Alaska pt. 3: my shart will go on

On the morning of August 14th, G and I were sitting in the breakfast buffet when we heard a shrill voice say "Madison, your brother is eatin' nicer than you are and he's three years younger!"  The woman in question stood up and we were treated to "ALASKA" emblazoned in neon letters across the seat of her sweatpants as she walked up to the omelet station and told the chef "I need another omelet 'cause my DAUGHTER doesn't know how to eat PROPER."  Then she called to her husband/partner "Babe [pronounced "beb"], tell Brooks what a good boy he is compared to his sister who is OLDER and should KNOW BETTER."  Turning back to the omelet chef, who was smiling painfully:  "Is that all the ham you're gonna put in there?"

G whispered, "Jesus Christ, no wonder they effing hate us."

(This was, of course, an exaggeration; although we occasionally saw the "hospitality mask" slip a little when they were especially busy or someone was being rude, nobody we ever dealt with in a professional capacity was ever anything but polite to us.  Though there was a bit of negligence on our steward's part, which I'll get to in a later entry.)

On this day, the ship dropped anchor offshore because the dock in Sitka was too small to accommodate it.  We took small boats called "tenders" (I don't know why either) from the ship to the shore for a guided hike in the Tongass rainforest.  True to its name, it was very rainy, but it sure was green.

To be honest, although the guide was very knowledgeable and the area was pretty, I don't think this excursion was worth the money.  And oh my god, the bathrooms on the trail!  G went into one and came out immediately, saying "I couldn't do it.  I actually dry heaved twice before I managed to get back outside.  Dudes were pissing behind the bathrooms instead!"  So I had to pee pretty badly once we got back into town.

After the hike, G was pretty wiped out...not so much from the walking, which was only a couple of miles, but from his cold.  So he went back on the ship while R and I went to a small pub for lunch.  We ran into my dad and A (who had gone on a different excursion) there, so we stuck together for the remainder of the afternoon.  We visited a small Russian orthodox church, and then we were walking back to the pier when I felt a really nasty rumble in my stomach.

Dear reader, I sharted myself.

I grabbed my oblivious dad's arm and said "I need a bathroom NOW."

"Oh, just a second...A wants to take a picture of---"

"I NEED IT NOW," I gritted out between my teeth, and hurried across the street to a hotel, where I ran into the lobby's bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and frantically pulled down my pants.

(Grossness/TMI alert; proceed at your own risk)

The damage wasn't as bad as it could have been because I was wearing a pantyliner.  Now, the odd thing is that I don't wear pantyliners on a regular basis, but for some reason, I had slapped one into my chonies that morning.  It's like I had some weird ESP that said "Hey, maybe you should wear one in case you shart".  (I mean, it's not the best type of ESP, but it's useful, I guess.)  Fortunately, my jeans were completely spared, though there was a little bit of, uh, splatter (sorry) on the side of my underwear because I hadn't picked the liners with wings, which is a mistake I shall never make again.  I scrubbed at the splatter (sorry again) with some toilet paper, proceeded to evacuate a massive load of devil's oatmeal into the bowl, waited a few minutes to be safe, popped three Imodium from the stash in my purse, waited a few more minutes, and then flushed, washed my hands, and rejoined my worried party outside.

I must add here that I don't think it was food poisoning, because I only had the one pooptacular incident.  I think the culprit was eating way richer food than I usually do.  I do enjoy my snacks and sweets, but my actual meals (weekends excepted) are generally pretty bland:  yogurt for breakfast, PBJ for lunch, and organic pasta with tomato sauce for dinner.  I sure don't eat bacon, eggs, red meat, and/or desserts on a daily basis, so I think my system was like "Holy crap, bitch, enough of this already" and let loose.

Once I got back on the ship, I went to our stateroom, where G was lying in bed reading the latest volume of The Unwritten.  I locked myself in the bathroom and handwashed my underwear and the crotch of my jeans (just in case I missed something) with hand soap, hung them over the clothesline in the tub, and then I emerged and said, "Hey, I did something I haven't done in decades!  Wanna guess what it was?"

"Didja poop yourself?" he asked.  (This is the kind of Vulcan mind meld that develops when you've been together for ten years.)

After a long nap, we had dinner at the buffet and saw a comedic juggler who was excellent.  All in all, it was a good day.

...I mean, besides the sharting.  Obviously.

[to be continued]