3/3/2012 Losing Weight With Noodle on The Pride of America Cruise Ship

I couldn't wait to get up to Rascals kid club
for Mystery Morning!
Of all the themed programs on the ship
nothing could excite me more
than pretending to be spies.
Ever since David McCallum captured my eight year old
heart on the TV show, Man From U.N.C.L.E in 1964,
I wanted to be a spy and go on missions
with Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin.
So, now I got to.
I met Noodle in the Rascal room on deck 12
and we had six kids left behind for Port Play
as their parents explored Kona and the surrounding area.
Noodle, my fellow Washingtonian, from Spokane
was what my grandmother used to call,
"One long drink of water."
At six foot four with bright blond hair and
sparkling blues eyes he was adorable and
had a fun-loving personality to boot.
Noodle and I divided the work and I helped
the kids make their "official" spy badges
and write their spy code secret messages
while he took the all the ransom notes
and hid them all over the ship.
When Noodle came back he "noticed"
that some evil person had kidnapped
Charlie the Seahorse.
Now Charlie was a blue, much-loved over-sized
vinyl covered stuffed rocking seahorse
that lived in the padded toddler play area.
Who could be so evil as to kidnap the
most beloved toddler friend as Charlie?!
Our spy team was going to solve the mystery,
and with the two twelve year old boys
finding the first ransom note,
we were off to save Charlie!
The snag for me was that Noodle
had decided to depart from the standard
search of ransom notes to "mix it up a bit."
Noodle followed the oldest kids
and I (Lolliopop) brought up the caboose of six and eight year
old kids as we searched the entire ship for clues.
Ten clues that were spread the length of the 965 foot ship
and up and down six decks, five times each.
I don't normally need a calculator to write stories
but we covered 4,825 feet and 50 staircases that morning.
My favorite part of going through the ship as spies
was that we had all kinds of secret codes to follow.
Whenever we'd run into passengers in the hallways,
we needed to be invisible so we'd do a Code Red,
and crab walk stealthily against the walls
and of course crossing the large reception area
unseen necessitated Code Black
or crouching down and tiptoeing silently.
All good fun for when we finally got
back to the Rascal Center and the final note,
which led us to the baby-diaper changing room
where we "rescued" the "prisoner" Charlie.
By the time we finished, the parents were
waiting to pick up the kids for lunch.
Most people on a cruise ship gain weight
foraging through endless buffet lines,
but I lost ten pounds each contract
and five that one Mystery Morning.
Thanks Noodle!