Back to Back

Step one, grew the beard.
Step two, got some friends together.
Step three, concoct a plan.
Step four, execute said plan.

Who said skiing is hard? I suppose that all depends on the landing, but we'll get to that part. With a single vacation day left before the end of the year, it wasn't too difficult to figure out a good use for it, especially after working a month on my awesome skiing beard! It also helped that Caberfae was running $9 lift tickets and since we would be in the area, our friend Cori had a seasons pass to Crystal Mountain, so the decision was made to have back to back ski days.

We started at Caberfae on Friday. Becca and I are the more traditional skiers. Cori is part of the new generation that thinks snowboarding is cool (it's not). With six pairs of skis loaded in the blazer, I thought it was a bit of overkill, but Becca talked me into trying some newer technology skis. Call me old school, but I like my pair of skis I had in high school best. The new skis didn't turn that much better and because they are shorter actually felt scary at speed (or maybe I'm just getting older). It was a great day for skiing, the snow could have been better, mainly man made snow on top, but the temps were great. Once we broke out the camera, it was easy to take pictures without gloves, and still feel fingers.

It was hard to say the highlight of the day, it was funny when after lunch we came out to get back to it, only to find that Cori's lock wouldn't open. We thought we would need maintenance to come and cut it open, the Becca used her super man strength to force it open. The other highlight was getting to ski with my old high school skiing buddy, Steve. He was able to join us in the evening and get a few runs in. Fifteen plus years later, the two of us still rule the Caberfae slopes.

Saturday we were back at it, though this time we went to Crystal Mountain. After a full day of skiing on the day before, all of us were moving slower on Saturday. We still got many hours of skiing in. All said, in two days, we got 40 miles of skiing in (with chair lifts) which I think entitles us to some sore muscles and maybe a pair of sore backs (back to back). Speaking of sore backs, here's why Cori's back is sore, oh yeah, don't land like this:

Becca is a Mommy!

You heard that right, Becca is a mommy! Now, normally if I said that statement, all you'd see is a trail of dust and I'd be writing this from a warm, tropical, non-extradition country. In this case, I'm confident that the DNA test will prove I'm not the father, but I have a feeling I'm still going to be stuck paying child support regardless how the test comes back.

Our Black Molly was looking especially bloated and also developed a few white spots, so to be safe Becca moved her to a quarantine tank. She spent a few days there, her spots seemed to go away and also seemed to lose some weight. She then was put back in the big tank and it wasn't until Becca started cleaning the quarantine tank that she discovered little babies. Only two survived and now Becca is playing mommy to them. I'm going to take the typical (adopted) father approach of not caring until they reach the age they can actual do something.

Even though I'm not going to win Father of the Year, it will still be kind of cool if we can raise them.

I setup a Fish Cam to view the tank. At this point, it's not possible to see the babies, but at least it's possible to check out some of the action. When the page first loads, it only shows a still picture, so click on the Video/Java button.
Fish Cam Link

Wine-ing is Fun

Did this summer have a goal? I have a vague memory of hoping to mountain bike thousands of miles this summer. Priorities change and it may of had something to do with constantly tipping over in the new clipless pedals, so I'm changing this summer's goal to get out and visit some of the local wineries. I know it's now officially Fall, tough, stop wine-ing!

Our first visit this year was to St. Julian's over in Paw Paw. Both Becca and I really enjoy a couple of their wines before we even visited, so we figured this was the best place to start. We had a good tour of the facility and enjoyed tasting a number of their wines. The most memorable wines for me were a couple of brandies. A couple of them were so potent, Becca decided she wanted no part of them and forced me to finish them off. But there were two that reminded me of drinking Smucker's jam, they were that sweet. Now, I've never been one to drink jam, so I can't imagine doing that, but it was a very unique taste that's for sure.

Our second visit was to a local place in Kalamazoo called Tempo Vino. Last year we received a gift certificate for them and hadn't used it. Turns out it's downtown Kalamazoo and very easy to get to provided you are already down there to see a movie, which is what we did. For the record, I can't tell the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $40 bottle other then one makes my wallet lighter. For this hole in the wall place in downtown Kazoo, I'm shocked at how many wines I liked. I was equally impressed with the woman conducting the tasting for us who spoke perfect English, answered the phone and switched to Greek, and also knew Italian. All there wines are in my price range and I thought all were wonderful. They have some fruit wines that are out of this world.

