My Monster Iguana and how (I hope) I got rid of it

M.I., the Monster Iguana.

You don't want to know what 

that mound of stuff in front of him is. 

As a homeowner in Pelican Landing for 17 years, I didn’t think there could be a more annoying neighborhood pest than the group of disgruntled owners that, for years, has been sending anonymous emails pooh-poohing any proposals that might cause an increase in assessments.

Then I met the four-foot Monster Iguana — I call him M.I. — who started pooh-poohing all over our house. 

I first encountered M.I. last summer when our dachshund and Jack Russell terrier, lounging by the pool, began barking hysterically. When I went outside, M.I. was atop one of the screens on our pool cage, where he had just laid two hefty mounds of feces. I couldn’t get to him -- the pool cage is attached to the roof — so I began shouting and waving my arms. M.I. crawled off the screen, scampered up the roof, and disappeared over the side of the house. I got out my pressure washer and sprayed the poop off the screen and backwards into the gutter. When he didn’t return, I assumed I had scared him off once and for all.

I was wrong. Four weeks ago, I heard something shuffling across the roof. M.I. had returned and there was another horse-sized souvenir -- just one this time but it was at least 18 inches long -- on the same pool screen. Again, I scared him off.

M.I. returned every day or so until last Tuesday. I wasn't able to catch him in the act, but he left numerous souvenirs which, until this morning — more about that in a minute — dotted the west side of our steeply-pitched roof. Iguana feces contains E. Coli and Salmonella. My wife and I spend lots of time on our lanai within a few feet of that roof. So do the dogs. M.I. was threatening not just our home’s appearance but our health. I decided I had to do something.

Iguanas  — not to be confused with ordinary tropical lizards — aren’t native to Florida, but, for the last decade or so, have been popping up all over the southern half of the state. I.M. is/was a bright lime green but iguanas can also be orange, black, pink or any combination of those colors. It is speculated someone may have released a pregnant pet iguana into the wild and, ever since, they’ve been multiplying like, well, iguanas. Some females lay as many as 70 eggs at a time. For years they have been causing problems on the Atlantic coast but in the last few years they have moved over to the Gulf Coast where they’ve invaded communities north of us including Gasparilla Island, Cape Coral and Ft. Myers. Since Hurricane Ian in 2022, they are, suddenly, everywhere. I am outside for several hours every day and last week spotted four big ones, not counting M.I., while walking the dogs.

I asked fellow members of the “Residents of Pelican Landing” Facebook page if anyone else in the ‘hood was having problems with iguanas and, if so, what they had done, but I didn’t mention the poop — that tidbit of info was too disgusting. Nobody, it seems, was having iguana issues. Just us. 

Knowing iguanas have become a problem on the three golf courses within the community, I called a groundskeeper of one of the golf clubs. He put me in touch with a retired military sharpshooter who came out to my house. He said he likes to use iguanas for target practice. That may sound cruel to pet lovers (for the record, I am most definitely one), but it’s not. Iguanas can dig burrows around houses that can damage foundations. Their germs can kill small animals and make humans ill. They rarely attack humans and are, I'll admit, kinda cute.  But because they are an invasive species, the State of Florida requires anyone who traps an iguana to destroy it rather than release it back into the wild. 

The sharpshooter, who lives a few miles away, said to call him next time I saw M.I. and, if he was free, he would come right over and kill him with his pellet gun. (It is illegal to fire rifles or shotguns within the city limits so pellet guns are the only way iguanas can be shot in our town.) I showed him a video of M.I. and he said he looked like a 20-pounder, maybe more. That turned out to be a not-so-practical solution. M.I. returned that afternoon — I didn’t see him — and left more poop on the roof. Over the next two days he left several more souvenirs.

A friend suggested I buy a Super Soaker water gun that uses pressurized air to shoot liquids with more velocity and range than a traditional squirt gun, and fill it with vinegar — iguanas hate the smell  — so that, if I spotted him, I could blast M.I. through the pool screen. I bought one at Costco but never was able to catch M.I. in the act.

