Mother Nature tried her best. But she could not make me lose my lunch.

While traveling on my honeymoon this month, I had the good fortune of experiencing three of the four forms of motion sickness and emerged unscathed. Okay, perhaps the memory remains, but the nausea did not humble me like a college freshman's first keg stand. The good element to it was I had a small window of time to compare them directly. Your grandma told you knowledge comes from mysterious teachers, and she wasn't lying.

For those who don't travel much (which included me until this month), here's some trivia to bubble the acid in your gut. As defined by Wikipedia, motion sickness is "a condition in which the endolymph (the fluid found in the semicircular canals of the inner ears) becomes 'stirred up', causing confusion between the difference between apparent perceived movement (none or very little), and actual movement." Take a deep breath now, that was the bad part.

Motion sickness occurs while traveling via sea, air, car, or in outer space. Since I can only assume that my marriage upset the gods, I experienced the first three forms to a degree that I never had before. (As for the fourth, NASA has yet to return my calls). Most of the air and sea motion on my trip was due to the outer effects of Tropical Storm Gamma, which was passing through at the time. See the diagram below that compares my travel path to Gamma's.

Since I have stomach ailments while on solid ground, such a trip appeared to be a gastrointestinal death wish for me. But I planned ahead and packed a Ziploc sandwich bag of remedies like Johnny Depp's suitcase from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. It contained the pill form of Pepto Bismol, Rolaids, Ginger extract, digestive enzyme supplements, and of course Dramamine. Lots of pretty colored tabs that luckily raised no eyebrows from U.S. Customs.

Here was my week of motion sickness:

(1) AIR - I traveled from New York to Tampa (and back) via plane. The ride down was fine (apart from the fact that I ingested a pound of strawberries, whipped cream, and champagne the night before). But the return trip was a little rough leaving Tampa. The turbulence began as 'choppy'--small bumps that made the plane appear to rumble-- and escalated to 'wavy', where the plane seems to bounce in a huge arc causing the sensation that most of your major organs migrated to the bottom of your throat. In my opinion, air motion sickness is more about fear, since I've seen one too many dramatizations (LOST, Fight Club, etc.), and is usually able to be overcome mentally.
- - - I give it a Nausea-O-Meter rating of 7 of 10.

(2) SEA - Part A - After arriving in Tampa, we boarded our cruise ship for a loop of excursions around the West Caribbean (as shown above). The waters were most choppy at Grand Cayman, and near Costa Maya. Overall, the motion was not too bad when you were doing something active. But anytime we were still (either dining or lying in bed), we had the sensation of a buoy, bobbing from side to side in rhythm to the ocean. I didn't think this motion was as unexpected or jarring as air turbulence, but it was more about the repetition just gnawing at you. Like Chinese water torture. But there are lots of remedies to combat this annoyance (see the link at the bottom).
- - - I give it a Nausea-O-Meter rating of 6 of 10.