That tasting at Tempo Vino went so well, that we decided to do another tasting that same day and go back to Paw Paw and try the other winery there called Warner's. I'm not even sure if they do tours or not, but for the tasting, I really liked the atmosphere. It felt as if we were in a 1800 dungeon as we tasted. I was expecting to see a head roll out from a guillotine at any moment. It never happened, so that's a strike against Warner's, but they had what is now my current all time favorite wine, Peaches and Honey. That sounds strange, I admit, but it was outstanding!

The last place we visited was Natural Wines from Peterson and Sons. I'm going to start with this tour was by far the most memorable of the bunch. First, it's run out of the basement of his house. Walking up, I could hear the banjos playing the Deliverance tune. My gut feeling was right because once inside we were actually given a set of rules to follow when wine tasting! The two that stick with me is never touch the glass as he's pouring the wine and you must drink the water he pours in your glass between tastings (which I think there were a total of ten rules). I honestly thought the guy had a shotgun pointed at my head from under the bar, it was interesting to say the least. In the end, we walked out alive and with a certificate that we survived the Wine Notsee. I'm not sure if the wine didn't leave an overall impression on me, or if it was his character that overpowered everything else. Either way, this was definitely an experience to remember!

So, I didn't tip over stuck to my bike this summer. But, I may need a tip-over as in a nap from all our wine tasting. It's been an adventure!

Chicago

I didn't win the 350 Mega Millions lotto, but I did get a taste of the good life and I must say that I enjoyed it! It would be a struggle, but I think I could adjust to that lifestyle very quickly. The hardest part would be trying to stay in shape, I think I lost three arteries this trip alone, but it was totally worth it. This weekend consisted of eating vast amounts of food, an aquarium visit, an art museum, a gorgeous city skyscraper night scene and an oh by the way wedding (No, not mine...do you think I'm crazy?)!

This weekend was a huge weekend for me. It was the start of the new Michigan football season. It's not every day a relative gets married either. Even with that said, I'm pretty sure I'd miss my own wedding for a Michigan game (Before you judge me, it would have to be a big game). It took some convincing from my Dad to give up my opening season football game, but the promise of visiting my favorite restaurant in the world helped (Don't tell him, but I probably would have also done it for my second favorite too).

The Hotel was gorgeous. The wedding was beautiful. The reception was amazing (and my favorite part). Any reception that starts with the wedding party introduced with "Welcome to the Jungle", it's going to a memorable night. What made the reception awesome? It would be the nine different food stations each run by a different chef. Wow.



The next day was exploring the tourist traps of Chicago. First, was Shedd Aquarium and then we finished with Chicago's Art Museum. I decided that I like Shedd more when there aren't very many people around. Being an aquarium, Shedd likes to give the customer the full fish experience and enjoys packing people like sardines, which really detracts from their amazing exhibits. My impression of the Art Museum, I'm convinced the only thing that makes that art good is that it survived. There were very few paintings that I'd even show off on my walls. I don't know much about art, but I know what I like and I liked leaving the Art Museum!

The last experience of Chicago was the eating. Now, my Dad was very impressed with the lobster omelette and the chocolate waffle I had was damn good. The highlight of the trip was a visit to Harry Carey's, which I'm convinced is the best steakhouse on the planet. My Dad isn't normally a steak eater and once he heard that the 23 ounce porterhouse is what I always get, he wasn't sure he could eat that much. My shining moment of the weekend was watching him surgically shave every ounce of meat off the bone. I'm sure he would have used his hands and chewed on the bone if he could have, but Harry Carey's is a classy place and he had to be on his best behavior. I believe this was my fifth visit and I swear every time I walk out thinking that was the best steak I've ever had. I don't know where they get their cows from or maybe they really are Holy Cows, but they are delicious!

We had such a good time on this visit, we are already planning on future visits, so watch out Chicago!

Epic Fail

Wow...I changed all my permissions on my Flickr pictures only to find that it changed the links. Well, it's going to take me forever to fix all the pictures in my blog. Hope you enjoy all the white pictures in my blog! This isn't exactly the housecleaning I had in mind.

