Transportation Woes

We took a cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii, stopping in Hawaii in 4 places. Halfway between Vancouver and Hawaii the cruise ship starts vibrating and slows down. The captain is very professional, talking to the company and doing various tests. At the first stop in Hawaii, a dive team flown in from Miami pulls fishing net and random rope off one of the propellers. To slow a cruise ship takes quite a lot of rope, as you can see in the first picture. Later, when flying LA to Albuquerque and just north of the Salton Sea one of the engines on our Southwest 737 shuts down and we return to LA. It was the first time I’d heard a jet engine shut down this way: A loud noise of declining pitch lasting maybe 2 secs. It warranted a fire truck and police car at LA, as you can see in the second picture. (FYI: We had bought the three Southwest tickets on points but they gave us $200×3=$600 bucks for scaring us.)