In desperation a week and a half ago, I called a Wildlife Pest Removal Service. The owner paid me a visit last Monday and proposed setting a trap. He said he couldn’t guarantee success but was almost sure the iguana would be lured into it. He said that if M.I. was caught, he would be removed and “euthanized.” I asked how. He said M.I. would be placed in a freezer and would gently fall asleep, after which the corpse would be cremated. I asked if there would be a memorial service, and he laughed. He said that, once M.I. was removed, the roof would be cleaned and treated with an enzyme that would kill any germs he and his poop left behind. We agreed the trap would be installed today.

As if he had overheard us and wanted to express his opinion of our plan, M.I. left a jumbo-sized souvenir on the roof that afternoon.

The next day, a neighbor shot a huge iguana fitting M.I’s description in his yard using his pellet gun. He is 100 percent sure he hit him — he heard the thud of the pellet penetrating the iguana’s hide — but, before he could reload to finish him off, the iguana crawled into a thicket of palmettos. The neighbor is almost certain the iguana was mortally wounded. 

I’ve seen no evidence of M.I. since.

Yesterday I called the Removal Service and told them I didn’t need the trap. This morning they sent a professional who treated the roof and pool cage with the enzyme spray. Every hour on the hour I’ve been checking the roof to see if M.I. has returned but so far, so good -- the roof is clear. 

Bizarrely, just now, I took a break from writing to figure out how to end this post and went outside to check the roof. It was clear but I spotted another brightly colored iguana — maybe eight inches long — crawling up the west side of our pool cage. I blasted it with the Super Soaker.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed M.I. is in iguana purgatory but am under no illusions he, she, they or whatever it is or was hasn’t left hundreds of offspring. 

If so, I hope those iguanas decide to climb on other peoples’ roofs and leave mine alone.

I’ve had it with all this s _ _ t. 

Updated: The boy in the Oval Picture Frame

I wrote "The Boy in the Oval Picture Frame" the week before Memorial Day 24 years ago when I was a columnist for my local newspaper in Wilton, Conn. At the request of my readers, it was reprinted every other Memorial Day for the next six years. It has also appeared in this blog three times since I began writing it in 2011. Here it is again with an update: For the first time, it includes a picture of the boy in the oval frame in which his parents, my aunt Margaret and uncle Pat, displayed it. He was my cousin, Jimmy Timmerberg. I hadn't seen the picture for at least 50 years, and had no idea what had become of it until last month when Jimmy's nephew, Tim, texted me the above image. He said that after my aunt's death, his mother, Jimmy's sister Nancy, displayed it in her home. Nancy died in 2019 and today it hangs in Tim's home. It is exactly as I remembered it -- a handsome dark-haired boy of 18 or so peering down from an oval picture frame on his parents' dining room wall. I am grateful to Tim for sending it, and am touched that, 73 years after Jimmy's death, Tim continues to honor the memory of the uncle he never knew.

I'm also including for the first time the family photo mentioned in the first sentence. It appears at the end of this post.

Atop a table in our guest room is a photograph, taken in the summer of 1933.

The photo is of my grandparents, Burton and Judy Tate, and the first four of what would eventually become a brood of 14 grandchildren.

On my grandfather's lap is my cousin Robert, six months old. Robert grew up to be a computer specialist.

Grandma is holding another baby, my cousin Nancy. She grew up to be an R.N.

Standing next to grandpa is my six-year-old cousin Paul. Paul grew up to marry his childhood sweetheart and became an Army General.

Jimmy, a boy of four, is next to Paul.

He was killed in Korea when he was 21.

I wonder what he would have become?

