Wander Water

Just got back from the doctor, been wheezing while breathing, so thoughts of “Asthma!!!!” started banging around in my head. The thought of me developing “Asthma!!!!!” scares me, because it could end my career underwater, and then I’d really be a grumpy mofo! Turns out it’s simply an add-on to my seasonal allergies…or so says the Doc.

Anyways, started teaching 3 private students this past weekend, Saturday and Sunday we did classroom and pool, everyone did great. This weekend we’re doing one dive at Redondo (I know, EVERYONE seems to hate beach diving, especially at Redondo, but I love it, plus I think it’s good for students to get a taste of what it’s like) and Sunday we’re going to Catalina, where I’ll also be meeting up with my friends, the Maezumi sisters, Kyrie and Yoshi! I taught Kyrie how to dive, and Yoshi is my dive buddy who stars in my video “Yoshi and the Sea Lion” (I posted in an earlier post). I haven’t had a chance to dive with either one of them in ages, so I’m really looking forward to seeing, and diving, with them!

After the pool session on Sunday, I stopped by my LDS to get some new dive booties, and while there, Joe, the sales clerk that was helping me out, asked me what I had been up to, so I told him I had just spent the day in a pool teaching. He answered with, “Oh, bummer, must really suck when you have to teach and be in a pool when you can be diving in the ocean, huh?” I paused as I looked at him and answered honestly, that I actually enjoyed teaching, love introducing people to my underwater world, and that I’m happy whether I’m in 100′ of water, or 6′ of water, what it boils down to, is that I’m UNDERWATER!!!! and that’s what makes me happy. I’ve hovered above the deck of a 5′ deep pool before for an hour, not doing any skills, not moving, just hanging there, listening to my breathing, watching the bubbles squeeze through the water, feeling the water holding me in suspension, and I’ve been happy. Though I love seeing fish, playing with the sea lions, swimming through incredibly clear and warm waters, the thing I’m in love with is simply being underwater, that’s all…

Alright, here’s a bit of underwater Fiji, let me know what you all think! Later this week I’ll post something with more land based subjects and sharper edits!

So I haven’t written here in about two weeks, and I wish I could say it was because I was in some exotic location, swimming in dangerous waters, filming Giant Pelagics… but no, I’ve actually been here in L.A….not diving….and working in my wife’s shop YOLK…sigh…. BUT! I do get to go back in the water in a few weeks with a new class of divers, so I’m looking forward to that. They’re all on a budget, so our ocean dives will be at Redondo, hilarity will soon follow on this blog!

Anyways, lets put the Fiji trip to rest, shall we? First of all, I finally got my camera back, it only cost, oh $2103 to fix! Thankfully I had insurance!!!!! So I’ll be editing the tapes this weekend and will post some stuff here next week.

Well,I’ve already described the diving, or at least a bit of it, it’s hard to really describe what I saw, you’ll have to watch the video, but what follows are a few bullet points on my memories and experiences. Not everything is in here, because you, the reader, might not find everything as interesting as I do, but some of the stuff that really stands out.

1.) Seeing the sharks…yes, SHARKS with an S, as in more than 1! There was the Grey Reef Shark I saw in the current of death, but also saw at least 3 White Tip Reef Sharks on subsequent dives…of course they were dives that I did AFTER the camera had flooded, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

2.) Finding the tiny little Harlequin Shrimp, and the smallest Frogfish I’ve ever seen (ok, it was the first Frogfish I’d ever seen, but it was TINY) I did get footage of those two, though I had my wide angle lens and the adapter isn’t great at filling the monitor, so we’ll see what they look like.

3.) Giant Clams!!! Well, maybe more like BIG Clams, but bigger than any clam I had ever seen, so I guess they would be considered Giant. I mean, you might only stand 5′8″, but you go hang out with Pygmys in Africa and they would probably describe you as a giant. (It’s why I like visiting my family in Mexico, down there I’m “tall”) The best part was watching Kinsey make them snap shut and her jumping everytime they did because she thought they would clamp down on her and drown her! hahahaha

4.) Ah, just everything underwater, I’ll show you later, I promise.

5.) The friendliness and kindness that the Fijians show towards visitors, and not just at the resort, where some of you, yeah you, the cynical jaded one reading this post, might assume is because they’re hoping for a tip. The people are very nice and good natured, it goes against cultural belief to argue and they hat being impolite (maybe we should just let Fijians run for office?)

6.) Oh, the shower in my room… yeah, you read that right, the shower. See, it was one of those indoor/outdoor showers, where one of the walls is a plate of glass and it faces into a small “private” garden, so you can get the sensation that you’re actually showering outside.Yeah, I know people LOVE that….um… don’t. As much as I get accused of being extroverted, I actually like my privacy. The first thing I do when I go into a hotel room is pull the curtains shut…tightly.
Anyways, I walk into the bathroom for the first time and see this shower and think “Shit… I wonder if anyone can see in?” There’s a bamboo screen around the garden for privacy, but I can clearly see gaps in-between the poles, just enough for someone to catch a glimpse of my hairy shampooed ass. I kneel down and try to see what’s on the other side of the fence, but the sun is shining in, so I can’t really tell. I’ve been on a plane for 10 hours, and then took a 2 hour van ride to the resort and I stink. I know I need to take a shower “Well, I am going diving tomorrow…I’ll be in the water…that’s like bathing, right?” Hmmmmm? SO my first shower consists of me turning off the lights (can’t look into a window if the lights outside are stronger than the one’s inside) turning the water on, quickly jumping under the water stream, making sure I’m facing AWAY from the glass, cleaning up really quickly, and then jumping back out… all the time imagining half the resort walking by my room and going “Hey, look! We can see right into that guy’s shower! Look he’s totally naked! hahaha… Gasp, oh my!” That last part is because the half of the resort I was talking about was the female half and they…well, never mind.
So I showered, went to dinner, came back, turned the lights on and walked towards the back of my room, where I noticed that the only thing facing my room was a huge hillside and you could see nothing going on in there. Needless to say, I still showered with my back to the glass for the whole trip….