Cruising Into the Fat Abyss

I recently got back from a cruise (or at least that’s what the web­site said it was going to be). I never thought I’d go on a cruise, but when my wife’s mother decided to take her two daugh­ters and their fam­i­lies on a cruise to Alaska using some of her inher­i­tance money, well, we went (it was very nice of her to do so).

While walk­ing around a glacial lake and watch the bright-blue mini-icebergs float by and walk up to a lake in the woods was great, I instead want to share how strange the whole boat expe­ri­ence was.

To sum up my expe­ri­ence, I think I could enjoy cruis­ing, if it weren’t for the boat or the peo­ple. Let me explain.

The ves­sel was clean, but old – and not in a cool, vin­tage kind of way. It was like a Best West­ern hotel, except the rooms were clos­ets and there were no exits. The decor wasn’t shabby, yet wasn’t pleas­ant, either. There were long, drab cur­tains and short, stubby lounge chairs. There were a myr­iad of odd art­work from the early ‘80s (after all of the good artists had moved to Europe, appar­ently). And  there were more plas­tic reclin­ing lawn-chairs than an old-folks’ home in Boca Raton.

As if that weren’t enough to con­vince us that we had stum­bled onto a lost set of the Love Boat, the pas­sen­gers fit right in, too! Every cliché about cruis­ing old peo­ple was ver­i­fied within the first 45 min­utes of being on board. There was the retired shoe sales­man and his wife from Topeka. The Har­riss’ from Ben­tonville, who prac­ti­cally live at sea now they are retired. And of course, Buddy and Joe, the retired busi­ness­men with their “friends” (I’m sure she’s not like all those other escorts you hear about).

Deter­mined not to get sucked into dou­bling my weight on the cruise and look­ing like every­one else, I set my alarm clock for the next morn­ing. At 7am I jumped out of bed, only to hit my head on the ceil­ing (it had been low­ered to form a bed for my daugh­ter). I put on my run­ning gear, which wasn’t easy, since the boat was rock­ing furi­ously (we were blessed with a cabin in the utmost for­ward of the boat).

As I headed up to the espresso kiosk and then out­side to the track, I flashed my GPS watch to every pas­sen­ger, try­ing to show them that I was dif­fer­ent (and maybe a lit­tle too much like hold­ing a cross up to vam­pires). I walked a few laps on the boat’s track in the rain and wind, and even ran a few steps. I watched as the last bit of vis­i­ble land slipped fur­ther and fur­ther into the abyss with each lap around the track.

Then it started to hap­pen. There’s some­thing weird out there, man. As soon as you lose sight of land, you start to lose your life. It was like enter­ing the twi­light zone. The rock­ing of the boat weak­ens you at the knees. Your innards begin to think they should belong on your out­side. You don’t feel yourself.

The rest of that first day at sea, and on all sub­se­quent sea days, I would wan­der the boat like a hyp­notic teenager at the local mall, hop­ing to stum­ble upon some­thing inter­est­ing. The design­ers of the boat (and call­ing them such is being too kind) must have been skilled masochists in their for­mer lives. The inte­rior of the boat had skill­fully been cre­ated to match the monot­o­nous view out the win­dows into the grey abyss. I imag­ine being stuck in a wash­ing machine would be more inter­est­ing and exciting.

With noth­ing else to look at, you end up turn­ing to the age-old pas­time of peo­ple watch­ing. If you haven’t gone on a cruise, you might think a boat filled with over 2,000 peo­ple would be pretty entertaining.

It was quite depress­ing, though. Every­where you look you see peo­ple who are ter­ri­bly unhealthy and unfit. It felt like we were on a 7-day cruise with the last port-of-call being the morgue. I’m sure we had every dis­ease known to the West­ern world right there on that ship. Heart dis­ease, dia­betes, stom­ach, throat, lung, liver, yet-to-be-named can­cers, and the list goes on.

I keep lying when peo­ple ask if I saw any whales on the trip. I say no, but the truth is there were plenty beached whales on the boat. One obese guy was so over­weight he had to use an old-person’s cart to move him­self around. Another cou­ple never even left the boat dur­ing port days. And a woman hap­pily explained how she could see the glac­i­ers out­side on her TV screen from her room! Really? Why even go on a cruise in the first place? Wouldn’t camp­ing out at your local All the Fat You Can Stom­ach and then Some Buf­fet have been cheaper?!

It should have been rather moti­vat­ing, right? Look­ing around, not want­ing to end up like the folks who could barely lift their forks to their mouths? But truth be told, it was a lit­tle fright­en­ing. I was over­whelmed – the sheer num­ber of them all! They were every­where. In the hall­ways and ele­va­tors. On the decks. And most cer­tainly in the cafe­te­ria. It was like being in the trailer for a zom­bie movie, in the scene where all the zom­bies are march­ing towards you with out­stretched arms. Except all these zom­bies are over­weight. You run for the door, but you can’t get out of this hotel.

Author’s Note (yeah, still me, but doesn’t it sound much more cred­i­ble with that intro?): I want to take the oppor­tu­nity to explain my point of view regard­ing the ter­ri­ble obe­sity epi­demic that has our nation by the throat (and whose grip is quickly extend­ing around the world, with every open­ing of McDonald’s and shelv­ing of Twinkies).

Unlike many, I don’t blame the indi­vid­u­als for their cir­cum­stances. We all need to take respon­si­bil­ity for the deci­sions we make, but if there aren’t many good deci­sions avail­able to us, we aren’t to blame for that.

The truth is that if you are poor in the US, it’s really, really hard to find good food at an afford­able price. Mil­lions of fam­i­lies don’t even have access to stores that carry fresh, healthy food!

Some­thing has to be done to give every­one a fight­ing chance for a healthy life. You can be sure that no large cor­po­ra­tion in this coun­try will make the nec­es­sary changes to their pro­duc­tion lines and cost struc­tures unless they per­ceive that the major­ity of us demand change.

Grab an apple and write your local rep­re­sen­ta­tive or food com­pany. We need seri­ous change in America’s food indus­try or we’re all going down with this sink­ing ship.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

•