Nancy, Paul and Jimmy were the children of my mother's sister, Margaret, a tiny wisp of a woman. In 1923, Margaret married a giant of a man, Pat Timmerberg, who stood six feet three inches tall. Pat's parents had immigrated to Missouri from Germany and settled on a farm near Mineola. When America entered World War I, Pat joined up and was shipped off to fight his own people in the fields of France. When he returned, he was a soldier through and through, who loved to sing war songs and tell war stories.

Margaret and Pat's oldest, Paul, joined the army in 1945, the year he graduated from Montgomery City High School, just in time for VJ Day. Like his father, Paul showed a natural aptitude for soldiering. He was selected for Officer Candidate School and, shortly thereafter, was a Second Lieutenant, on his way to earning his stars.

Jimmy, who graduated from high school in 1947, enlisted in the army the next year, when he was 19. After basic training, he was sent to Colorado, where he captained the 21st Engineer's basketball team. He was shipped to the Yukon for eight months, went back to Colorado and, in August, 1950, to Korea, where he was a machine gunner with the 21st Infantry Regiment of the 24th Division.

Jimmy was killed in action near Changgong-Ni on April 28, 1951. His tour of duty was almost over.

When they received word of Jimmy's death, the Timmerbergs were preparing for Nancy's high school graduation. She had graduated first in her class, and was looking forward to giving the valedictorian's speech.

She went ahead and delivered it, though her heart was broken and the audience knew it.

In those days before jet planes, families often had to wait months for their loved ones to arrive home for burial. Jimmy's flag-draped casket arrived in Montgomery City on a Wabash train on November 20, and he was buried with full military honors. According to his obituary posted on cousin Robert's family web site, a quartet sang "In The Sweet By and By" and "Safe In The Arms of Jesus." A solo, "God Understands," was also performed.

My mother couldn't attend. She was in the hospital, having given birth to me three days earlier.

We visited Aunt Margaret and Uncle Pat often when I was growing up. They were always full of news about Paul and Nancy and their growing families. But I was always aware of the presence of a third Timmerberg cousin -- a handsome dark-haired boy of 18 or so with a fixed broad smile, who peered from a gold oval frame on the dining room wall.

Of him, never a word was spoken.

Pat died in 1963 and Margaret, who lived alone, began spending a lot of time at our house with my mother. They spent hours discussing the family and events of the past. But they would never mention Jimmy. Every Memorial Day, my mother took Margaret, who never learned to drive, to the cemetery, and they would return looking grim.

As a teenager, I used to accuse Aunt Margaret of being a pessimist. She wasn't much fun to be around. She always seemed to look on the dark side, to expect the worst out of life.

I take it all back, Aunt Margaret.

Now that I have held my own sons in my arms and have seen them grow into young men with their own hopes and dreams, I understand.

And I want to tell you this: You were amazing. I don't know how you were able to go on, but you did. You even managed to laugh on occasion. I can't help but wonder if, every time you saw me, you were reminded of the son you buried the week I was born. I hope not, but I don't see how you couldn't have been.

Margaret died in 1988, and was laid to rest next to Jimmy and Pat, near my grandparents. My mother continued the trek to the cemetery every Memorial Day until a few years ago when she stopped driving.

Paul died in 2008 and was buried at Arlington in an impressive military ceremony with a
13-cannon salute befitting his rank. He was inducted into the Military Police Hall of Fame and there is a building named for him at Ft. Leonard Wood.

Mom talks often with the last of my Timmerberg cousins, Nancy, who just had a knee replacement.

But nobody in our family ever speaks of Jimmy. I don't think those who knew him can. Though his headstone has faded, the horror of his loss never will, until the last person who loved him is gone. And there aren't that many of them left.

Many of my grandparents' 14 grandchildren accomplished great things. One became a math teacher. One graduated from West Point, as did Paul's son, their great-grandson. The youngest, born after Jimmy's death and named for him, is president of a major music company. All of us married, most had children and grandchildren, some are even great-grandparents.

Scattered from Connecticut to California, those of us who are left will celebrate Memorial Day. We'll enjoy the sunshine and picnics.