Get out of Jail Free Card

In my internet travels, I found the site Kiva.org. I can't even remember how I stumbled on it, but the concept intrigued me enough that I had to give it a try. The object is helping people. Okay, now I really know what you are thinking, "how on earth did Ace find this site?". Seriously, I don't know, the point is I found it and that's all that matters! The concept is donating a small amount to somebody, typically in a third world nation, to help fund a business venture. I consider it a donation, but if all goes well, the individual who asked for the loan, plays it back and ultimately the money you gave for the loan comes back to you. So, in a perfect world, it's loan and not a donation where it's possible for the same money to be used to help people over and over again.

I picked four individuals who I thought were worthy of my funding, actually one looks like a small village, but I'll pretend it's only one person. Hopefully, the small loan I made will help make their business dreams come true or at the very least makes their lives a little better. Now, don't think for a second that I have a big heart, there's always evil plotting with everything I do. This is really just my master plan for the day I stand before a judge, my defense lawyer can use to show my high moral character!

Here's a link to track my loan progress

The internet never ceases to amaze me.

Traverse (Moomers) City

Our new friend Cori imposed on us enough! Becca and I finally decided enough was enough and it was time to turn the tables and invite ourselves to her city for a change. She graciously accepted on a moments notice and we drove up for the weekend.

Friday night, I was taught how to make S'mores over the small bon fire in Cori's back yard. It's not like I didn't know how to make them, but apparently my idea was different then theirs. With two girls, sometimes it's best to to pick and chose your battles and I decided this was one not worth fighting over. For the record, when making a S'more, it's half a Hershey's bar, one gram and two marshmallows. The girls, for some reason wanted to only use small pieces of the Hershey's bar, which seemed silly to me.

Saturday was a full day. Our first adventure was climbing the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Due to a tactical navigation error, we didn't reach the top of the dune to overlook Lake Michigan. Instead we came to the top of the dune only to see another steeper dune, then after climbing to the top of that dune was a great view...of more dunes. By that point Becca had enough of the sand of this adventure and we headed back to increase our chances of finding water. The next stop was the scenic tour (by car) where we were able to stop and walk to a lookout. The view is incredible and the water color is amazing (hence the picture). We then headed north and grabbed lunch, continued further north to visit a lighthouse and then stopped at our first official winery. On any given day, that seems like a full day, but we weren't done yet. The next stop was what Good Morning America declared as the best ice cream in America at a place called Moomers. That's a tall tail and I'm not disagreeing with the claim, but I need to do much more "testing" before I'll agree with that claim, but I have to admit, it's pretty damn good.

I don't even remember what we did on Sunday, but we did visit Moomers again. Hmmm, it's growing on me. Oh yeah, we did some geocaching. It just so happened that there was an underwater cache not to far from Cori's place, so we all suited up and did that. I really should admit something here, but I'm not! Cori was right and we'll just leave it at that.

We had a blast and I look forward to crashing at Cori's place unannounced for the ice cream again!

Dive, Dive, Dive

June 13th and June 14th

This Dive weekend was a special treat because it brought me home to the area I grew up and it also added a new dive buddy. Turns out that an old high school buddy also got hooked by the dive bug and is just as addicted to the sport as I am. We were able to plan a weekend to meet, visit, and get some diving in. It almost felt like we were Jacque Cousteau because our first dive had real purpose. There was rumor that a small plane crashed in Sunrise Lake and even though it had been found, it hadn't been found by us! There were a number of times I got excited thinking we found it, but it only turned out to be a large log. In the end, we didn't find it, but it was still a fun dive. The bottom of the lake had what I can only describe has huge rolling dunes for the bottom, which made for an interesting dive. By the way, it turns out the plane went down in the 60's and there's probably nothing left but the engine block and the local dive shop owner hadn't heard of anyone finding it in twenty years. That just means next time we get together to dive this lake, it will make it that much better when we find it!

The second lake we dove was Wells Lake. We spent an hour and half underwater and still had air to spare! Of course that means we stayed shallow, but we had a blast chasing the local fish population around. The highlight of the day was when Brent found a school of baby fish that had just hatched. They were so small and so hard to see, I don't know how he even noticed them! It took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at and Becca thought both of us had lost our minds as we had stopped and laid on the bottom to watch.

Hopefully, the three of us can get together again because it was a blast. It was good to find somebody as hooked to the point of almost wanting to dive a mud puddle (that makes me feel better that Becca and I aren't crazy).

