The Longest Day

Sunday seemed to stretch on forever. It’s the travel day from Seattle to Juneau. The initial “leaving Seattle/checking out the view/checking out the boat” excitement wears off after a bit. I enjoyed the day, but when we were being pounded by the large waves and rocked, Carol wasn’t feeling too well. In fact, she was rather queasy most of the afternoon.

The day moved slowly – which is hard for the Iron Tourist to handle. We were up early, and all four of us (sans Julia, who was getting soaked in Charlottesville thanks to Hurricane Irene) did a Tai Chi class. I’m always looking for help with my balance, given my bad ankle, and Carol and the girls wanted to try it. I figured if they were going, I’d give it a shot.

The class was fine – I did well parting the wild horse’s mane, but apparently, according to Carol and the girls, my Butterfly is pretty disjointed. Well, given my lack of rhythm, that’s not too surprising. The class is led by the ship’s lifestylist, Jo. She’s perky – kind of what you would expect from a cruise ship lifestylist!

Then we had breakfast. After that, we kind of hung out. I walked around the ship, and then did some work. To be honest, here it is Tuesday early morning, and I don’t really remember what we did between breakfast and lunch. Maybe it will come to me later. (Oh, and a few paragraphs later, it did – we spent some time figuring out the shore excursions we wanted to do and took care of that. Of course, that wasn’t the whole morning, so I’m still drawing a blank on the rest of it.)

We had lunch in the Vista restaurant, which is a sit down, menu restaurant. The bulk of the lunch service is at the Lido, which is buffet (and where we’ll have most of our lunches), but we figured we had time to for a sit down.

The early to mid-afternoon was taken up with the CPAC events – first a panel with Donald Rumsfeld, David Keene, and Grover Norquist, and then my panel with Ralph Reed and Emily Miller of the Washington Times. All were interesting, and people really liked my presentation – as I knew they would (the data is VERY interesting). I took the most time, so I hung back during the Q & A to give Ralph and Emily more time. Carol, Maddy, and Torie came, and they enjoyed it. Maddy and Torie did groan at one of my lines (but everyone else like it). I guess my plays on words can get a little old at times.

After that, I went for a run – as much as I could – along the 3rd deck outside promenade. Since it was no longer calm Puget Sound, I bounced along quite a bit. Plus, the deck was wet in spots, so I had to go slow. At one point each lap, the wind was such that it nearly stopped me. Wow – a lot of work to go 1.33 miles. I finally stopped and walked another lap (0.33 miles) when Carol came out to walk (she had also walked some earlier).

By this point, she was starting to feel the bounce in the boat. I’m hoping it wasn’t my presentation that made her queasy! The girls watched “Anchorman” (they were underwhelmed). I did spend some time in the casino, winning money and talking with some folks. Again, a relatively quiet day. Dinner was rough – Carol took one bite and decided she couldn’t stay – she went to the ship’s infirmary, got some medicine, and went to sleep.