Since we got another hour last night I had a good night’s
sleep and was still up at 6 without the alarm clock. I got up to the gym about
6:30 and did some looking and moving to music (I had my earbuds) to see what changes I
wanted to make to the routine. Jesse was teaching again – I haven’t been able
to figure out the rotation, if there is one. He too is playing around a little
with his routines, so there were some different things. I still can’t figure
out why he puts upward dog in the stretch routine. We did a lot of abs in extended
boat pose, including one with legs extended and out wide, which are good for
me.
I had a very nice breakfast with John and Sue from outside
of Cleveland. I’d forgotten until I talked to Dave after breakfast that we met
them at the first technical stop on the Alhambra bus tour, and that we called
him the potter because he had the same crazy hair as the potter in the Priorat.
He runs a business, and she works with him, doing energy storage components – everything
from tiny capacitors up to full grid storage. We nerded out together, but also
talked about museums and amusement parks and other things. They met at Los
Alamos, among other interesting stories. John ordered a very strange breakfast –
a ham and veggie omelet with no eggs and a scoop of rice. It was hard to get
across the waiter, but when it came it seemed to be what he wanted.
Back to the cabin for a short practice with the new songs,
and off to class. Yesterday the mike stopped working, so today I got a new one
that I don’t like nearly as well. Also today Kieron decided to do his what’s
going on talk at 10:10, instead of 9:50, so it hit right in the middle of
Touched by God. I was able to recover almost perfectly afterwards, which
impressed me no end. There were over 20 people in the class, and I moved around
to stand in front of the DJ booth which turned out to be a very good thing,
because it has a plexiglass shield around it and I could actually see the class
reflected in it. We had a good time as usual, and at the end several people
came up and told me how much they were enjoying the class and asking how to
find it in their own towns. I had another person come and tell me that she had
hurt her knee but it was feeling better after an hour of class than it had in
weeks. And one lady told me how she had hurt her knee and missed a few classes
(oh-oh), but it turned out she’d done one of the crazy workouts in the gym. Her
friend started scolding her: “I told you not to go do that, I told you to do
this workout.” It made us laugh. Also the seas are much calmer today, which in
general I don’t like but makes dancing much less hazardous. I’ve now taught
more Nia classes on the ship than on land, and to way more people, and I am
loving it. It will be sad to not be teaching class every day when we get home.
After class I joined Dave in the Queen’s Lounge for Kieron’s
cooking demo. He made an Asian inspired duck breast. He and Daniel, the chef,
had a good banter going and he’s very funny on his own. Unfortunately Ashley
the culinary host was there as well, and she is not so fun. Today is Kieron’s
24th anniversary of his first day at sea. There was time after the
demo to go up to the room and change, and then we had lunch with 5 other people
and made cruise small talk. We had Yudha as our server again, which is always
fun, but the food came a little slowly and we were a couple of minutes late for
the safety equipment demo. The first hint that the demo would be fun was that
there was a giant life raft upside down in the pool. The second officer, Marco
Arnout, who does the 3:00 navigation talks, was also in charge of this demo,
which was mostly about what happens if we have to abandon ship. He went over
all the communications devices, and then had 3 cadets get into their immersion
suits and life jackets. They’re supposed to be able to do it in 2 minutes, but
the problem is once your hands go in the gloves of the suit you have a thumb, a
forefinger, and a mitten. It’s bulky as well, so it’s very difficult to get the
life jacket straps tied. One cadet pretended to tie them and then stood at
attention, but no one was fooled. The other people in the demo got the three
cadets all tied up, and then they got in the pool and demonstrated several
swimming techniques, as well as how to flip the lifeboat upright and get in.
One of the cadets didn’t have an immersion suit, so they said he had
hypothermia and demonstrated the thermal protection suit, which was particularly
fun when the 2nd officer made a second cadet get in. There was a lot
of muttering and some threats of retaliation. Then they beached the raft on the
deck of the pool and let people go in it. We didn’t go, because it was time to
go back to the room for our highly anticipated afternoon naps.
I napped, Dave read on the verandah. Then he headed off for
the navigation talk and I went up to the gym for Day 2 with Adriaan. For the
clean and press he was using one 8 lb weight and I had two. I told him to try
to keep up. He also did a modified version of the half man makers where he only
did the dumbbell raise part, but in both cases he was going much faster than I
usually do so it was a challenge. We ended up with extra time for abs, and he
did some side planks that were brutal – bottom leg bent, upper leg extended, then
raise and lower the upper leg. I’ll be bringing that one home for sure. After cool
down (Jesse brought us cold towels, which felt realllly good) I went down to
the cabin to work on re-learning Dah-Din Beats for the Nia class. Dave stopped
by briefly on his way between the navigation talk by 2nd officer
Marco (global meteorology) and his mile walk around the ship. He learned about
the doldrums and the horse latitudes, and the roaring 40s. Eventually it was
time to dress for dinner.
The beginning of dinner is always a little slow, partly
because Keith and Jim have to talk about poker, and partly because the four of
us who drink wine haven’t had any yet. But eventually things always get fun,
and of course there is always making fun of Jim’s dessert – they have a fruit
crisp every night, and he orders it every night. Tonight many of us ordered the
queen of puddings, which was supposed to be a lemon custard but was too thick
and not lemony enough. We had to discuss it for a very long time.
Tonight is the Indonesian crew show, and Yudha will be
conducting the bamboo orchestra, and his assistant will be wearing one of the
king costumes (I can’t remember the assistant’s name, or whether he is the good
king or the evil king). So we are going to go to the late seating of the show
and then to the crew show. I will write about it in tomorrow’s blog.
Tonight’s towel animal: giant penguin. Usually we move the
towel animal from the bed to the table, but this guy needs to sit on the couch.
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