June 17th

The day started with the goal of diving the South Haven Pier, it ended diving our normal dive spot of Gull Lake. We got up and drove over to South Haven only to find that the waves were smashing in far more then we wanted, but also a brand new "No Swimming within 50ft of Pier" sign. Discouraged by the weather and the sign but not willing to give up diving for the day, we joked about diving the first lake with public access on the drive back. We ended up deciding to play around with Gull Lake. The point of the dive was to get Becca some practice towing the dive flag around and she got a workout because it was almost as windy as it was in South Haven and she was getting bounced around pretty good. We had great fun with the marine life, I got attacked by a blue gill, which I'm sure was protecting her young. But the best adventure was Becca spotted a crayfish. We startled it a couple times and it scooted backwards to avoid confrontation with us. Twice was enough though, at that point it decided we weren't going to leave it alone, so it stood as tall as it could, opened it's pincers and basically said "Bring it on, I'll take both of monsters on!".

Here's video of the encounter:


July 20th

We typically dive a quarry in Ohio. It's a good quarry, but frankly I dislike everything that's in Ohio. For that reason, I jumped at the chance to give another quarry in a different state, Illinois, a try. A small group of local divers were going to visit and check it out to see if it was worthwhile to send future dive classes there. It's called Haigh Quarry and it turned into a very nice place to dive. It didn't have as many cool objects on the bottom as "the other" quarry, but location, parking, and layout were all advantages. Becca and I ended the day with three very nice dives. Our first major discovery was the mysterious paddlefish that we had never witnessed before. Becca also fished a PADI divers mask off the bottom for him (a NAUI diver knows to never rest the mask on their head!). We also swam away with some decent pictures which is where the blog picture came from. Becca saw a plastic hammerhead shark and decided to give me the signal for shark!

Silver

The one year anniversary of my dive certification must be silver. My gift, this silver lighter found in Eagle Lake in Decatur. I'm very happy with the colors of the treasures I'm finding this year, the value not so much. I suppose I shouldn't complain, after all I'm coming up muck free.

Somebody really needs to mow Eagle Lake! The weed bed is incredible. It's not like I have tons of diving experience yet, but it's growth was so thick, it did remind me of my time spent in Nam. Even at fifteen feet below the surface, the weeds went all the way to the surface. It made for a challenging swim out to deeper water and once there, we both looked like swamp monsters and spent some time deweeding ourselves.

For the amount of weeds, I would have guessed many fish, but we really didn't see any. Next time, I'm going to bring my machete! We did have some fun trying to pull a boat anchor off the bottom, but only accomplished pulling ourselves in the muck. We also decided that we are not sure what the local divers are doing, we were the first divers in the water and were also the last ones out of the water! Either we are awesome with our air consumption or we still have too much fun underwater even when there's nothing exciting around. I'm guessing the latter.

Tattle Tail

This is the face of a trouble maker and I'm going to tattle on her! I've been doing so much diving lately, this blog is turning into my dive logbook, so time to relate some of the every day experiences around the house to change it up (plus I already know there will be more diving adventures this weekend)!

It's safe to say Sweetie Pie has adjusted to her new home. The shyness is almost gone. She is well aware of who feeds her and adjusts how well she likes you based on that. Though it's obvious that we don't compare to her original mom, she's now very comfortable. I would argue to the point that her name might not apply anymore. It could be that she is breaking out of her shell, or the other two cats are that much of a bad influence (I'm guessing this is the correct reason), but I caught her being naughty the other night. As a special treat, all the cats got to go out and play in the back yard for a short time. After some typical exploring around, Sweetie Pie decided the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence and she jumped the fence! She is hardly the most nimble cat, but she made quick work of of it once she made her mind up. I jumped the fence (not as gracefully) to follow her and she knew immediately that I had caught her because she jumped right back over.

The little stinker still has a sense of right and wrong and she knew that she got caught, so she headed right back to the house. I'm sure it won't be too much longer before the other two cats teach her there is no shame in getting caught and just ignore the humans like they do. Oh well, it was nice having a good cat for two years. So, Grandma, if you are watching or reading...your cat is naughty (which means she fits right in)!

Even with Failure, Positives Happen

Phone a friend? A call for help? It's amazing this call didn't go through from the phone booth at the bottom of Gull Lake.

