Fattrip

I 've visited Cairns, Australia, home of the Great Barrier Reef and some of the best snorkeling and scuba diving in the world.

Was I going to let the thought that people will see me in a bathing suit stop me from swimming with the colorful fish and coral? No way!

Don't let the prejudice of others stop your good time. I wore the largest size flippers. The snorkel strap went round my head with no problem. I wanted to scuba dive and was told that my weight was not a problem but my asthma meant I couldn't try it out.

Even poor swimmers went snorkeling, wearing life jackets, and the boat had large sizes. I find the jacket style vest best, the front style or "Mae West" tends to push into my neck.

I swim well so didn't wear vest. Fat floats. In the buoyant sea, I don't think I could have sunk if I tried.

What I would have missed if I worried about how I looked. Warm floating through blue, yellow, green, red, striped fish. Swimming over waving anemones and bright coral. The tang of sea salt. The glass bottom boat paled beside snorkeling.

I have snorkeled in Mexico and in the fresh water lakes of Ontario. I now carry my own flippers. In Playa Del Carmen, the guide helped me onto the boat and called me "Mama." Very friendly, but not too sexy!

I always use the hotel pool when I travel. Floating weightless soon soothes away stress. At the end of the swim, you walk up the stairs with a bit of sadness at the return of plodding gravity, just enough regret to make the swim entirely satisfactory.

One icy February, I stayed at a Toronto hotel with a pool that lay half inside and half outside, with a plastic curtain between the two areas. After a day of heavy conference workshops, I went down to the pool and stepped into the warm water. I swam outside. Steam rose from the pool. Crisp air. Chlorine and the tang smell of the cold. Black night. Sky floating snow flakes lit from the inside by the lighted windows of sky scrapers. Slush of a car passing beyond the snowy walls. Silence then the sharp splash as I swam.

A memory missed if I had worried about the toned tribe in the exercise room that I passed through on my way to the pool.