I can't, which is not really the calmest or most peaceful thought. That's why it's strange that I'd want to make an episode about basically surrounding myself with nothing but water on the biggest boat I could ever imagine and about finding perfection on that ship in the middle of the night. I think being surrounded by water affects people differently. Some people find peace out in the open water, others the water gives them a different energy and brings chaos. But, like getting seasick, you don't really know how you'll react until it's too late to do much about it. I talked with a friend recently who told me about having this feeling, but even more so she told me the scientific name for it it's called the Lassophobia and it's the intense fear of large bodies of water. I don't think I'm at that level at all, but it was interesting to hear her talk about her intense feelings around water, because I recognize so much that I have, just on a smaller scale. So I said I didn't like water, and that's true. But boats are a different thing. I like a boat, though I haven't really been on that many In my earliest memories of any boat at all. I'm sitting on Smithville Lake in Missouri with Grandpa Moppen, and maybe Grandma or Dad were there too. But fishing was one of my grandpa's passions and he shared it with my sister and me from a very young age. I'm not sure how many other boats I had even gone on, and what gets included under the classification of boat. The Kansas City area has a couple of examples that I don't know if I should really count. At Worlds of Fun, the big theme park in the area, I rode on a mock riverboat that was really just being pulled along on an underwater track at the park so that one seems borderline. Probably shouldn't count it, but what feels completely out of the question are Kansas City's riverboat casinos. Now, to me gambling always seems to have the oddest hoops to jump that make it go from completely illegal, go to prison crime, to 100% A-OK, super profitable business. To go from a place where it's not allowed to one where it is, you may have to cross a state line, like in Lake Tahoe, where the California side of the state line just has hotels, but across the street on the Nevada side they've become large hotel casinos due to the different state laws on gambling. Or the line between the United States land and tribal lands, where the laws are different as well. You might even have to cross from land to water in the case of the floating casinos on the Mississippi River where, as long as there are businesses on the water, the laws are different than they are on land. So these boats sail up and down the river, fulfilling that requirement regularly. But the riverboats in Kansas City are, well, they're different. For one, they are large complexes the size of shopping malls and you might wonder how well a riverboat could float in water, being that size. But don't worry, these riverboats aren't surrounded by water at all, but rather by enormous parking lots locking them in acres of concrete on all sides. Now, it might be hard to conjure up the image of a riverboat, considering the description I've just given you, but a few of them have put forth a nominal amount of effort to remind you that they are in fact boats A lit up display, smokestack, maybe a neon paddle wheel that is completely stationary you know stuff like that. So what makes these riverboats boats, you ask. I mean, why are they even called riverboats? Well, of course it's water. Most of the riverboats casino concrete foundation is taken up with restaurants, shops, movie theaters and the like. But to go on to the gambling floor in the middle you have to first step across the threshold, a small one foot gap bridged by a textured metal plate, beneath which runs a one foot wide stream of water that has been diverted out of the nearby Missouri River and then, after flowing under the metal plate, eventually flows back out to the Missouri River once more. And that's the magic that does it in KC. Walk across a rain gutters worth of water and now you're on a boat, which always felt so weird to me, so I don't count those really in the list of boats I've ridden. I guess that would be my auto boat dog right, no, and that means I don't really have that many boats in my past at all. The short boat trip in India I talked about last episode, a couple of ferries to Bershiri and Reibu and islands in Japan when I lived there and a short one in Seattle, but until a few years ago that was really it for me and boats, fishing with my grandpa, a bunch of non boats and some ferries. But then, in 2019, we got the call from the big leagues. It was a family trip being planned by people higher up in the tree than us, and we were invited to go on a cruise with a large group of relatives, something I had definitely never even thought of doing before and before I knew it, we were booked and packing for a big trip on the biggest boat I could imagine. We'd be departing from Seattle, washington, and then sailing north to see glaciers in Alaska, where I'd never been before, then back to Seattle, making a few stops in between. Now, this ship, the cruise ship, really was like a floating city. The ridiculous premise of a shopping mall slash casino being a boat because someone ran a hose through it was the fake version, but that idea was the reality of a cruise ship. The ship we would be sailing on, the Diamond Princess, had 13 decks, held 2600 passengers and another 1100 crew members and, like any cruise ship, it had to be designed with the goal of keeping over 2000 people entertained or at least occupied all day long, day after day. On a ship, they can't leave. So there was a lot to do Things starting all over all the time. You just looked at what was happening when and you could choose which things to hit up. But more even than the non-stop scheduled events, I was fascinated by just the fundamental differences that being on a ship brought. The first surprising discovery on board the ship, one that I didn't even know to expect at all, was the way the boat moved. At first you noticed some minor rocking back and forth while it leaves the port, but when the ship reaches open water it really picks up steam and the minor rocking becomes much more intense. The whole ship moves with the waves, but because it's so big, the time it takes to rock back and forth makes it feel like whatever ground you're on is either rising or falling slowly. I'd probably have a more poetic description if I'd been on ships all my life, but walking down a hall was almost like walking across one of those plank and rope bridges where as you walk you make the thing bounce and by the middle you're dealing with the whole bridge just rippling up and down in a wave. People were having a hard time with the rocking and more than a few of our family party just stayed in their cabin and tried to deal with their seasickness. The surprising part to me, mr Land, guy. Well, I was just fine Better than fine, actually. On my first trip where I could get seasick, I discovered that the rocking up and down and sort of moving floor feeling was something, well, something that I really enjoyed. It was like being on a slow motion trampoline, or maybe like the best parts of being tipsy, without any of the cost, calories or other negative parts of drinking. I get why people don't like it and I had never rolled those dice before, but if, when I did, I had found that I get really sick from the rocking motion, I'd feel the same way too. I didn't, so I didn't. For people who have been on a cruise before, or just people with enough wear with all to actually know what one's like, please bear with me, I was not in that camp prior to this. So the ship has shops, shows, places to eat, swimming pools, a gym, a casino and even a hospital jail in morgue in case something goes drastically wrong while you're cruising. It was huge, I'll be honest. It was also very overwhelming initially. I am not an extrovert. Often, and I'm also not particularly a swim in the sun or dance the night away
