Shea and I have reached that point in our lives where we tend to buy most Christmas gifts for ourselves and then label them as if they were from each other.
But we do usually try to get at least one original “surprise” gift as well – for example, this year I bought her some jewelry and she bought me a one hour soak in a “serenity float pod“.
I had my one hour appointment today and it was pretty relaxing – you go into the spa, shower in your private room then climb into the nearby serenity pod which has 10 inches of body temperature water and 1000 lbs of salt which make it incredibly buoyant.
You have a variety of options – you can leave the pod door open, partially closed or closed completely. You can have music playing or not (and either listen to the the spa’s or your own if you bring your device which can be plugged into the outside of the pod via provided stereo cable.) The final option is lighting in the pod which you control as either total darkness, about six different colours or a slow multi-colour strobe of all the colours.
It was a great experience – as the staff member explained, people often use their first soak as a way to simply try all the variations – everything from different ways of floating to the various lighting options and so on – and that’s what I did. I put on one of the handful of albums I listen to when I’m relaxing/napping (I didn’t but if you fall asleep in the pod, the water prevents you from going under!) and had a moment of non-serene panic when I thought the ~45 minute album would run out then I’d be stuck with whatever popped up on Shuffle Play! Luckily my iPhone was set to stop at the conclusion of the album. So this also gave me 15 minutes to experience the pod without music.
The actual experience reminded me of our various hot holidays where I take any opportunity to go out in the ocean then float and bob in the waves, watching the sky.
Anyhow, one of the many things that crossed my mind as I floated today was an idea for a blog post about the…
10 Most Unique Experiences of My Life
- We rode in a submarine off the shore of Waikiki in Oahu, Hawaii
- We also rode in a helicopter over Kauai
- This wasn’t something unique to me but I’ve often talked about being part of two unique moments in history – being in the UK in 1995 during the height of the “Cool Britannia” movement and being in Calgary in 2004 during the Flames improbable run to the Stanley Cup Finals. What links both of these experiences is they were times when a region rallied around a possibility with optimism and joy.
- I’ve stayed up all night in Vegas gambling (quarter machines but still a pretty big thrill to start with $20, get it up to over $100 then lose it all!)
- I pushed the idea of doing a “Money Bomb” fundraiser during Ryan Meili’s first run for the leadership of the Saskatchewan NDP. Then, when his team implemented it, Ryan’s “Money Bomb” because the first time this technique had been done in Canadian politics at any level (as far as we know.)
- I’ve been on the Eiffel Tower at sunset which is the ultimate in romance. Unfortunately, the woman traveling with me was a platonic fellow student but it was still a pretty cool moment. 😉
- Although the hits and attention aren’t what they once were when I focused on it a lot more, I have created a web site (not this blog!) with a truly global reach.
- It’s not unique that I was in the delivery room when Sasha was born. But it’s probably still (somewhat) unique that I videotaped the whole thing! (Then again, with the ubiquity of smartphones, that’s probably not too unique either. Okay, how about the fact that I invited my mother-in-law to be there during the entire delivery as well?) 😉
- I married the same woman three different times.
- I did a bunch of “sex, drugs and rock & roll” things in college that I won’t get into details about but will say that some of them were fairly unique, at least as far as I could tell in the days before the Internet made those kinds of activities a lot less private! 😉
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