One of the hopes of getting certified last summer was to go after a geocache two miles out in Lake Michigan. The time finally came to trying to make this dream a reality. I called a couple charters, had some options and finally decided to make an attempt for this cache with the cache owner. The boat turned out to be too small, under powered, and the weather didn't cooperate with us. For fear of being one of "those guys" who attempt something stupid and need the Coast Guard to come rescue us, our adventure ended with deciding to dive the pier at Holland. Although disappointed for not being able to attempt our goal, the diving experience turned out to be very positive. Initially the visibility was very good, we were treated to the huge population of gobi fish. Apparently they are kind of a nuisance fish, but I can relate to their personalities and thought they were fun. They lay around on their bellies and only move if threaten. Since we at the pier, it's a popular spot to fish, so the real game became finding snagged lures. By the time it was all said and done, I think we could have started a small bait shop with the amount of gear we found. The water was a cool 52 degrees and with the hour long boat ride in the wind and smashing waves over the bow, I think we were in the water a total of thirty-seven minutes. It was a fun dive all things considered, I'm looking forward to exploring the pier at South Haven now.

Our Wednesday night dive ended horribly this week. It was a game of navigation and about the only thing we did right was surface at the beach we left from. Saturday, we decided to return to our failure and give it another attempt. We navigated much better this time around. Our only problem area this time was me remembering 40 degrees for one of the headings, Becca remembering 47 degrees for that heading, and I'll just say that the object should have been at 40 degrees (I'm sure it was moved)! The picture of this blog was from after we found the phone booth and Becca was playing around and trying to make a call. I've worked on enough phone problems to know the reason she had trouble with the call, water on the line! It was a busy day at Gull Lake, there were two dive groups there doing their open water certification. It was fun to visit briefly with one of the instructors who happened to be our guide in Cozumel. He thought it would be more fun for the three of us to go dive, leaving his class, but we recommended he should do his job. Our navigation problems seem to have been corrected and the other positive, we look much better then the new divers with the year of experience under our belts!

Sunday rolled around and what the heck, might as well make it three straight days of diving! This time we headed back to Lake Sixteen. It was our third visit to this lake and we were hoping for the visibility to be better. Lake Sixteen requires what seems like a long swim to get deep enough to drop down, heading out it was like swimming in pea soup. My initial thought was here we go again. We dropped down to forty feet and it was amazing! Not only could we see, but it was what we could see. Two boats, a couple of signs, our good friend the scuba skeleton, all within view at the same time! Before it took hunting to even find the line to point us in the right direction to a boat. The signs, never saw them before and then the real kicker is finding the boat we stopped at last time was only maybe a hundred feet from where we dropped down at. Last time we swam the course out to it, then turned around and followed the course back. Here that same boat was almost within visibility of our start point. I'm kicking myself for not taking my video camera down. Hopefully, we'll get back here again while the visibility is still this good. We found the car this time, two more boats, and it turned into diving what almost felt like a completely different lake now that we could see. The only thing that wasn't different was the cold! Lake Sixteen is a deep lake and we spent twenty plus minutes at 43 degrees and we both were cold so the total dive time was only around thirty minutes.

Part of me still wants that geocache (which by the way was official found on Sunday, so we can't be the first ones anymore), but overall we got some good, fun dives in this weekend.

Biking, with Purpose

"All your bases R belong to us" - Storm Troopers haven't landed, but this was some of the gear needed for this weekend (this really is Becca, if you couldn't tell).

This summer was going be all about putting up huge miles for distance. Notice how I already used "was" as the qualifier and summer hasn't even started yet? I'm already predicting that the big numbers I was hoping for aren't going to happen. It will still will be better then last year, which when looking at the positive side, "is" an improvement. I think Becca's "idea" is to get involved with dirt biking and to put on miles the easy way!

This weekend was a trip home to enjoy the local bike trails around my parents house. You know, all the trials that I never used growing up and never knew existed. Even though I wanted to pedal bike, the real purpose was to get Becca a demo of dirt biking with our new friend Cori. I really can't comment on what actually happened, while the girls headed out on the trails, I took the much more dangerous job of geocaching in the area. They had beautiful beach sand trails, I had to blaze trails through dense forest trails that reminded me of my time spent in Nam. They had song birds chirping, I was being chased by swarms of mosquitoes thirsty for my sweet blood. They had a group of helpful guys to tend to their every need on the trail, I had myself to remove at least ten ticks off my body once I got back to the car! Plus, found another three in the car while driving (I'm sure the other drivers thought I was drunk as I trying to catch the little critters)! Well, Becca did do her impression of an ostrich by going over her handlebars and planted her head in the sand, but that hardly sounds close to what I had to go through!

