Was it Izaac Walton of fishing fame or Sir Isaac Newton who proclaimed that the calories consumed eating one's heart out on vacation were not added to the sum of one's body mass? At any rate, they shouldn't be, the calories that is; although Izaac was probably so busy dodging fish hooks on the fly that he couldn't keep much weight on anyway. Whoever proposed it though, never got it ratified by the physical universe, which is the one most of us are living in. Today we can take wonderful vacations on huge jets which can leave consciences far behind, but on the way home we may find that the seat belts have all shrunk.
I once flew off to participate in a Caribbean Christmas cruise. My spousal unit of the time spent seven days relaxing like mad on the promenade deck, collecting goodie stamps from a fitness director who radiated caloric energy like a midnight desert. I ate. The meals were all included in the fare, and the galley staff worked twenty-hour days producing the most amazing array of foodstuffs I'd ever seen. I ate. Spousal unit got a very nice thingamee. And a very good workout. I ate.
I ate to honour those cooks who had baked croissants in the early hours of the day while I was dreaming about eating. I ate to store up fat for the hibernation through the rest of a Canadian winter I would be going home to (and I almost convinced this eight-year old from Louisiana it was true). I ate to drown out the noise of the pounding, shuffling feet of those fitness freaks on the promenade deck overhead. I became a total seafood slut and a cheesecake tart. I had no scruples, but if I had, I would have inhaled them with whipped cream. When it was all over, I had gained only three pounds.
Not fair, you say? Of course, it's fair. I may have gone into a vegetative stupor (with a little Hollandaise on the side, please) during the cruise itself, but let me tell you, I was a calorie-consuming dervish in the airports at either end of the trip. Christmas travel is coming soon and Christmas caloric consumption is coming right along with it. However, whether you're cruising the oceans or friendly skies, there are ways to keep control of the bod.
I practise a special form of airport aerobics which I have developed over the years. Some of the moves are of my own invention, while others I have learned from fellow travellers such as yourself. Let me share six of the best of them with you.
Boarding-Pass Boogie
This one's always good for a fast sweat just before going aboard. It is initiated by the request of a flight attendant to show my boarding pass, which I had just a moment ago, and which I put in this pocket right here. No? Well, then, it must be in this carry-on bag; or maybe I put it in my money belt. On my phone? No, but where is the phone, come to think of it.
I once had three customs agent trainees and a civil rights lawyer gathered around watching what they were certain was a strip search. My wife never stays to cheer. She slips on board, trades seats with someone half a plane length away and settles down to watch the next set of moves.
Carry-On Cramming
The bag you carry arrives when you do, and there's no long wait at the baggage carousel. If it's true for purchases at grocery and department stores, it must be true on airlines. Now if I can just get down the aisle fast enough (Whatever possessed me to stash that boarding pass in my sock?) I can monopolize the whole overhead bin.
Who wants a pillow? Pillow anyone? Your umbrella, sir? No, it can't go here. Sorry. Hazardous Goods Act forbids it. You'll have to carry it. I can close it, young lady; you go practise your announcement. Leverage, m'am. Just brace yourself against my back while I get my feet up against the cover here, and ... You there! Could you just stuff that little bit of garment bag inside? Mind your fingers. That's it! Got it. I'll just sit down and buckle myself in now and ... No! No, you fool! Don't open that bin!
Luggage Lunging
Sometimes, it just won't all fit overhead and I know it and actually check a piece of luggage through. This gives me the opportunity to get my heart rate well up into my target zone when I go to reclaim the bag at journey's end. I find that using grey fabric bags with all identifying marks and labels removed adds greatly to the amount of exercise produced, as almost every bag looks like mine. That means I get to lunge forward through the crowd, seize the thing and wrestle it off the conveyor belt, examine it, yell "Damn! Wrong one," and toss it back on. I've noticed that this is such a common activity at baggage carousels that I have considered setting up teams on the plane while taxiing in to the gate. Must try it next flight.
Burst Baggage Bumble
Often a consequence of the preceding exercise, the burst baggage bumble involves wrapping your arms around a partially demolished suitcase and plunging off in the general direction of the bus bays or customs line, field of vision utterly obscured by the bulk of the thing and various fluttering bits of apparel.
The whole activity viewed from the top of the escalator overlooking the baggage claim area (a vantage post much frequented by less courageous family members) resembles a gigantic pin-ball game, especially when some humorless "bumpee" retaliates with a roundhouse backpack. It's good for an easy 200 calories per minute, and that's not counting what happens when some poor player (often this one) makes it through a doorway and out into rush hour traffic.
Long Luggage Lugalong
This one had real potential as airport parking lots expanded and check-in counters proliferated down miles of carpeted departure lounges, but it is rapidly disappearing as a serious fatburner now that so many suitcases look like something from transformer toys with big wheels and differential axles and power steering. Why not just put a seat on the damn thing and ride your luggage to the airport?
Let's-Be-Almost-Late Lambada
This is my favorite, partly because of its adaptability to so many situations in home town or on the road, but also because of the potential it presents for developing meaningful relationships so quickly with so many total strangers. It works best on the type A individual like myself who has a robust, obsessive-compulsive need to be punctual, and who has a partner who is a space cadet from la-la land.
It can begin of course before you even leave the house, but for full interpersonal involvement, it takes climbing out of a taxi at a major international airport at holiday time just as your flight is announced. You doh-si-doh your way through crowds of cranky campers, bobbing up and down in jump turns to yell at your ambling amorata, hurl your bags at the ticket agent. Almost too late? You then shift into the frantic stages of boarding-pass boogie and baggage bumbling and throw yourself down the corridor towards the departure gate.
Then it's a ghastly game of who's-got-the-tickets, (a boarding-pass-boogie for two) before you wheeze your way down the aisle of the plane, summoning your last ounce of strength for the worst round of carry-on cramming you've ever faced. I have received standing ovations from the entire coach sections of jumbo jets when I've finally slumped into my seat, an acknowledgement rendered particularly meaningful as they'd had their seat belts fastened for the previous half hour.
Well, there you have them, the sensational six that will keep you lean and everyone around you certainly mean. Oh, there's others that you could do on the cruise itself, but the old bar-bill fumbling, deck-chair dodging and power shopping, really don't work the metabolism quite as vigorously as these deadly half-dozen. Besides, you have more important things to do on a Caribbean cruise than dodging the huffers-and-puffers on the promenade deck. The cooks can be easily slighted. Eat! Eat!