And I guarantee that all of us will remember the boy in the oval picture frame on Aunt Margaret's dining room wall, the boy who, unlike the rest of us, never grew old.

I hope that, whatever else you have planned, you will also take the time to remember Jimmy Timmerberg ... the hundreds of thousands of other young men and women who paid for our freedom with their lives ... and their parents, who buried the best of themselves with them.

The dumbest Super Bowl commercial ever

There were lots (and lots and lots) of commercials during Sunday’s Bowl game. Many, if not most, missed the mark completely. The reason? The ad agency folks who created them and the clients who approved them neglected to explain the features and benefits — the reasons  viewers should buy whatever product or service they were promoting. Many featured celebrities who were paid handsomely to promote themselves, because they sure weren't saying or demonstrating anything about the products they were supposed to be pushing. Disagree? OK then, take this test. What product or service was Kris Jenner promoting? Laura Dern? Dan Levy? Tina Fey? Chris Pratt? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Gimme the name of the brand, not the genre. See what I mean? 

But the worst commercial of all didn’t feature celebrities. It featured the second unhappiest family in America (after the Bidens). 

A quick recap: A young figure skater is performing in a competition. Camera cuts to her dad in the audience as his daughter finishes to wild applause. The seat next to him is empty. For a split second, he smiles, pleased his daughter did well, but then glances at the vacant seat beside him, loses his smile, and becomes instantly sad as a wrist-slashingly depressing singer starts intoning a song that reminded me of the opening scene in Dr. Zhivago where young Yuri follows his mother’s casket to her grave. The singer continues her dirge until the commercial ends. 

The skater who, for a second, had flashed a triumphant smile, is now looking as sad as her dad — she obviously heard the music. Cut to a blue KIA EV9 as dad drives his daughter through the snow along a twisting mountain road. He uses the car’s navigation system to map out his route and arrives at a home which, conveniently, has a frozen pond in the yard. 

Cut to an old man — presumably the girl’s grandfather — inside the house, in a wheelchair. Cut back outside to the girl’s dad. He is stringing carnival lights above the pond, which he plugs into a generator that, in turn, he plugs into his electric car. Someone wheels the old man to the window as the lights come on above the pond, revealing the girl re-creating her skate show. The old man’s tears up, puts his hand on his heart and writes “10” (e.g. the score an Olympic judge would give for a perfect performance) in the frost on the window. I assume he wrote 10 to indicate his approval but perhaps he wrote it to let his son and granddaughter know that’s how many days he has left to live since they obviously don’t visit often — otherwise they wouldn’t have had to use the navigation system to find him.

Cut to, and hold on, the car as announcer intones, “Kia. Movement that Inspires.”  

I’ve had bowel movements that inspired me more. 

There are so many things wrong with this commercial I hardly know where to begin.

For starters, why did Kia choose a sad situation — a seriously ill elderly man unable to leave his house? Why didn’t the creators have the girl perform on a frozen pond outside a hospital where, from a window, her mother, holding the baby to which she just gave birth, watches her daughter do triple axels and spins? That would have been a happy occasion. Don’t you want products that make you feel happy? Of course you do. Everyone does.

Another observation: This is 2024. Everyone has a smart phone. So why didn’t the girl’s dad simply take a video of her performance with his phone and share it with the old man?

Why is the music track that plays under the commercial as depressing as “The Funeral March of a Marionette?” Shouldn’t a commercial for a trendy product be lively and/or happy to communicate how using it makes one feel? 

Why didn’t the girl's dad, when he installed the lights above the frozen pond, simply get an extension cord and plug them into an outdoor socket? Wouldn’t that have been cheaper, faster and easier than buying a $42,000+ electricity-generating car? 

