Say WHAT?

I don't travel on the ferries to and from Vancouver Island all that much, but I do it enough to know the standard announcements that they make:

"Would all passengers please return to their vehicles for boarding."
"Would the driver of a such-and-such car, licence blahbitty blah blah please return to the vehicle deck."
"Attention passengers. The ship's whistle will now sound." [Which, by the way, even when I *know* it's coming, still makes me jump right out of my skin.]

Etc. Etc. Etc. You know, the mundane "get buisness done" type of announcements.

Well this was the long weekend, aka WEEKEND OF FERRY INSANITY.

First there were the lineups. Even reservations were crazy, but we made it on. I was a walk-on passenger on the way home, and there was even a one sail wait for WALK-ONS. Insanity, I tell you. Insanity! The lineup wound back and forth throught the entrance area and then began winding its way out into the parking lot. We were aiming for the 6pm ferry. Ha! Not likely. We weren't even sure we'd get the 7.

And then there was transportation. Um, an over 200-person lineup for a transit bus that holds max 60 people? Yeeeeeah. I ended up splitting a cab with two other people who thankfully and awesomely lived really close to me. Hooray!

But back to the announcements. The more people you have, the more the chance of wacky things happening, I guess, and the more craziness you have to put out over the PA.

"Just a message to the people playing with a green frisbee in the parking lot. Your frisbee just hit a car. Your game is now over."

Them ferry people. They don't let anyone have any fun! heh. And what was that? Threat? Statement of fact? Did the ferry gods confiscate the frisbee and just wanted to let them know? A not-so-subtle way of asking them to stop? Whatever. It made us laugh!

"Please may we have your attention for an important announcement. We have reached maximum capacity in the cafeteria on this sailing. If there are people who are finished their meals, not eating, or PLAYING CARDS, please vacate the cafeteria to make room for other patrons."

Yes, those italics, caps, and bolding are necessary to convey the force of the words and the disgust behind them. Let me see... finished eating? OK. Not eating? OK. I think that covers playing cards. I pity whoever it was that was sitting down for a little game of gin rummy. Trying to have some fun, then SHAMED OUT OF YOUR SEATS by the ferry announcers. Hehehe!

But the best one was as we were walking off. "Would the passenger who left a package of fresh meat please return to the info desk to pick it up? I repeat, please come pick up your fresh meat. We. don't. want. it."

I don't even know what to say about that one. Freeeesh meat! It was an interesting ride, that's for sure.

Of course in between the moments of ferry insanity was the WEEKEND OF TOTAL AWESOMENESS. More details to come!