I get motion sick easily. I get sick on airplanes, sick in cars, even when I am the one driving, and worst of all, sick on boats. When my parents and I went to White Island, both there and back were... Challenging. So, it was with much apprehension when I agreed to travel by ferry to Milos. My fears were assuaged by the argument that the Mediterranean is a sea, with mild weather, and not the "open ocean." On the voyage to Milos, the assertions proved true, and the passage was smooth with only mild motion sickness typical of a car on a straight road.
After two calm days on Milos, the winds picked up, and each day we saw the ferry depart through the white caps on the sea. I did not think critically about what this would mean for our trip off the island, only that the ferries seemed largely unaffected by the whitecaps. We purchased our tickets to return to the mainland, and went to the docks with time to spare. The crossing that night was cancelled due to wind (i.e. rough water). We lugged our baggage back to the hotel, and stayed another night.
The next day, the wind was strong, and the chance of departure hung tenuously in the balance. Not wanting to stay another day on Milos, I was hopeful that we would depart. Yet, I could not help but be concerned that a voyage on such a day may not be one I wanted to sail on. The vessel arrived, and we boarded with Mr. Bean playing on the on-board entertainment system.
Televisions are enormous distractions for me. The constant motion attracts my attention, and I have to fight to look away. As the ferry jostled out of the harbor, I pulled my eyes from the screens, and stared directly in front of me at a painting of a windmill. In these situations, my best defense against both televisions and motion sickness is a precise point to focus on, and at the hub of the windmill, I found just such a point.
The first minutes of the passage dragged on, the ship climbing a wave, and slamming down the next side. I started sweating, not a little, but pouring sweat. The cabin was hot, and my seat received none of the air conditioned air blowing through vents along the windows. The cabin grew muggy, and thick in the hot air was the smell of vomit from the previous sailing. The man next to me complained that worse than the motion was the smell of the boat when the fragrance of cigarette smoke started to mix with the vomit. Rowan Atkinson was replaced by the safety video, which was replaced by a melodramatic film, the audio of which was piped through the loud speaker.
Staring straight ahead at my windmill, sweat dripping from every pore, face pale, and a bit green, Sarah asked what the movie was, and I responded, "I think it is Mama Mia." Moments later we left the Bay of Milos for the open sea, and the Abba started to play.
Outside of the protection of the island, the ship added rolling to its repertoire of nausea-inducing motion. The climbs to the top of waves also became larger, as did the crash on the other side. It seemed that with each crash a shudder went through the boat, and my world narrowed to the windmill, Abba, and Pierce Brosnan missing his ferry, lucky bastard.
Eventually, my motion sickness caused the blades of the windmill to appear to spin, and I had to find a new point on the painting to stare at. A red pot laying on its side was the second best single point in the painting to focus on. The stewards appeared with fistfuls of motion sickness bags and rolls of paper towels. Almost instantly the first person vomited. She was seated in the bulkhead row, with people not only to her left and right, but a rear facing row in front of her. The smell drifted the short distance to our row, and Sarah started to lament our plight.
"Oh no," her battle with the spinning demons began. Then a moan. The audible portion of her battle continued, then stopped. "I'm going to need a bag."
"How soon"?
"Pretty soon."
I raise my hand, make eye contact with a steward, and a bag is brought to each of us. I hand Sarah hers, and return my gaze to the pot in the painting. Always stare at the pot. Always stare at the pot. My brief effort to obtain silver-lined bags, puts me closer to my limit of motion sickness, and I fail to find the silver-lining anywhere outside of these little white bags. I stare at the painting, focus on my breath, and listen to Sarah's pain to drown out the Abba.
Time passes in no measurable way. Life in the boat is some sort of Purgatory, where the passage of time is impossible to gauge, save for Abba songs that never seem to end, and the woman in the first row vomiting again and again, challenging everything I thought I knew about how much the human stomach could contain and expel.
Sarah vomits. The filled bag is passed to a steward, who seems unhappy to be collecting vomit filled bags from his passengers. My eyes are off the painting, off the pot. I feel my illness growing.