Come to think of it, are there any benefits of owning a Kia EV9 other than being able to use it to generate electricity?  Does the car reduce CO2 emissions?  If so, that could have been mentioned to appeal to environmentally-conscious consumers. Does it help owners save money on costly gas? That benefit would have appealed to budget-conscious viewers. Is it fun to drive? Does it have unique safety features in snowy driving conditions? How does it compare to other cars in its price class? Does it convert, at the touch of a button, into an airplane? Who the hell would know from this commercial? 

Certainly not viewers, though it’s a safe bet both the agency and client got VIP tickets to the Super Bowl from CBS which charged something like $14 million to air the spot.

What’s the next Kia EV9 commercial gonna show? The dad and daughter in their KIA following a hearse carrying the old man’s body to the cemetery? 

Sure, why not?

The Death of Capt. Waskow

Ernie Pyle

I just finished reading “The Soldier’s Truth” by David Chrisinger. It is the biography of Ernie Pyle, the journalist known for his reporting from the European and Pacific theaters during WWII. Pyle’s dispatches from the front lines about ordinary soldiers were printed in hundreds of newspapers back home and eagerly devoured by millions of readers. Pyle was killed during the Battle of Okinawa in April,1945.

Pyle filed “The Death of Captain Waskow” from Italy in early 1944. I read it for the first time yesterday while using a treadmill at the gym. At its conclusion, I had to climb off the treadmill and sit down. My head was spinning not only from the story, but from the beauty, truth, power and simplicity of Pyle’s writing.

Every journalism student should be required to memorize it,  It should be read aloud from the Capitol steps every Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. It should be on the syllabus of every American history class. All of us should read it and re-read it often, to remind ourselves why, whatever our differences and there are many, we can be proud of our country and, especially, how much we owe to those who fought and sometimes died for it.

The Death of Captain Waskow

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.

"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He’d go to bat for us every time."

"I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain Waskow," one of them said quietly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I’m sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

A bargain cruise with nothing to see but the sea

Azamara Onward

Maybe I should change my name to Tom Triton. It (sort of) rhymes with Dryden. And Triton, in Greek mythology, was King of the Seas. 

That’s me. 

Between November 18 and January 20, I spent 28 days on cruise ships. The first was a 12-day cruise from Lisbon to Ft Lauderdale. The second was a 16-day voyage from Buenos Aires to central Chile via Antarctica. 

Halfway through the first cruise, I received an email from longtime friend, Carolyn Worthington, publisher of "Healthy Aging" magazine. I replied we were on a repositioning cruise aboard a top-shelf cruise line, and that it was everything we hoped it would be, and more, at an incredible price to boot. She invited me to write an article explaining the benefits of a repositioning cruise for the January issue of her magazine and, when I got home, I did (see below).

What’s a repositioning cruise? Read this and you’ll find out and learn how you can enjoy a lengthy, luxurious and leisurely sea voyage for as little as (hold on to your hats) $50 a day. That’s cheaper than staying at home (unless, of course, you are incarcerated but it's a safe bet nobody's leaving chocolates on your pillow at night). 

Enjoy. 

Imagine you are a contestant on America’s longest-running game show as the announcer describes the grand prize on which you are about to bid. “Today’s showcase is … a transatlantic cruise!”  (Oohs, aahs and applause from the audience.)

“That’s right, you and a guest will enjoy a 12-day cruise from Lisbon, Portugal, to Florida aboard a super-luxury ocean liner. Your cruise will include a balcony cabin with twice-daily maid service; three gourmet meals each and every day; unlimited Champagne, wine, cocktails and beer; daily trivia and bridge games; fascinating lectures; afternoon cocktail hours featuring exquisite tapas; a fully equipped fitness center; nightly entertainment; and two days in beautiful Bermuda. All this can be yours (more oohs and aahs) if …. the Price is You-Know-What.” (Applause.)

 What would you bid? Fifteen thousand? Ten thousand?

If so, you would hear the dreaded buzzer indicating you overbid.

