9 September 2017 It's Not Easy Being Green...Like The Color Of The Leaves...

"Travel tips: How to avoid carsickness, seasickness and airsickness... Be careful what you eat. And stay home."

I love that "Travel Tips" quote by Charles M. Shulz, the american cartoonist best known for his comic strip Peanuts featuring Charlie Brown. However, staying home wasn't an option that I've ever considered!

Fortunately I don't usually get sea sick, although my dad loved to tell a story of when I was about seven years old and he took me fishing south of Nantucket. The way he told the story, he was catching Striped Bass off the stern, doormat flounder off the starboard side and tuna off the port side...and I became horribly sea sick and we had to go home. He always told this story with a smile on his face, and while I'm guessing in the actual moment he didn't find it humorous (it was a l-o-n-g boat ride to the south side of Nantucket!), as the species and number of fish grew into an even better story, he got quite a good chuckle out of telling it!

The reason I'm bringing this up is, yes you guessed it, I turned a little green the other night (Wednesday September 6th) when the barometer sank and the seas grew! I had felt pretty well for most of the day, despite the sensation of being a pinball in some kind of wild oceangoing arcade game!

If you'd like to see the live action of the seas through the porthole, just click on the link below!

Steve and I even fit in a game of Makin' Bacon since the Tucker Trawl, Bongo net trawls and all main deck activities were temporarily suspended due to the rough sea conditions.

So, everything was going well, until...a group of us decided to go watch a surfing movie in the lounge before bed.

I thought that it would also be a good time to go online and answer some questions in my PolarTREC journals. I had been in the lounge area before...and the motion did seem a little problematic even on a calm day, so I packed up all of my belongings in the lab for the night, just in case. Dr. Okkonen looked up from his work and said, "done for the night?" And I replied, "maybe...I figure that between the ship heaving, going into the lounge, watching a video + reading e-mails, the odds of my coming back vs. getting sea sick are about 50%-50%!"

Everything went well for the first half-hour. We even had popcorn! And then suddenly...I just had to get out of the room! I exited immediately into the galley, where Annie, one of the awesome stewards on ship pointed me toward the ginger ale and crackers!

What a crummy feeling it was to suddenly feel my body spiral into an oddly heavy, warm, slightly dizzy, mouth watering, nauseas experience! I fought the pitching and rolling of the sea back to my cabin while carrying my crackers and ginger ale like prized possessions! As I entered my room I was able to grab my immersion suit out of my locker, while still balancing my ginger ale and crackers, just before the next big wave rolled the ship toward the side that my bunk was on. I'm still not quite sure how I was able to make it over the edge of the bunk and wedge the immersion suit next to the metal railing, but phew! I had made it!

Thankfully I didn't actually get physically sick (I've often heard that if it gets to that point, it's hard to recover until you get on land!) and I only felt really horrible for about 15 minutes. I did grab the acupressure wrist bands that had been sitting unopened in my desk drawer and chewed a little cinnamon gum after I finished my crackers. Not sure what worked but very thankful that something did!

So what's a sea-sick teacher at sea to do? Since my phone was in reach, and I obviously wasn't going to sleep, I decided to make an audio message to my students back in Springs! By the end of the message I started to feel much better and within an hour was back to feeling great again. If you'd like to listen to the audio just click on this link: Audio:PolarTREC teacher Lisa Seff "live" from her bunk.

Through the Porthole:Arctic Artwork!