The Cruise Days AKA The Good Days

My family just spent a blissful 2 weeks on a cruise through the Baltic Sea. It was sublime. I am convinced cruises are the best way to vacation. If you want a day by day rundown of our travels check out my sister's blog here. But over the next few days I'll be posting some of my favorite cruise moments.

Not every day was spent in a new city, 2 were spent at sea. On these days my sister and I attended a Zumba class. I'd never done it before the cruise. In my mind it was jazzercise to reggae beats. But my sister wanted to go so I thought "what the heck. why not?" I showed up a few minutes late and easily spotted my sister among the other Zumba zealots. She was the youngest person on the floor and the only white one. All others were middle-aged Asian women. Yes. This was going to be superb.

I weaved through the crowd dodging dancing women to find a spot next to my sister. I was an outlier: below the age of 50 and male. We danced our calories away to Latin beats. It was a constant struggle to guard my little dancing space. It was constantly under siege from the rhythmless woman next to me. I battled against her encroachments with no success. Eventually I gave up and accepted that this is how Zumba was going to be, claustrophobic, hilarious, and old.

When Zumba finished I was ready to go get some of that endless french toast from the buffet. My sister though was not. She wanted to stay for Aerobox. No. Please can we be done? I suck it up though and commit to staying for the next hour. Luckily most of the Zumba zealots couldn't hang and left. Finally I could enjoy some more real estate while I did some Aerobox, whatever that is.

The routine started and I immediately regretted staying. It was hard. Real hard. To make everything worse, I was in the dead center of everyone. And Mr. Aerobox thought that meant I wanted personal guidance and motivation. So he came over and got right in my face, started smacking my stomach to tighten up my abs and telling me to push it. I wanted to be in the buffet. That was all I wanted. Meanwhile, Mr. Aerobox is telling me that she'll thank me later, pointing to my sister. I didn't bother correcting his assumption that we were married, too much pain to talk.  Finally he left me alone and after a few more exercises it was all over. I couldn't be happier. Freedom and french toast awaited me.