I decided to the brave the salty waters in a claustrophobic pod

I walked in and was immediately hit by the scent of chlorine, a powerful, pungent scent of being near a pool. But, I wasn’t near a pool and the thing I smelled wasn’t chlorine. It was salt

Yup, that’s right, salt. Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea? Well, the Dead Sea has such a high salt content that your body floats when you are in it. And, apparently that idea has been brought here to Seattle. Except, instead of floating in a sea I would be floating in a metal pod.

After I checked in at Float Seattle, located in Green Lake, I sat down and waited. Senior Annie Cohen was going to brave the salty waters as well, but she was running late. So I started talking to Neal, the friendly receptionist.  What Neal said next creeped me out a little bit. The first time Neal went floating was in Baltimore, after he found a guy on Craigslist with a pod in his basement. Sketchy!

Anyway, by the time Annie arrived, Neal had already given me the full tour and was now showing me the pod rooms. Each room was numbered and inside was exactly what I thought there would be: an eight-foot-long pod with two feet of  slightly murky, weirdly warm, incredibly salty water in it. At this point, I was a little skeptical about this entire thing.

As it turns out, Annie and I would be floating in separate rooms. I got the room that had a pod with high ceiling, which was known as the “newbie pod.” Annie on the other hand, had a pod that looked a little bit like a claustrophobic cave.  We said our “good lucks” and separated.

Once I went through the checklist that Neal had so adamantly described to me earlier, I was ready to enter the pod. I slowly sat down. I wasn’t floating yet. The water was heated to my body temperature, so it felt pretty warm as I lay on my back in the water. Then, to my utter disbelief, I started to float. I felt completely weightless and I couldn’t tell the difference between the air and the water. I wiggled around in the water, which was the weirdest feeling ever. I continued to wiggle….

After about a half an hour in the pod, I was starting to get a little bored. At this point in
time, as she later told me, Annie was flailing about and struggling to get open the heavy door of
her pod, with only one eye opened, because she had
splashed salt water in her eye. Poor Annie.

After my hour was up, and Annie and I left, we decided that floating wasn’t really our thing. Hey, it was relaxing, but days later my hair still smelled like salt.

By: Lacey Pike