乘豪华游轮航海旅行，在一望无际的海面上以星空为被，枕着波浪做美梦——一个字：妙！哎，等等，还有更“妙”的呢，听这位先生怎么说……

　　I am a hearty seafaring type of individual, so recently I spent a week faring around the sea aboard the largest cruise ship in the world that has not yet hit an iceberg.<注2> It is called the Voyager, and it weighs 140,000 tons, which is approximately the amount I ate in desserts alone.

　　The Voyager sails out of Miami every week carrying 3,200 passengers determined to relax or die trying<注3>. The ship has (I am not making any of this up) a large theater, a shopping center, a rock-climbing wall and a nine-hole miniature golf course<注4>. We have come a long way indeed from the days when the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower, which—hard as it is to imagine today—had no shopping center and only four golf holes.<注5>

　　While aboard the ship, we passengers engaged in a wide range of traditional cruise-ship activities, including eating breakfast, snacking, eating lunch, drinking while lying on deck absorbing solar radiation until we glowed like exit signs<注6>, snacking some more, eating dinner, eating more snacks and passing out face-down in the midnight buffet. Needless to say I did not attempt to climb the rock wall, which is good because the resulting disaster would have made for a chilling newspaper headline: CRUISE SHIP EVACUATED AS MAN FALLS, EXPLODES!<注7>

　　When every passenger had attained roughly the same body weight, the ship would stop at a Caribbean island, and the passengers would waddle<注8> ashore to experience the traditional local culture, by which I mean shop for European jewelry and watches. I frankly don't know why it makes economic sense for a tourist from Montana to fly to Miami, get on a ship and sail to Jamaica for the purpose of purchasing a watch made in Switzerland<注9>, but apparently it does, because shopping is very important to cruise passengers. If these people ever get to Mars<注10>, they WILL expect to find jewelry stores.

　　The other thing you do when your ship is in port is take guided tours to Local Points of Interest. In Jamaica, we toured a plantation. During the tour, a man demonstrated how he could climb a tree using only a small rope made from twisted banana fibers<注11>. When he came down, he showed me the rope, and I, out of politeness, pretended to be interested in it, although in fact it was, basically, a rope. The man handed it to me and suggested I might want to ''take it home to the kids.'' I frankly doubted that any modern technology-raised American child would be thrilled by such a gift (''Look, Timmy! A rope!''). But I pretended to be grateful. Then the man told me that such ropes USUALLY sell for (he did not say where), but he would let it go for . And so, unable to figure out how to escape, I gave him . I imagine the other plantation workers laughed farsintosthe night when he told them.

　　But don't get me wrong: I truly enjoyed the cruise. It was fun and relaxing, and it gave me a rare chance, among all the hustle and bustle<注12> of my busy life, to pick up a substantial amount of body mass. Cruising is also romantic, so let me just say this to you couples out there: If you're looking for a way to rekindle the flame in your relationship,<注13> I'll sell you my rope.