I have recently had reason to contemplate some of the lyrics of a song by the band Bachman- Turner Overdrive. It’s the rock’n’roll song “Takin’ Care of Business.”

Randy Bachman wrote the song. Sanpete’s own Adam Reader aka “the Professor of Rock” informed me recently that Randy’s last name is correctly pronounced “Back – man” — even though most Americans say “Bach – man” — with the “Bach” being like the classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

If you don’t recognize the classic rock song, google it. If you don’t know who Adam Reader is, google him (he has 1.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel). If you’re not familiar with Johann Sebastian Bach, one of “the Three B’s” — (along with Beethoven and Brahams), Google him.

Anyway here’s the lyrics I was thinking about: “People see you having fun just a-lyin’ in the sun. Tell them that you like it this way. It’s the work that we avoid, and we’re all self-employed. We love to work at nothing all day.”

Long story short, I’ve been on a cruise. I know many of you Sanpeters have been on cruise vacations as well. There are many who love them. And there are some who kind of have the opinion of “include me out.”

Years ago, I had to be talked into going on a cruise. My wife proposed the idea for our 25th wedding anniversary. I was opposed to the idea. I had felt woozy on boats in the past. Contemplating feeling “icky” for a week wasn’t sounding wonderful to me.

But, I relented. I went on the trip. I took over-the-counter pills once or twice on one of the first days and was fine from then on. I loved the trip and got “sold” on the cruise concept of traveling.

This recent cruise was a long’ish one. We went from Florida down to Cartagena, Columbia, then through the Panama Canal, then on up the Pacific side to Los Angeles. We had a few ports we stopped in, but there were a lot of “sea days.”

Those days at sea could get just a tad boring. And perhaps, I’ve given the wrong impression with the title to this column. It wasn’t that I was doing nothing on the cruise. The title might more accurately be “Relaxing is Hard Work.”

Everyone knows that one of the features of a cruise is eating. Breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner, snacks — it never ends. All you can eat — all day. Dinner for me one night was Oyster Rockefeller, shrimp cocktail, lamb shank, and Baked Alaska.

Time on the lounge chairs was well spent. Gazing at the ocean or people watching was a difficult job that had to be done. And reading four and a half books took some effort. Deciding how much ice cream and pizza to eat while on the deck was quite a taxing succession of decisions day after day.

Remembering to keep sunscreen applied was a chore. Not overdoing time in the hot tub was a constant worry. (What if someone mistook me for a giant lobster and hauled me off to the kitchen?) I had to remember to take a walk on the Promenade Deck at least once a day. You can see how the “work” could pile up day after day, right?

When the pressure of my “work” got too great on the ship, I had to find ways to relax from the relaxation. A couple of times, I made appointments with Qanalia (Q) in the spa. She’s a Jamaican woman with a lot of experience in the massage department.

One time, she gave me a massage using hot stones. Another time, she gave me a bamboo massage. If you find yourself on a massage table on the “Island Princess” cruise ship, and Q asks you whether you want a medium level or a deep level massage, I advise medium.

I got a sample of the deep massage and I said something — I’m not sure what, but it meant “Ouch!” Q giggled and said, “OK, I’ll take it a little easier on you.” Q is tall, a former volleyball player, and the mother of two boys back in Jamaica. Oh, and she has muscles.

Another way I found to decompress from the decompression on the ship was to become the ship’s unofficial librarian. They have a library on the ship, but no librarian. So in an odd tiny way, I fulfilled an itsy bitsy piece of a former, long time occupational goal of being a bookmobile librarian.

Late at night, we would go into the library. Diane would work on jigsaw puzzles with other jigsaw puzzle “freaks.” And I would assume the role of librarian. I’d put some order in the books on the shelves and straighten things up. I found out that the night before the cruise ended, a couple of guys from the crew came in and straightened things up “their own way.”

Well, you can see that a cruising vacation is not all fun and games. There’s a lot of work involved. The day we went through the Panama Canal was busy for me. Being a supervisor (observer) of all that was going on for that passage was intense. It took most of my day going from one place to another on the ship to make sure that I was seeing everything that needed to be seen.

I figured it was my personal responsibility to see that the locks were filling up and draining properly, and that the ship was appropriately positioned. There’s a lot to keep track of. You don’t think we could depend on the captain, his crew, and the Panamanians to do that all by themselves, do you?

Well, if you’re up for it, the cruise ships are waiting for you. If you watch for deals, it’s not as expensive as you might think. But, beware — there’s a lot of work involved on a vacation voyage like that.

— Merrill