Life's a Stitch

1983 nautical mikes from Lisbon in the middle of the North Atlantic. No birds, no land, just ocean and sky. The sea depth is 5000m! I’ve done this route a few times in the past so I know the routine. Heading to the Caribbean, each day gets warmer. Soon we’ll see flying fish and an exhausted flock of birds might land on deck for a much needed rest on their long trip across the ocean. 

I find the routine quite relaxing, meeting new people, participating in activities as if it were camp for grown ups, watching the sea and the sky. 

E and I tried the Drop, a “ten story free-fall” dry slide. Reality was way better than it sounds. You are positioned enclosed in a clear tube, wrapped in a plastic padded mat, standing on a small platform. You hear the countdown and the platform drops from underneath you, leading along the first steep part of the slide. It never really feels like a free fall Halfway down you come to a stop. That’s what I thought would be the scariest as if you’d be stuck in a tube. You have to wiggle a bit to get moving again. It’s like a regular curvy slide until near the end when you come to a dead stop inside the tube with the end in clear sight a few feet away where there’s an attendant to help pull you out. I talked to a staff member whose work commute from the top floor to the eighth would be by slide. How cool is that?

The person who introduced me to audiobooks many years ago was inspired while on a cruise where she saw people engrossed in reading and missing the view. That’s when she began listening to books and shared her advice when she heard I was going on a cruise. What appealed to me was the ability to do two things at once: walking, cooking, knitting while reading. So that’s what I do when walking laps around the promenade deck. 

This cruise’s full length theatrical production was Beetlejuice. It went off without a sea induced hitch (it happens) and was quite impressive. 

On this, the last long stretch of sea days, following my usual routine I was walking on the promenade deck without my book. It’s interesting what you overhear. Tone of voice is everything. A much younger couple comes toward me. He says “You have ice cream on your shoulder.” She replies with a sneer, “well you can just lick it off then,” not a hint of come hither. Probably an unfortunate ice cream accident, but the story could have been a romcom moment at sea. She was unhappy about something. At our first dinner we unfortunately heard two adult brothers angrily debating their American politics throughout the meal. E politely asked them to tone it down, the request was not well received, and G sprang up to avert a near brawl. Those aside, you hear plenty of laughter and happy holiday sounds, punctuated by the excited screams of those brave enough to attempt the Drop. 

Tomorrow, our 43rd anniversary, we land on the Dutch side of the island of St. Marten.