I'm referring to our vacation last year to Alaska. The first leg of our trip that brought us to Minneapolis wasn’t bad. Rather quiet actually. I should’ve known that this was the calm before the storm. :) The next leg of our trip from MN to Anchorage, AK was just over five hours. This, of course, was where the problem was. Being the gracious wife (well, girlfriend then) that I am, I always give Eric the window seat because I know he loves it and I take one for the team with the middle seat. The dreaded middle seat. No one ever likes sitting “bi*ch” in a car, let alone on a plane where you’re among strangers!!
I digress. Back to the story.
The problem was with the man that I had to “share” arm rests with (and by share I mean completely TAKE OVER the arm rest and think it’s only theirs!). He was an older man, sixties maybe, and had some sort of issue with his legs, unbeknownst to us, of course. So upon arriving at our seats, we were greeted by this man that just sat there and stared up at us. After the common, “Excuse me sir, these are our seats...would you mind moving for a moment?” we were told in not so many words that he couldn’t move and we had to CRAWL/STEP over him! Really?!?! I mean, REALLY?!? So after stowing our over head luggage in the compartment, we proceeded to climb over this complete stranger and fumble to get situated. At this point, I’m thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” and it’s as I finally settle into my seat that the realization sets in. I will NOT be able to use the restroom for this entire 5 hour flight and suddenly all I can think about is the bottle of water I just polished off. Uh oh. :) As you can imagine, about an hour into the flight I had to use the facilities, but there was no way in heck I was climbing over duder again. How embarrassing! And let me just pause to say – I’m not trying to come down on this guy for his leg issues or whatever the case is. Get a WINDOW seat, dude! Not an aisle seat! Oh, and the best part during the 5 hours was the fact that he fell asleep for most of it with his head cocked towards me. Let’s just say that would’ve been bad enough had I not also been overwhelmed with his heavy breathing and TERRIBLE bad breath! It’s times like these when I question the wisdom of always giving Eric the window seat. Now you see why an uneventful plane ride is good. :)
Here's what we saw when we approached Mexico - so beautiful!
Here’s something else to put a smile on your face...it did ours, that for sure! We took an excursion one day to the Tulum Ruins which was followed by a visit to Xel-Ha (a water park type place, except no chlorine - all ocean water with all sorts of different activities to do). Xel-Ha also happened to have a bike path with bikes you could use to ride around. We figured, What the heck! Sounds like fun! Let’s just say that while it was a lot of fun, it also resulted in BOTH of us feeling very inept afterwards. Let me explain these bikes for a second. I’m still trying to figure this out - although it was a full size, adult mountain bike, they put child brakes on it. Hmmm, shouldn’t adults already know how to operate regular bike brakes? You know the kind – where you pedal backwards and it brakes. I haven’t had a bike like that since I was about 5 years old! Also, the pedals were really low to the ground, so you had to be careful not to scrape them on the asphalt as you made turns. All of this came into play as I rounded the bend on a turn…uh oh. One thing led to another and my pedal was scraping the ground, I freaked out because of the sound, I tried to brake and back-pedaled too hard, my bike started to wobble, I tried to balance myself out but did the exact opposite and started making things worse, and before I knew it…I was off the path and headed into the woods. HAHA!! Luckily, somewhere during the chaos I managed to brake enough to slow my bike down so it came to a stop just moments before I tumbled to the ground. :) After Eric made sure I was okay, we were in hysterics laughing at the events that just transpired. As they say, “Nothing to see here, folks - move along!” And I got back on the proverbial “horse”.
As we meandered down the path some more, we would occasionally pass two skinny trees that would be a few feet apart and Eric would ride between them. Needless to say, I was a little gun shy at this point so I stuck to going around the trees. Well, before I knew what was happening, all of a sudden I hear “CRASH!” and I turn my head just in time to see Eric flying off his bike! He actually caught some air, too!! Ha! Turns out he got a little too cocky going in between two skinny trees, misjudged their distance apart, and his handlebars ended up touching one of them. Whoops! Luckily, all was A-OK with him (except maybe a bruised ego) and we sure got a good laugh out of that one as well. After returning the bikes shortly later (before we completely demolished them), we stuck with an activity that was likely to keep us out of harm’s way…laying in a hammock in the hammock garden. :)
Oh, good times…
~as
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