I have a bucket list. On it, are things all the way from working in a soup kitchen to writing a novel to being a ‘one hit wonder’. Some of them are attainable and some will be miraculous if I get to do them! But I got to mark three of them off my list the past few weeks!

For the past year, Kenn and I have been planning a fantastic 15 day, Panama Canal cruise—one of my bucket list items. The cruise left Los Angeles, California on February 4th and arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 19th. We visited a couple of cities in Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Columbia, and Aruba. Of course, the big event was traversing the Panama Canal. It was amazing!

But first things first. Those of you who know Kenn know of his love affair with trains. We decided to begin our epic trip by flying to Seattle and catching the Coast Starlight train and riding it down to Los Angeles. We began our train journey at 9:45 AM one day and ended it at 11:30 PM the following day. We decided to reserve a roomette for sleeping. Well, the roomette was three feet by six feet, roughly the size of a double phone booth on its side. There were two chairs facing each other, that turned into a bed at night. Then there was a bunk bed that folded down. Kenn slept in the bunk and he was so close to the ceiling, he could not sleep on his side, only on his back. Kenn is 6’2”. He felt like he was sleeping in a coffin! Needless to say, he didn’t get much sleep. The train itself was enjoyable, with a nice observation car, dining car, and no wrecks, derailments, and such. Some pretty scenery was seen along the way, but lots of homeless and tent towns were seen, also. We did have one breakdown, with one of our two engines deciding to quit. That put us two and a half hours late into LA, with our scheduled 9 PM arrival turning into 11:30 PM. We may do another train ride in the future, but we will certainly make some adjustments.

Three days later, we began our cruise. Our first stop was in Puerto Vallarta. We took a snorkeling and beach excursion and while riding on the boat, we saw at least a dozen whales spouting, swimming, diving, and breaching. Whale watching was another bucket list item. It was awesome!

Those that know me know I love to sing. So it’s no surprise that I decided to do karaoke on the ship. Their karaoke event had a cute name….the Voice of the Ocean. At least I THOUGHT it was a cute name. Turned out Princess cruise line bought the rights to The Voice, with coaches in revolving chairs with big buttons and all. I wasn’t singing karaoke, I was auditioning for The Voice of the Ocean!  Immediately I was wishing I hadn’t done it, but I ended up making the ‘show’. That really wasn’t that hard to do, given that not too many people tried out. Seven of us had three rehearsals with the ship’s wonderful band and the show was on the final night of the cruise in the big theater. It was a little nerve wracking but I met some wonderful people. In the end, I actually won! And I was famous for a good 12 hours…..until I got off the ship. Kenn recorded my song and ran out of storage on his phone halfway through the song. He pulled out my phone and got most of the rest of my song. Then, while he was recording the winner announcement, the cruise director was building the suspense, intense music was playing…..she finally says dramatically, “I can now tell you the winner IS…..” storage full. I kid you not!!! No more phones to use so we rely on memories!

I checked off another bucket list item. Who would have guessed that I would be a one hit wonder before I worked in a soup kitchen!