Day 1 Cruise Index:
Length of ship, in feet: 915
Decks accessible to passengers: 9
Number of passengers, est.: 2,500
Number of teenagers: 250
Number of children: 250
Average poolside temperature at sea on, in degrees farenheit: 67
Number of books carried around: 2,000
Random airport titles: 500
Copies of the new translation of Don Quixote: 1
Copies of David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Funny Thing I’ll Never Do Again: 0
Copies of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: 0
Copies of Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon: 2 [!!]
Copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code: 1,496
Copies of The Da Vinci Code reported stolen from an unattended deck chair: 1
Price of a Diet Coke, either in a can or a glass: $1.50
Glasses of Diet Coke in a can: 2
Price of a cruise-long Coke Pass, which allows consumption of unlimited fountain drinks, including 15% gratuity: $37.95
Glasses of Diet Coke I must consume daily to make my Coke Pass cost-effective: 8.42
Estimated percentage of cruise spent walking back and forth to the bar and/or bathroom: 20
Daily wage of a cruise ship pool attendant: $18
Equivalent daily wage in Diet Cokes: 12
Equivalent daily wage in Yummy Yummy Mango Tango’s, a rum concoction designated as the Drink of The Day: 3
Fee paid to employment agent to secure job: $1,000
Months of work required to pay back agent’s fee: 2
Length of contract, in months: 6
Days off during contract: 0
Ranking among pool attendants of Christmas Day for the loneliest days of the year: 1
Year The Nation magazine began sponsoring cruises for its readers: 1998
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the making of, by greg allen