Sarah vomits again. A different steward collects this bag, and issues her a new one and a wad of toilet paper. In all the transactions my eyes are off the painting, and I lose focus on my breathing. I look back to the pot, and the spinning demons have made the windmill spin even though I am not longer staring at it. The motion attracts my attention. My eyes dart from the pot to the windmill, the blades freeze. Back to the pot, and the blades start spinning again.
Sarah vomits a third time. Everything starts spinning, and I'm lost in some sort of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, where the only sounds are a shuddering ship, people vomiting, and Abba.
"Just let it go if you can, it feels better," Sarah says, panting in the cool air from the vent her seat is blessed with.
I say nothing, staring at the painting with the spinning windmill on the spinning boat, fighting the demons who are in my head, and my belly. I wonder how far through the two and a half hour journey we are, and if it takes longer in bad weather. I open my bag, hoping it is big enough.
I vomit. I keep the bag at my mouth, convicted to only use one bag. The bag gets heavier as the boat and I heave over the next waves. My vomiting becomes painful and irregular, and I start to wish I had taken the dozen bags tactic of the woman in the bulkhead. No matter now though, my stomach is nearly empty.
I look up, the man next to me has abandoned his seat. He is either superhuman, or had vomited his dinner on his voyage from Thira. I fold my bag closed and hand it to the steward. He looks grumpy about this aspect of his job, failing to see the silver-lining that I would only produce one large bag of vomit for him to double-bag in plastic and take to the trash can. I probably would not see it either if I were him, especially since some of his coworkers have started singing along with Mama Mia. I look at my watch, we have only been sailing for an hour, but at least the windmill has stopped spinning.
The boat seems to be tossing less, and a steward passes through the cabin commanding people to put their motion sickness bags away, that the rough seas are behind us. Sarah curls into a ball on her seat, head under the vent, and falls asleep. My eyes get heavy with the reduced turbulence, and I follow her to the same reprieve.
I awake as the boat starts to arrive to port. The Greeks prepare for the post sailing shoving match that is disembarking, and I have no desire to lose this match, as I want off the boat as much as any of them. I shove to the luggage hold and collect our things, then the mob packs in around me, waiting for the hatch to open, and the gangway to extend to solid land. While waiting for freedom some Australians are discussing how much worse Abba made their nausea, and pressed into a mob of hot and barfy Greeks, I can't really agree more.
After two calm days on Milos, the winds picked up, and each day we saw the ferry depart through the white caps on the sea. I did not think critically about what this would mean for our trip off the island, only that the ferries seemed largely unaffected by the whitecaps. We purchased our tickets to return to the mainland, and went to the docks with time to spare. The crossing that night was cancelled due to wind (i.e. rough water). We lugged our baggage back to the hotel, and stayed another night.
The next day, the wind was strong, and the chance of departure hung tenuously in the balance. Not wanting to stay another day on Milos, I was hopeful that we would depart. Yet, I could not help but be concerned that a voyage on such a day may not be one I wanted to sail on. The vessel arrived, and we boarded with Mr. Bean playing on the on-board entertainment system.
Televisions are enormous distractions for me. The constant motion attracts my attention, and I have to fight to look away. As the ferry jostled out of the harbor, I pulled my eyes from the screens, and stared directly in front of me at a painting of a windmill. In these situations, my best defense against both televisions and motion sickness is a precise point to focus on, and at the hub of the windmill, I found just such a point.
The first minutes of the passage dragged on, the ship climbing a wave, and slamming down the next side. I started sweating, not a little, but pouring sweat. The cabin was hot, and my seat received none of the air conditioned air blowing through vents along the windows. The cabin grew muggy, and thick in the hot air was the smell of vomit from the previous sailing. The man next to me complained that worse than the motion was the smell of the boat when the fragrance of cigarette smoke started to mix with the vomit. Rowan Atkinson was replaced by the safety video, which was replaced by a melodramatic film, the audio of which was piped through the loud speaker.
Staring straight ahead at my windmill, sweat dripping from every pore, face pale, and a bit green, Sarah asked what the movie was, and I responded, "I think it is Mama Mia." Moments later we left the Bay of Milos for the open sea, and the Abba started to play.
