Birthday at sea

It's a little nutty here!

I woke up feeling like I was sleeping on a water bed - the rocking of the ship was much, much stronger today than it has been. It's also gray and rainy, but still warm - probably about 75 degrees. Since at home there are six inches of snow on the ground, I am certainly not complaining. But rather than spending my birthday laying in the sun, I'm having a calm day indoors.

However, I did get up to exercise. I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and then, because the ship was rocking so strongly, I wanted to see what running in that would be like. I know I said I wouldn't run until I returned from vacation, but I figured I'd just do 15 minutes just to see.

Well, it was super fun and weird at the same time. In theory, the track is flat. But with the rolling sea, it was constantly moving under my feet. Sometimes it felt like I was running on air - like I would take a step and it would be a long way before my foot actually hit the ground. Other times it felt like the wind was pushing my legs down and keeping me from lifting them up to move forward. I ran very comfortably at around a 10-minute mile pace. Oh, and no foot pain!

So later this afternoon I am going to lift weights and take the last spinning class of vacation. Then I'm going to take my daughter to high tea in the dining room, then shower and dress for dinner. It's a formal night - how lovely to get to dress up on my birthday! - and we're going to the steakhouse for dinner.

Oh! I didn't write about scuba! My friends, my husband and I did a "Discover Scuba" class yesterday. We had like 10 minutes of instruction before we were putting on vests and tanks and masks and hitting the water. After another 10 minutes of shallow water practice, we were diving down and swimming with the fish! It was amazing. I couldn't believe how quickly they had us really diving, but I figured out very quickly how to manage the air, mask, and equalizing pressure in my ears. My problems were staying low enough - I kept floating back up - and my silly triathlete kick. I do a little flutter kick to save energy, right - that makes sense for triathlon. Well, in scuba they want you to do a big scissor kick and not move your arms. That was not natural for me. But I loved it, and am thinking about getting certified. I don't want to fool around in a pool, though - if I do it, I'll try to combine a vacation to Hawaii with a scuba certification class or something.