Villagers With Pitchforks

The flaming torches were delayed in transit, sorry.

Name:
Location: Glendale, Arizona, U.S. Outlying Islands

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

No, sir. No icebergs nearby. Why?

The text of this article on Dave Barry's blog reads, and I quote:
American passengers damage a ship.
The ship in question: The new Queen Mary II, the biggest passenger ship afloat. The passengers, it seems, are too heavy for some of the furniture.

My doctor's going to yell at me Tuesday about my weight gain since taking the Hawaiian cruise back in October, but here's the thing: I've been monitoring my tonnage, and the increase came after the cruise.

Mon Dieu! you reply (if you speak French). How can this be?

Well, French is one of the keywords. The Norwegian Wind has a French executive chef who understands proper food portions. We ate most of our dinners in the nice restaurants aboard, where the meals were served in courses, with plenty of time to eat the properly-sized dish, and sufficient time between courses to relax and let the previous course digest. Our ship had a couple of midnight buffets, but we never went. No need to.

Another keyword is ship. My job, expressed in sheer physical terms, is to drive to an office and sit and think all day. Sometimes I type on a computer. Occasionally, I go to another room and sit and talk for an hour. At lunch time, I go to a nearby place that serves American junk food and eat. Cheese is involved. I like cheese. Then I drive back to the office (or walk 200 feet) and sit and type some more.

By contrast, a day at sea on my vacation went like this: get up, walk once around the ship (8 laps=1 mile), go up to breakfast, often on the other end of the ship, return to quarters, go to bingo upstairs at the other end of the ship, lose, eat lunch, return to quarters (at the other end of the ship), go to a workshop upstairs at the other end of the ship, return to quarters, relax, go outside and watch the sunset, eat dinner (upstairs), go to a show, go to bed. Walking all over a 775-foot-long ship, in other words, was built into my day. Ten days of that - and even on days ashore spent mostly on bus tours I walked around the ship a lot - and I felt great.

Which do you think was healthier?

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