Floatation Device

 

As everyone knows, I dislike vehicles. Not just airplanes, cars and bikes, but anything necessary for the getting from one place to another. I like being in other places, I just don't like getting there. So it might seem odd that we would choose a vacation that was one hundred per cent travel. But there I was, after considerable time used waiting in lines and being confined to seats, boarding a ship whose sole purpose for eight days was to move me around while not limiting access to bed, board, and bathrooms. And at the same time never getting me anywhere.

The tourist industry is a strange game, but the 'cruise' might be the strangest of all. It is built around the assumption that people need to be prodded into enjoying themselves. On the particular cruise we went on, that meant extremely loud public address systems used mostly by entertainment directors to gin up excitement. I didn't want to be excited. I wanted to lounge on the deck chairs by the pool, solving Cryptoquotes and Sudoku.

Side note, Sudokus are a recent invention given a foreign sounding, but nonsensical name, for no particular reason. Many autistic people can solve them at a glance while the rest of us focus half an hour to make sure the numbers 1 through 9 don't duplicate in squares, lines or rows.

However, plans for working my way through the puzzle book weren't to be, but not because of busy-ness of the ship.

I bought several puzzle books before the cruise, and immediately began working my way through them. I worked so many puzzles so quickly that I wondered if that was what a savant felt like. One book was filled before we started packing. So imagine my frustration when I got on board and was unable to crack codes. After several days of frustration, Jerry solved one from across the room just by listening to my confused ramblings. The books went in the trash can, and I began to wander around the ship, realizing what I had gotten myself into. A week of travel with no destination.

What about off-ship excursions, you ask. Weren't there places the ship stopped?

Yes, I could have gone para-sailing, scuba diving, bungee jumping or shopping. But I'm not a thrill seeker. Being briefed on how to abandon ship in case we had to, was scary enough for me.

Art or museum tours, which are my idea of fun, were not on the menu. Once Mom and I went to see some Aztec ruins, and that was thrilling. I could have spent the rest of the week there, especially since Mom was trying to get back to the beach because she wanted to fly like a kite behind a motor boat.

But there are no museums in tourist towns so I spent eight days on the ship waiting to get to my destination, which was home.

Nancy Sherer

 

 


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