Have I mentioned how much I hate being on a ship before? Well let me reiterate I hate sailing, I hate transport by ship, I just hate the idea of travel on water in general (I've tried all methods, none of them are fun, easy or worthwhile). No matter how they've advanced over the years you can't take the motion out of being on the water, or that you are all alone in the middle of a large body of water and if the ship goes down you die! YOU DIE IN THE WATER ALONE! Also you can't see the bottom, so who knows whats down there? I have no idea, could be sea spiders the size of ships, you don't know, it could be down there, waiting for you in the depths, their sea spider fangs hungering for your flesh! Ok sort of lost my point.
Anyway I hate being on a ship normally, this ship was old, parts of it were rotting, and we were sailing in the worst storm I'd ever been a part of (and not directly or indirectly caused...) So it appeared all the other sane people were right and I shouldn't have been out on the water. The captain of the vessel was some old guy with a beard down to his knees and a couple of teeth rattling around in his head. I staggered my way up from the hold down below and shouted at him to try and get his attention (not exactly the wisest course to do to someone steering a ship in a huge storm).
"Where are we going?" It was a valid question in my mind, becuase despite clearly being in a storm, maybe we were sailing in the wrong direction or something.
"East you said you wanted to go east!" His voice cracked a couple times in the yell.
"I thought no one wanted to sail east?"
"I didn't! But you won that drinking game fair and square so here we are." Yes dear reader, I defeated the worst ship captain of all time in a drinking contest and my victory got him sailing east. I don't even know how thats considered a win.
"At least this is the worst of it right?" I had to ask because you know optimism is my only friend.
"Worst of it? Son this is the best of it, we haven't even got to the actual storm yet!" My heart sank with that little revelation, and then I lost my footing and smacked my head fairly hard on some railing. So you know, a total win. He offered me a rope length of rope as I struggled back to my feet.
"Whats this for?"
"To tie yourself down, find something sturdy though, old girls got some rot in her, but we'll make it Mr. Lorentino, or we'll die trying!" That wasn't very reassuring, nor was the rope which looked as ragged as the rest of the ship. I hate when someone uses the "or die trying" statement, because thats ridiculous, dying while trying something is just an eloquent way of saying you failed. Its not like history really writes kindly to those who "died trying" because thats ridiculous. So anyway all of that is to say tying myself to the ship wasn't really a reassuring moment, and I was pretty sure I'd drunkenly agreed my way into dying aboard a ship in the middle of nowhere (see theres that optimism again).
I was almost right as well, but for that you'll have to read the next entry...
No comments:
Post a Comment