I never expected to become a star case study at an island hospital, but life has a funny way of reminding you that control is mostly an illusion. What was supposed to be a fun ATV excursion during a marketing cruise turned into weeks of hospital beds, language barriers, and discovering just how strong I really am.
That fateful Wednesday started so innocently. I got up early on the cruise ship and went for a nice 2,000-step walk around the track with my friend Mark. My Oura ring actually said it was about 4,000 steps, but who’s counting? (I have shorter legs…) I had been hitting the gym every day of the cruise, doing weights and squats, and taking stairs everywhere. #legdayeveryday! This morning, though, I just wanted some light movement before our ATV excursion.
After walking, we grabbed breakfast burritos and tacos, made a communal meal out of it, and ended up meeting with Kay. The three of us had breakfast together, and it was quite lovely. Then it was time for me to grab my stuff and meet Dannella to disembark the ship as soon as we docked in St. Maarten.
We offboarded on the Dutch side of the island, found our transport, and were taken to the ATV place. Here’s where the first red flags started popping up. We arrived at the ATV place, and they looked at us like, “What are you guys doing here?” There were about 14 of us from the ship, and this was supposed to be a private charter just for the marketers’ cruise. I still don’t know if we ended up at the wrong ATV place or if the reservations had been messed up.
The driver who brought us there disappeared as soon as we arrived. The ATV company said, “It’s okay, we can take you guys.” So we signed all the waivers—”just signing our lives away,” as I joked. The excursion was supposed to be an ATV ride with our group, crossing the island to a private beach for some beach time and lunch before heading back.
But since they didn’t seem to be expecting us, they told us, “We’re going to finish this other group first, then take you guys. Go walk down to the street to the beach and hang out until noon.” It was around 10:30 or 11:00 when we arrived, so we had some time to kill.
We weren’t dressed for the beach, but we went anyway. The bathroom situation was… interesting. They technically had two bathroom stalls—little outdoor bathroom closets—but one was being used for storage, so they only had one marked for men. And it was a beach bathroom: water and sand all over the floor. Not ideal for changing from shorts and ATV wear into a bathing suit, but I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to go into the ocean.
We spent probably a good 30-40 minutes just floating in the beautiful water and talking. A small group of us—Scott and his wife Katie, Dannella, JoAnne, and myself—were floating around on an inflatable island, discussing business, marketing, and life. It was a great time until they came up on the beach and said, “Ten minutes and we’re leaving for the ATV tour.”
Nobody had thought to bring towels from the ship, except Joanne and Danela. I air-dried as best I could, used my sundress cover to slip on my underwear, bra, and shorts, and put my flip-flops on to get through the sand. I switched to my Keens once we got back to the ATV place.