Working as a field service technician has its advantages and its disadvantages. It gives you a wide variety of work locations, some better than others. It allows you to see the insides of all kinds of airports. You get to spend lots of weeks and weekends away from home. You get to endure the pleasures of a divorce. Yeah, life as a traveling technician is really great. Well, maybe not so much. After a long week working at installing and debugging a control system, I had a long weekend to kill in San Antonio. I'd rather be home where I could go fishing or work on one of my many projects around the house. Instead, I was cooling my heels until I could get back to the plant on Monday.
Having dug through the local attraction listings and getting a few suggestions from the secretaries at the plant, I decided to go take in Sea World and get a look at the famous Shamu. I got to the park around ten on Sunday morning and after nearly an hour of standing in line to get tickets and get through security, I finally got into the park. It didn't take long to track down the show times for the killer whale and make my way through the winding park roads to his tank for the show.
It was quite interesting and entertaining to watch the big whales fly through the air and do tricks, and it was the most interesting shower I'd ever gotten when the huge fluke flung water into the crowd, saturating those of us "lucky" enough to be sitting in just the right place.
After dripping my way out of the stadium, I made my way to a few other rides and shows, finally breaking for lunch at one of the many eateries within the park. The temperature was soaring into the high nineties, so for me, the thing to do was to head to the water park and chill out for the afternoon.
On the advice of one of the secretaries at the plant where I had been working, I brought a small bag with my swim trunks, some sun block and a pair of water shoes. Twenty dollars and ten minutes later I was changed and was stuffing my still soggy clothing into a locker, ready to explore some cooler activities.
A quick dip in the huge wave pool's bathwater warm water was fun, but getting out of the water did more to cool my hot body than the water itself did. Feeling a bit better, I wandered around a little, soon finding my way to a large pool full of stingrays that continually circled the artificial rock harbor. I wasn't really up for paying an extra twenty five bucks to stand in the water and feed the creatures, but leaning over the wall and touching them was fun. The adjacent water slide, a five story high twisting tube of orange, red and green, emptied into a tunnel under the ray pool, providing what was described by some people around me as a spectacular view.
The line was long to say the least, winding up the staircase and moving at a slow pace of only a half dozen or so people a minute. I made a quick guess that it was going to take about forty five minutes to get to the business end of the ride, and muttered something about that fact to no one in particular.
"Yeah. Makes me wonder if it's worth the wait." A lady near me answered my unaimed question.
"I hear ya. I'm debating if I want to stand here this long." I said as I turned to survey the woman. I figured her to be a tad younger than I was, maybe in her early forties or so, a slight bit shorter than my six foot frame with sandy blond hair in a long pony tail and gray-blue eyes that seemed to twinkle as she smiled. The thigh length charcoal gray t-shirt she wore covered what appeared to be a medium build, not thin but certainly not fat either, though just what shape it had was a bit hard to discern from her chest down, the t-shirt hanging fairly loosely after it pushed out over what seemed like a moderately good sized pair of breasts.
"I have the same concern. It looks like a pretty long wait." She said, snapping me from my survey.
"They say it's a great view from down under though." I said, taking a few more steps up the curved path that led toward the first of the stairs.
"Maybe the line will go faster than we think?" She asked hopefully.
"I'd guess there's a limit to how fast it can go. Looks like one tube every thirty seconds or so. Hopefully they pack them full before they send em."
"I don't think they do," she replied. "My sister said it's up to whoever you go with as to how many are in the tube, as long as it isn't over eight hundred pounds."
"Good thing I don't weigh that much then, because it looks like I'll be going alone."
"Yeah, me too." She said as we stepped forward another couple feet.
"Well, you're certainly not over the weight limit." I joked, looking down at her body again.
She shifted to stick a leg out a bit and tugged the sides of the shirt back to pull it snug across the front of her body. "I certainly hope not. I'd hate to think all that dieting I do goes to waste!"
"I'd have to say it didn't." I answered, getting a better look at the shape of her body. There was definitely no excess fat on her, and it was clear that her breasts were a bit larger than I had guessed, maybe a thirty eight C cup or so. "In fact, I'd have to say it did a lot more than go to waste."
"Oh. Thank you!" She said with a little blush and a shy smile, letting go of the shirt so it hung loosely again. "You're definitely not going to be over the weight limit either."
"No. But it's getting a lot harder to keep the weight off. That two hundred pound mark keeps trying to sneak up on me."
"Well, doesn't look it to me." She answered with a bright smile.
"I appreciate that!" I answered feeling a bit warm inside at her comments.
The conversation turned to the weather and then to jobs. We chatted for almost half an hour as we slowly worked our way up the switchback staircase, making our way out from the shadows onto a sunny section.
"You know. It's getting pretty warm out here!" The woman, whose name I had learned was Terri, said, fanning herself with her hands.
"I'm not surprised. Standing in the sun on a nearly hundred degree day with a dark shirt on? That's just asking to be hot." I said reaching out and gripping a fold of the shirt and tugging on it lightly to emphasize my point.
"Yeah, well...I don't have my regular suit on under it, so the shirt is to hide my body, which my sister's suit exposes way too much of!" She replied emphatically.
"Oh? That brings all kinds of things to mind. Just what kind of suit do you have on under there besides your birthday suit?" I asked with a wicked grin.
"Ohhhh You dirty minded man!" She answered with an almost girlish giggle. "If you really have to know, this was a spur of the moment trip to come with them, and I didn't have a suit with me, so she loaned me one of her bikini's and it's a little bit small for me."
