Trying to run while on the ship has been a challenge. I thought I’d wake up early again and go for a run around the ship. 2-1/2 laps equal 1 mile. I didn’t know that at the time, so I just started my Garmin running watch and started running. Since it was closer to 8:30 when I started running, and we were arriving at a sightseeing glacier opportunity, I had to dodge a lot of people! So, I thought my running time would just have to be slow. After one lap, I looked at my watch and it told me that I was running at a 6:30 mile pace! Then, I figured out that I started the GPS when I started running and the ship was traveling at at 20 nautical miles per hour. Therefore, I was running at 20 miles an hour even if I just stood there! I briefly considered this option and then went to the gym to run on the treadmill. If you’ve never run on a treadmill while a ship gently rocks the treadmill, you better have great balance if you want to succeed at that skill!

 

After breakfast, Alana went to the gym while I went to take some pictures of the glacier. I’m now up to about 650 pictures that I’ve taken with my iPad and we have six days left on this trip! After the first time the glacier shed some of its ice (they call it “calving”), I turned on the video function. I recorded some amazing calving action! God  bless global warming! The person in charge of explaining things to us said that the ice, at the freezing temp of 32 degrees was sitting in water fed by the warmer Pacific Ocean at 40 degrees. He compared it to a person sitting in a hot tub where the temp difference would cause your nose to fall off.

 

Throughout the day, people came up to me and said things like, “You were great last night at the Yes/No Game, how did you do it? Did you have a strategy?” “You were so funny last night!” One guy in particular caused Alana to cringe. We were eating lunch when he came up to me and told me how much he enjoyed my winning the game last night. The look on her face after he walked away was priceless!

 

Later in the day, we were in an area where we were supposed to see a lot of marine life, like whales, sea otters, seals, etc. We were on the deck with our binoculars when a woman said, “Look, there’s a puff of smoke!” I guess that it would be okay for a whale to smoke since they’re at least 100 yards away from the ship, but it’s still not good for them. So the best we could do was see a whale take a breath and then go under the water, with an occasional view of its tail. Alana kept complaining that the whales were lazy and that they needed to come out of the water more. We were lucky with weather that gave us a great view of the glaciers, but the marine life viewing left something to be desired.

 

Our day was highlighted by a couple at a table near us during dinner who decided to have an argument loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear them! Some snippets of the argument included, “The constitution allows me to say what I want but it doesn’t say that I should care if you’re offended by what I say,” followed by, “so why do you feel it necessary to try to shush me?” Yes, that’s the perfect way to tell your wife (I assumed they were married) that the constitution gives you the right to be an asshole and there’s nothing you can do about it! He’ll be sleeping alone soon enough.

 

Tomorrow we have our first on-shore excursion. Stay tuned for all the exciting details!