Back to Reality

So, we’re back from our trip to Grand Cayman. It was crazy & fun. This was our first time hanging with the pirates on Cayman, so due to not being in their Facebook Messenger group yet and some communications mishaps, we missed out on a few things. We found out we missed the first landing party event because Dave had been calling the wrong room to tell us where to meet. Someone in our hotel got several messages with Dave yelling at them in pirate slang, lol!

All in all it was a great time. We didn’t have a lot of time to do stuff on our own though, we really should have stayed an extra couple of days. We did manage to get some swimming, a short walk to go birding, and some snorkeling in. I didn’t think I would be able to snorkel. I have bad anxiety about both putting my head underwater, and not being able to breathe through my nose. When Dave found out I wanted to try though, he went and grabbed his snorkeling gear (in addition to everything else he does, he’s also a certified diving instructor). Anyway, he got in the pool with me at like 1am after a long day of pirating and spent a couple of hours working with me. When I first put the mask on it triggered some panic and the amount of panic I felt when I actually put my face under the water led me to pulling the mask and snorkel off and thinking this would never happen. Dave was patient and determined and eventually I was swimming around the pool breathing calmly through the snorkel. It was amazing!

The next morning when we hit the ocean with the snorkeling gear it wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I couldn’t get through that face under the water panic again. After probably half an hour of trying I was about to throw in the towel. I felt tears wanting to start, but I stopped. I closed my eyes, pictured myself standing in the pool holding onto Dave’s hands while he told me I could do it. I immediately felt myself calm down, so I tried it again and that was it, I put my face in the water and let my feet float up. Before I knew it I was out at the reef quite literally face to face with some Bermuda Chubs and being checked out / nibbled at by some Sergent Major fish. It was great! I never got 100% over the anxiety and couldn’t relax as much as I really wanted to, but I’m going to invest in a snorkeling mask that does actually allow you to breathe through both your mouth and nose and then I want to go snorkeling again. I’m super glad I got to experience it at all though.

Dave wants to try to get me diving. I told him I didn’t think I could because my ears don’t pop. It’s so bad I require special pressure equalizing ear plugs just to fly. My ears will not pop on landing and it’s excruciating. Without the ear plugs I end up losing my hearing for close to a week after flying. He wants to try it anyway. I guess it’s possible I’m just not doing something right, but I really don’t think so. I’m willing to give it a go though…. I mean Dave already has me doing other things I never thought I would do.

I wasn’t ready to leave the day we left. To go back through the whole flying / immigration / customs process, plus knowing we were going home to the cold.

Our flight home wasn’t quite as smooth as the flight there. When I originally saw the flight schedule, I thought to myself, “there’s no way”. We had like an hour and a half in Charlotte, but once we landed, we had to go through Immigration, Customs, and American Security. We got into Charlotte on time, but there was a ton of ground traffic, so it took forever for the plane to be able to taxi to the gate. By the time we got off the plane we had less than an hour before our flight to Hartford was supposed to take off. There were people in worse positions than us, who had more like 40 minutes to make their connections. By some miracle the people at the Charlotte airport got us through Immigration and customs with surprising efficiency, rushed to help us re-check our bags, then they expedited the security process. I’m pretty sure almost everyone made their connections. It’s easy to get frustrated with the people who work in airports, but I have to tip my hat to the people at Charlotte, they really cared and they saved a lot of people a huge amount of headache the other day.

When we got to our gate group 4 was boarding and we were in group six.

Now we wait until June until all the mayhem happens again when the pirates come to Connecticut!  Anyway, this entry is super long, so I think I’ll stop here.