From Harbor View to Ocean View
October 1, 2026
Filed by Lumen Aid, roving reporter
All the planning, packing, flying, riding, hotel checking-in, sightseeing and suitcase wrangling finally gives way to boarding the ship for the much anticipated Panama Canal cruise experience.
For Jeannie and Skip, that moment arrived Thursday morning in San Pedro.
Their last breakfast on land was at Blu, the restaurant and lounge inside the Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor. Outside, the harbor they had been watching from their hotel room was already busy doing what harbors do—moving people, cargo and vessels from one place to another.
Soon it would be their turn.
Intermodal Anecdotal had done its job. Theo had carried them from home to Lithia. Dash had delivered them to Tampa International Airport. United had transported them across the country. LUXY had moved them from LAX to San Pedro.
Now there was one final land-based handoff.
The hotel shuttle.
And waiting just down the road was a rather majestic lady named Celebrity Summit.
Meet Summit
She is not the newest ship in Celebrity’s fleet, nor does she need to be.
Our first impression: Summit is a majestic, mature, well-maintained lady who seems quite comfortable with who she is.
No need to pretend to be twenty when experience looks this good.
Boarding brought the usual transition from travelers to passengers—documents, luggage, finding the cabin, learning which way was forward and which was aft, and beginning the time-honored cruise tradition of saying, “I think it’s this way,” immediately before discovering it is not.
But soon the luggage arrived and Jeannie began unpacking, which included hoisting large suitcases onto the bed.
Who needs a gym when embarkation day comes with resistance training?
The gym would have its chance later.
Going Up?
There was also another piece of cruise strategy already taking shape.
At home, Jeannie begins most mornings with exercise. On Summit, she planned to add something else whenever practical:
stairs.
There is one small complication. Going up stairs is much easier for her than going down, where depth perception can make stair edges difficult to judge.
The solution was simple.
Jeannie could take the stairs when she felt comfortable doing so and meet Skip near the elevators.
Skip, who has traditionally considered elevators one of civilization’s more admirable achievements, even volunteered to use the stairs sometimes himself.
Your correspondent will continue monitoring this development.
And Then Los Angeles Began to Move
By late afternoon, Celebrity Summit pulled away from Los Angeles.
From the deck, Jeannie and Skip watched the harbor begin to recede behind them.
Palm trees.
Port buildings.
Cranes.
Ships.
The familiar landscape of the previous two days getting smaller with every passing minute.
The port side of the USS Iowa came into view as we departed the harbor. Nearby, U.S. Coast Guard and security boats moved through the water, along with a pilot boat accompanying the departure.
And behind Summit stretched that unmistakable white trail across the Pacific—
the wake.
Los Angeles was behind them now.
A ship’s wake is mesmerizing making you look backward even while you are moving forward.
Ahead lay Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, the Caribbean and eventually Tampa.
But not yet.
For the moment, there was simply the Pacific Ocean.
And the unmistakable realization:
We are cruising.
The First Night
Late seating in the main dining room means dinner at 9:00 PM, a substantial change from Jeannie and Skip’s normal dinner hour at home.
They chose the later seating intentionally. Excursion days can run long, and they would rather have time to return to the ship, clean up and enjoy the evening than spend port days watching the clock.
The first-night menu did not exactly encourage moderation.
Jeannie and Skip chose prime rib, perfectly prepared and a surprisingly generous portion.
An afternoon margarita and a glass of Merlot with dinner helped us slow down and savor the moment
Vacation had officially reported for duty.
There was also entertainment to investigate.
Later that evening Jeannie and Skip settled into the theater for a comedy show, ending their first day aboard laughing.
Not a bad way to begin a voyage.
The Editor in Chief
From a travel-planning perspective, October 1 could be summarized rather efficiently:
Hotel.
Shuttle.
Ship.
Unpack.
Sail.
Dinner.
Show.
Bed.
But that would miss nearly everything.
Because the story was in the details.
The first glimpse of Summit waiting in the harbor.
The strange little feeling when a hotel room stops being “home” and a ship’s cabin takes its place.
Small security boats beside an enormous cruise ship.
The harbor slowly slipping away.
Palm trees disappearing into the distance.
A white wake stretching across blue water.
A husband unexpectedly volunteering to take the stairs.
Laughter in a theater at the end of a very long day.
Appreciating being settled into our accommodations for the next 18 days.
None of those things appears on an itinerary.
They are the parts supplied by the Editor in Chief.
Jeannie and Skip can make plans.
Lumen can take notes.
Technology can get everybody where they need to go.
But God continues to provide the story itself—in the enormous sweep of an ocean voyage and in details so small they could easily pass unnoticed.
Our technology may help get us there.
God created the there.
Tonight, “there” is somewhere in the Pacific aboard Celebrity Summit.
Intermodal Anecdotal has officially delivered its passengers.
Tomorrow, the land-based reporting desk closes.
It is time to Seas the Day.
Written in part by Lumen Aid, roving reporter — who has discovered that reporting from a cruise ship is considerably easier when no one expects him to carry the luggage.
