I watched one that starred Tom Arnold and the girl who played D.J. Tanner on Full House. Sorry, I never bothered to find out her real name. That was really the lowest point of my weekend. When you are watching Christmas movies in July that star Tom Arnold and any of the kids from Full House, things are bad. There are a lot of productive things I could have done. I just didn't feel like it. I do know that it is time for me to become a productive member of society again and I think it is why I have been vegging so much for the last several days. I'm building up my strength... or something like that.
On Saturday I went to a wine tasting that benefited TNT and LLS. I have a friend who is preparing to run her umpteenth Half Marathon. She is actually running one in Chicago next weekend. Then the TNT event she is doing this time around will be in San Francisco. You would think this would motivate me to start getting some exercise. It didn't. I have another friend who is losing a lot of weight and walking every evening and posting her results on FB. You might think that this would motivate me..... not so much. But one thing is motivating me and will result in a trip to the gym today. If you know me well, you have probably already guessed. I have booked a cruise!
My friend Jenny and I will be going on a Royal Caribbean cruise out of Galveston in January to Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Cozumel. My parents are going too. It was actually my dad's idea which makes me really happy! Their friends, Nancy and Maurice will also be going. I can't wait and having 6 months to get ready makes me really happy. I am not sure how employment will effect all of this. I hope that I'll be able to take a week off in January assuming, of course, that I have found gainful employment. But I guess we will see.
I do know that I have to get very serious about a diet and tons of exercise. I am hoping that this could lead to a query for a magazine article on dieting for vacation. God knows, if anybody knows about the perils and pitfalls of vacation dieting, it is me! I can usually think about it right up until the final week and then start dieting 3 days before I leave. Then I get on my trip and whine about how I didn't lose any weight before leaving after all of my good intentions. That is sort of my specialty.
With the trip to San Francisco, my excuse was that we didn't plan the trip until just about a month before we were leaving, so there was no time to lose weight. Although, I did start going to the gym 2 weeks before we left. On other trips, like Europe for instance, I have had more than 6 months to get ready. With Europe, I lost weight and got in much better shape before we left. Then Jenny and I both lost additional weight during the trip because we seriously limited our food while on land and we walked all over Barcelona for five days. Then while in Florence and Rome, our excursions were nothing but walking. This was much more exercise than we generally get on a cruise.
Once when we went on a cruise that stopped in Roatan we decided to do this Eco-Hike thing for one of our excursions. It was up a mountain. That should have been the first clue that the diagram indicating moderate exercise was highly under exaggerated! I'll just go ahead and put it out there because I have very little pride when it comes to endurance.... the Hondurans are much tougher than us. There was about a 12 year old boy leading our hike up the mountain with a machete. The main tour guide was a tiny little creole woman who if I remember correctly, may have been pregnant. She brought up the rear and made sure their were no escapees from this excursion in Hell. It was about 90 degrees and in a jungle, so I am sure that you can imagine how it felt with about 150% humidity.
We had to hike up the mountain single file because that was all the trail would allow. Jenny and I were close to the front. There was just an elderly couple and the little boy / guide in front of us. The elderly couple apparently saw the same "moderate exercise" diagram next to this excursion in their guide that we did because the man was not happy at all! Both the husband and wife were struggling but the man kept stopping and threatening to turn back around and wait for us at the bottom of the mountain. The little boy / guide had apparently figured out long ago that the more groups he could take up the mountain, the more tips he would receive, so he seemed to be going for the land speed record on scaling the trail during our trip so as to get back down quickly and herd another group of unsuspecting tourists into Hell. Here is a picture of me after we had been hiking for about 45 minutes.... Just before we reached this sign, I thought we were almost done. I didn't realize that we still hadn't reached the Mountain Trail. So, you might be able to detect a little bit of despair in my expression.
The picture to the right is the little boy / guide. It isn't out of focus, it is just that he is moving so fast that he is a little bit of a blur. This picture was taken just after the elderly couple in front of us moved to the back of the line to prevent the man from strangling the little boy and also possibly so that the older female tour guide could administer CPR if the need arose. Quite frankly, the little boy didn't seem to understand that tips are only passed out if a majority of the participants survive the trek. You can see the butt of his machete in his right hand. You also may note that his left hand is draped casually in his pocket and he is wearing flip flops so as to indicate that for him, this wasn't even moderate exercise. Apparently, his mother had not yet taught him that most Americans hate smart alec kids.
Below I am posting a picture of myself after we had reached the top of the mountain. As you can see, this is no Pike's Peak, but again, we did run up it. So I still consider this to have been a major feat. They gave us about a half hour at the top to look around and take pictures. There were a ton of pretty flowers and the water below was beautiful. The area in the left bottom of the picture where the water is surrounded by piers is one of those places where you go to swim with captive dolphins. I don't think I could ever do a captive dolphin swim. It just seems mean to me. But I will try again to swim with them in the wild. I read on Trip Advisor over the weekend that there is a male dolphin right now at Rum Point in Grand Cayman who keeps coming up to snorkelers and swimming with them. I hope he is still doing it in January!
Apparently, the newspaper there was warning that he was aggressive so swimmers should get out of the water when he came near. But all of the posters were saying that he was wonderful and just swam along side them and interacted but never made any aggressive moves.
On that particular cruise, the Eco-Hike was the toughest day we had. We also did a Zip Line excursion in Costa Maya. It was fun. I went back and did it again with my nephew last year during his graduation cruise. It turns out that zip lining is more fun the first time when you don't know what to expect than it is the second time when you have already experienced all of it before. I don't think I will waste time zip lining again.
Getting back to my original topic, I was by no means skinny in these pictures. But I was much lighter than I am now. I think I have to get back to at least this weight in order to enjoy the January cruise. I was miserable in San Francisco just from walking. I don't want to be that uncomfortable on a vacation ever again. So, I am going to get a few things done around this house and then I am heading to the gym. I'll post on FB once I get to the gym so that you will know that I made it. If I don't post from the gym, you have my permission to harass me!
Tomorrow, I am making a quick trip to Nacogdoches since it is my Mom's birthday. I'll try to run to the gym in the morning before I leave, but anyone who knows me, knows that I am not an early morning gym rat.... so we will see how that goes. Have a great day and I will be posting a lot about past trips in the next few days so that I can get myself motivated. Hope you can take all of it!
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