There Lies The Port

I did two afternoon dives with my new roommate Chris. We stayed shallow between 5 and 15 meters. Just poked about looking for things. Saw some rays, and an eel and some little skinny miniature crabs.

This evening, I did a night dive with some younger folks: an Aussie woman, an Argentine man, a Brit man and a young kid from South Houston that had gone through Instructor class with me.

We dove Moonhole dive site and spent about half the dive (45 minutes) with lights out. A moonless night is much more interesting. We could easily see each other even with lights out.

This was a good group for me because I consumed less air than most of them, which is a rarity!! There is a quarter moon which has a big impact. We experienced a bit of the bio-luminescence (When you disturb the water, the little plankton light up like little sparkles).

Saw a tiny octopus the size of a tennis ball and light neon green and a pretty big crab with a body the size of an iPhone. His leg span was about a foot.

We were diligent on checking our gas and all finished with plenty to spare.

Good folks, good safe diving.

As I watched the crab and these aliens(us) hovering above it with our bright lights, I couldn’t help but think that we are the aliens. The crab cowered away a bit, as did the octopus.

I also think about people that hike and birdwatch. People that drink in the flora and fauna and abundance of life. Not my thing, but I get it better.

And the conscious act of disconnecting from the “web.” Listening to yourself breathe. Paying attention to the air you are consuming and the space you are occupying.

Enough for tonight. I wish you all Sweet Dreams.

I wanna give a shout out to my friends Tim, Dan and Larry.

I remember those days long ago in DC palling around with you guys. Good memories.

https://youtu.be/pxP0Qg9CILs

Went on a dive last week. One of the divers, Gio, was Lionfish hunting. As I may have mentioned, Lionfish are invasive in The Caribbean and Atlantic and it’s open season.

As we approached the boat in the final third of the dive, we ran across Gio with his catch tube and spear. He had caught a couple.

Problem was, a 6 foot nurse shark smelled the blood and was pestering him. There was a group of about 6 of us and this shark sniffed at all of us for about 20 minutes. He/she finally went away but we all were able to reach out and touch/rub/push it’s sandpaper-like skin. Cool experience. If it had gotten much more aggressive Gio would have had to dump his catch.

There is supposedly some film floating around of the event. Will try to find.

I rented a new place much closer to the shop. About a 5 minute walk to the dive shop on the same quiet side. Old place was about 25minute walk. Paying $350 per month for 2 BR, have a male roommate my age. He’s an instructor at the shop.

Very busy last few weeks. Took instructor level classes and evaluations on Wreck Diving, Deep Diving, Gas Blending, Adaptive Diving, Self Reliant and Sidemount Diving.

Wreck: basically mapping, penetration and line tying exercises. Line tying is tying path lines inside the wreck for path finding and exiting.

Deep: dive planning, demo skills and nitrogen narcosis experiments. More on that later.

Adaptive: learned to guide and teach diving to the handicapped. Interestingly, they had had dive with our feet tied together and using webbed gloves for control. A paraplegic would have no problem Diving.

Gas Blending: operation of the gas machines and creating different gas mixes for various depths of diving. Very interesting.

Self Reliant: learning to dive solo…extra precautions, redundancy.

I have been totally swamped with classes, study and test dives.

This segment finishes up soon and I will return to some better posting.

There are some interesting things to share.

One tidbit. I was on a boat earlier this week and we ran across a pod of about 200 bottlenose dolphin. We were all able to jump out and snorkel with them. Awesome sight. They are so fast in the wild! And they love playing/surfing at the bow and in the wake.

Junio, a friend of mine, posted this in a group message and I thought I would share:

Steve Gouves dies a billionaire, with a fortune of $7 billion, at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer,
and here are some of his last words:
In other eyes, my life is the essence of success, but aside from work, I have a little joy, and in the end
wealth is just a fact of life to which I am accustomed.
At this moment, lying on the bed, sick and remembering all my life, I realize that all my recognition and
wealth that I have is meaningless in the face of imminent death.
You can hire someone to drive a car for you, make money for you – but you can not rent someone to carry
the disease for you. One can find material things, but there is one thing that can not be found when it is lost – “life”.
Treat yourself well, and cherish others. As we get older we are smarter, and we slowly realize that the watch is
worth $30 or $300 – both of which show the same time.
Whether we carry a purse worth $30 or $300 – the amount of money in the wallets are the same. Whether we
drive a car worth
$150,000, or a car worth $30,000 – the road and distance are the same, we reach the same destination.
If we drink a bottle worth $300 or wine worth $10 – the “stroller” will be the same.
If the house we live in is 300 square meters, or 3000 square meters – the loneliness is the same.
Your true inner happiness does not come from the material things of this world. Whether you’re flying first class, or economy class – if the plane crashes, you crash with it.
So, I hope you understand that when you have friends or someone to talk to – this is true happiness!
Five Undeniable Facts-

1. Do not educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy. – So when they grow up they will know the value of things, not the price.
2. Eat your food as medicine, otherwise you will need to eat your medicine as food.
3. Whoever loves you will never leave you, even if she has 100 reasons to give up. She will always find one reason to hold on.
4. There is a big difference between being human and human being.
5. If you want to go fast – go alone! But if you want to go far – go together!
   And in conclusion,
   The six best doctors in the world.
6. Sunlight
7. Rest
8. Exercise
9. Diet
10. Self-confidence
11. Friends
    Keep them in all stages of life and enjoy a healthy life.
    “Love the people God sent you, one day he’ll need them back.”

Something worth sharing