Second or third day in Ubud, Bali. Jet lag dragged me out of the bed at about 6:30. After spending time relaxing on the porch reading and enjoying the beautiful surroundings, I headed inside to do what most men do every morning: poo. Shelley had awoken and was getting dressed. I was still engrossed in my novel taking care of my business, when I thought I felt a truck rumbling by. Weird, I thought, but quickly I realized I was nowhere near a mainroad or anywhere a large truck would be. What was this rumbling? It kept growing into full shimmying and then onto shaking. I jumped off the tiolet and jumped under the doorframe of the bathroom; somehow I was channeling some old PSA about what to do during an earthquake, which for some reason I had seen growing up in Atlanta. The cliche about things happening in slow-motion is completly true. It seemed like an eternity from when I first felt the rumbling until I felt the tiolet really swaying and jumped up to the door. Really, it was about 15 seconds, if that. The feeling of a building moving like a suspension bridge is bizarre and really hoped nothing would start falling down.
I pulled up my shorts and looked into the bedroom and Shelley was there in a bit of shock. I grunted, "is this an earthquake?"
She grunted back something incomprehensible -- later, I found out she thought it was animals fighting upstairs which might explain her inability to communicate. She ran outside and I followed (not what you are suppose to do). By now the earthquake had subsided and most of the guests were outside their rooms in the garden in varying outfits from fully dressed to just skivvies. An Indian mother was yelling at her son-in-law to put on some pants. Otherwise, everyone was slack-jawed and quiet. Shelley and I looked at each other, smiled, and high-fived surviving our first earthquake. I think the other guests thought we're crazy or huge douche bags.
