Blowing in the Wind

When I booked the cruise, I forgot that you have to choose your dinner seating for the main dining room. There are so many people on the ship that they have to split them up into main seating and second seating (and this is three levels of dining room, to boot). By the time I remembered you have to do that, main seating was filled, so we were relegated to second seating, which means supper isn't until eight o'clock in the evening. Unless you specifically request your own table, you are seated with six or eight other people at a larger table. On our family cruise, we had some rather odd table mates; on another that I took with my sister, we were seated with a young married couple and a retired couple, he from the FBI, so the table talk was lively and interesting.

We were a little concerned about who we might end up supping with, as you can imagine. They turned out to be two ladies, about my age, friends who had their children, a nephew and a son's girlfriend, all from the Oklahoma City area. We got along famously the entire week. Even if they had been mutant face stuffers from hell, we still would have muddled through.



It was very windy out of Galveston, and the ship was doing some weird kind of roll-y things. Not nausea making so much, just, as one of our dinner mates pointed out, "It's really annoying." Nothing I had encountered on previous cruises.

I have been pushing my workouts, trying to lose some weight and get in shape for our backpacking/canoe trip to the Boundary Waters canoe area in July (more about that in upcoming months). I was determined not to be one of those people who gain 7-10 pounds during their cruise vacation. Yes, there is a lot of food, but that also means that at least half of it is healthy food. Thank God I like healthy food.

The ship has a large fitness center, and also offers yoga classes, pilates, stretching, and so forth. My favorite way to exercise on the ship, however, is just to walk around the deck. My daily walks are four miles, so that was my goal. That and taking the stairs up and down the 12 decks, rather than using the elevator. Getting lost repeatedly while trying to find our cabin probably added many miles, in addition.

So, on the deck, five laps is one mile. Cool, twenty laps around the deck. I started out. Nice, wind behind me, sunny, this is . . . wait, what just happened? I turned the corner and . . . I can't stand up! After a few moments to adjust, I carried on, although I have to say, it wasn't easy. I managed to make it around the end of the ship, so that the wind was at my back again, but each time I turned at the other end, I was face into it. I had seen on the ship news on the television in our cabin that the wind was blowing 27.9 knots. I didn't know what that meant. But I live in Oklahoma, how bad can a few knots be? But then, I remembered that the ship was going 26.9 knots straight into the 27.9 knot wind. I'm neither nautically nor mathematically inclined, but it felt like about 50-60 mph winds that I was walking into head on. It was tough, but I did it.

Of course, even in near gale force winds, you can't bitch and moan too much when you are walking on the deck of a ship looking at the most amazingly beautiful blue water all around you. Made even more stunning by the accents of the whitecaps. Whitecaps. You know, because of the stupid wind.