The correct bid?  A mere $3,200, which comes out to $133.33 per person, per day, not counting airfare. That’s the price my wife and I paid for the above cruise aboard the Azamara Onward in November. The fare even included staff gratuities, and our travel agent graciously threw in a $300 credit to spend onboard. That’s an incredible value considering that a 12-day Mediterranean cruise in October 2024, on the same ship in the same room, is listed on vacationstogo.com for $10,320 — $430 per person per day.

It’s no easy feat these days to find a room in a Motel 6 and three fast food meals for $133 per person, so how did we land such a bargain? 

We booked a repositioning cruise.

Twice yearly, the major cruise lines — including MSC, Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Princess, Holland-America, Celebrity, Virgin, Disney, Azamara, Oceania, Regent and Silversea— reposition their ships.

In the fall, liners that spent the summer calling on European ports are redeployed across the pond to Florida, where they will spend the winter season visiting Caribbean islands, Mexico and Latin America. 

The ships generally take 12 to 14 days to cross the Atlantic. Most depart from Barcelona, Rome or Lisbon.  En route, one or two stops are made in islands like the Canaries, Madeira, Azores, Bermuda or Puerto Rico. 

In the spring, the ships return to Europe, making the same stops along the way.

Because they know most passengers prefer cruises that stop at a different port every day, cruise companies offer steep discounts to entice travelers onto repositioning cruises. And since they don’t have to pay to dock their ships in different ports every day, the cruises cost them less to operate than standard cruises. 

Repositioning cruises are a win-win for the cruise companies, and for travelers who prefer days at sea where they don’t have to rush off the ship every morning and be herded onto buses that take them on excursions to visit yet another rum distillery, beach, museum or cathedral. Because there’s nothing to see but the sea, you can’t help but relax. There’s no rush. Nothing frenetic about it. If you’re one of those people who has to be on the move at all times, you can always take advantage of the walking track or head to the fitness center.

Repositioning cruises are targeted toward a specific demographic — retirees who love the days at sea and have the time to cross the ocean at a leisurely pace — so the sailings rarely sell out. Our ship, which can accommodate 680 passengers, had just 429 passengers. Ninety percent appeared to be least 65 or older. Many told me they were on their tenth, twentieth or, in the case of an Australian woman, forty-third repositioning cruise. 

During the day, the pool deck was mercifully free of annoyances found on mass-market cruises, e.g. screaming children, wet t-shirt contests, and music blasting from giant speakers, making it easy to concentrate on a good book, converse with new friends, or enjoy a snooze in the late autumn sun. 

Fellow passengers who have taken multiple repositioning cruises told me that the weather can vary wildly. Cruises in October or May generally encounter highs in the mid-seventies. Cruises in November or April average ten or so degrees cooler. The key is to pack clothes you can layer and shed or don as the weather dictates. 

Is a repositioning cruise for you? If your idea of a perfect vacation is outdoor sports, a tropical beach, or sightseeing, the answer is probably no, you won’t enjoy it. If you prefer vacations that give you free time, you love being catered to 24/7, and can view the ship rather than a different port every day as your primary source of entertainment, you probably will. 

How much can you expect to pay? It depends on the cruise line, the level of service it offers (not all include free booze and gratuities as ours did), and the room category you book. As I’m writing this in mid-December, 2023, Vacations To Go, the company though which we booked our cruise, is featuring on its web site more than 30 repositioning cruises in October/ November from Europe to Florida.  Starting prices (per person, double occupancy) range from as little as $529 for an inside cabin on Royal Caribbean — less than $50 per person, per day — to $370 a day for a suite on Silversea, one of the world’s priciest lines, favored by travelers who demand nothing but the best. Airfare to/from port cities isn’t included. 

If you like to plan ahead and want to lock in your price on a specific cruise, book now but be forewarned:  You just may bag a better deal if you are willing to wait until a month or so before departure because some lines drop their prices even more.

Whatever you choose, bon voyage. 

You just may run into me, because I’m getting ready to book another one.