Outside of the protection of the island, the ship added rolling to its repertoire of nausea-inducing motion. The climbs to the top of waves also became larger, as did the crash on the other side. It seemed that with each crash a shudder went through the boat, and my world narrowed to the windmill, Abba, and Pierce Brosnan missing his ferry, lucky bastard.
Eventually, my motion sickness caused the blades of the windmill to appear to spin, and I had to find a new point on the painting to stare at. A red pot laying on its side was the second best single point in the painting to focus on. The stewards appeared with fistfuls of motion sickness bags and rolls of paper towels. Almost instantly the first person vomited. She was seated in the bulkhead row, with people not only to her left and right, but a rear facing row in front of her. The smell drifted the short distance to our row, and Sarah started to lament our plight.
"Oh no," her battle with the spinning demons began. Then a moan. The audible portion of her battle continued, then stopped. "I'm going to need a bag."
"How soon"?
"Pretty soon."
I raise my hand, make eye contact with a steward, and a bag is brought to each of us. I hand Sarah hers, and return my gaze to the pot in the painting. Always stare at the pot. Always stare at the pot. My brief effort to obtain silver-lined bags, puts me closer to my limit of motion sickness, and I fail to find the silver-lining anywhere outside of these little white bags. I stare at the painting, focus on my breath, and listen to Sarah's pain to drown out the Abba.
Time passes in no measurable way. Life in the boat is some sort of Purgatory, where the passage of time is impossible to gauge, save for Abba songs that never seem to end, and the woman in the first row vomiting again and again, challenging everything I thought I knew about how much the human stomach could contain and expel.
Sarah vomits. The filled bag is passed to a steward, who seems unhappy to be collecting vomit filled bags from his passengers. My eyes are off the painting, off the pot. I feel my illness growing.
Sarah vomits again. A different steward collects this bag, and issues her a new one and a wad of toilet paper. In all the transactions my eyes are off the painting, and I lose focus on my breathing. I look back to the pot, and the spinning demons have made the windmill spin even though I am not longer staring at it. The motion attracts my attention. My eyes dart from the pot to the windmill, the blades freeze. Back to the pot, and the blades start spinning again.
Sarah vomits a third time. Everything starts spinning, and I'm lost in some sort of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, where the only sounds are a shuddering ship, people vomiting, and Abba.
"Just let it go if you can, it feels better," Sarah says, panting in the cool air from the vent her seat is blessed with.
I say nothing, staring at the painting with the spinning windmill on the spinning boat, fighting the demons who are in my head, and my belly. I wonder how far through the two and a half hour journey we are, and if it takes longer in bad weather. I open my bag, hoping it is big enough.
I vomit. I keep the bag at my mouth, convicted to only use one bag. The bag gets heavier as the boat and I heave over the next waves. My vomiting becomes painful and irregular, and I start to wish I had taken the dozen bags tactic of the woman in the bulkhead. No matter now though, my stomach is nearly empty.
I look up, the man next to me has abandoned his seat. He is either superhuman, or had vomited his dinner on his voyage from Thira. I fold my bag closed and hand it to the steward. He looks grumpy about this aspect of his job, failing to see the silver-lining that I would only produce one large bag of vomit for him to double-bag in plastic and take to the trash can. I probably would not see it either if I were him, especially since some of his coworkers have started singing along with Mama Mia. I look at my watch, we have only been sailing for an hour, but at least the windmill has stopped spinning.
The boat seems to be tossing less, and a steward passes through the cabin commanding people to put their motion sickness bags away, that the rough seas are behind us. Sarah curls into a ball on her seat, head under the vent, and falls asleep. My eyes get heavy with the reduced turbulence, and I follow her to the same reprieve.
I awake as the boat starts to arrive to port. The Greeks prepare for the post sailing shoving match that is disembarking, and I have no desire to lose this match, as I want off the boat as much as any of them. I shove to the luggage hold and collect our things, then the mob packs in around me, waiting for the hatch to open, and the gangway to extend to solid land. While waiting for freedom some Australians are discussing how much worse Abba made their nausea, and pressed into a mob of hot and barfy Greeks, I can't really agree more.