If I'm home visiting my parents, that means one thing, I'm eating. Cori got initiated to pasties. She then initiated us (really just me) to biscuit strawberry shortcake. Apparently because I grew up "urban", I like my shortcake using the easily purchased angel cake way and not the "traditional" home style of my mom slaving in the kitchen for hours. Don't get me wrong, it was good, and Cori can make it for me anytime, but if I'm having guests over, they are getting the angel cake way...deal with it!

We did get to take Cori out for her first official Geocaching experience. Though I'm not sure if she really enjoyed the walking around swamps and playing the slap mosquitoes off each other game. I thought we gave her a good experience when it came to finding various wildlife. It started with me scaring a momma partridge then almost stepping on three of her eight babies. They were pretty cute and reminded me of the candy peeps coming to life and running around. I'm sure Rascal would have loved them as much as the candy peeps as well! Deer, lots of deer. A momma turkey with I believe twelve kids and I believe the consensus favorite a huge porcupine that proceeded to climb down the small tree where Cori found him, to a much larger tree to get away from us (Cori) tormenting him. I noticed that he did stay in the tree, until Cori called him fat, then he got self-conscious.

It wasn't until the end of the weekend that we actually got some pedal biking in. I was totally shocked my parents wanted to go out and ride with us. That alone tells me that I'm not riding enough if they think they can keep up with me! We had a nice ride and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I think it was my favorite part of the whole weekend. Now you all know how sentimental I am, so that's why you know that for me to enjoy something, it must mean there is some kind of destruction going on, there was! The tent worm population exploded and there were thousands of them running across the trail and were creating ecological terrorism. I put on my Homeland Security hat, raised the terror level, and the game became running them over with the bike tires. My favorite moment of the whole weekend was missing a tent worm, trying to point it out to Becca, only to have her not in a position to get it, but watching my mom line up and crush it with a smile. It only took thirty four years before we actually could enjoy a destructive game together. So, here's my tip for this blog post, if your goal is to bike miles, get some some tent worms on trail. Not only is it a bonding experience, but it's therapeutic and damn fun!

Lake O'Nothing

Wednesday Night dive night took us to Bristol Lake. With my success last week, I could only feel that this week was only going to bring greater treasure finds! Take a guess at how this ends. My greatest find of the night turned into being cold water. Maybe it was the overcast skies, the rain, or just bad luck picking a path, but we found nothing! I don't think I ever have to dive Bristol Lake again it was that uninteresting, it was simply a vast nothingness that reminded me a prime time tv.

It turned out that it was guess the average dive time of all the divers and win the pot (everybody chipped in a dollar). I picked 43 minutes as my time. 18 minutes into our dive I was already frozen because I found the 46 degree water and I knew it wouldn't fly with Becca that we'd end the dive that quickly, so I navigated us back to shallow water and normal temperatures. We ended with our dives at 57 minutes, both knowing that we had to bump up our time to help our chances of winning the pot. Turns out the winning time was 42 minutes! If we would have stayed down a few minutes longer, we could have walked away a whopping $12 richer.

The most memorable event and our learning experience from this dive, pay attention to where you enter the water! It was raining hard when we got in the water and though I did set my compass heading before going down, when we came up, we surfaced a couple hundred feet away from the boat lunch we started at and it was a very odd feeling having no idea where in the lake "home" was.

Holiday Weekend

This Blog entry is in the spirit of 24 for three reasons, too much happened this weekend and it will take too long to write, I'm lazy, and there really isn't a reason to do it this way because I never watch 24.

Friday:

5:32 - Cori Arrives
5:33 - The decision is made to go out to eat
5:47 - We arrive at Niskers
5:51 - Food is ordered with a tip from the waitress that the green beans suck
7:05 - Kalamazoo Kings vs the Traverse City Beach Bums starts
7:06 - Kalamazoo is already up 8 to 1
7:42 - Mark runs out of insults and now actually feels sorry for Cori's team
9:30 - Three outs to go, this game is over 13 to 5
9:35 - Bases are loaded with Bums, zero outs, and the score is now 13 to 10
9:37 - Some miracle happens and the Kings avoid blowing this lead and giving Cori endless payback for my teasing. The game ends 13 to 10.

Saturday:

7:50 - Becca begins making homemade (from a can) cinnamon rolls
8:15 - Sugar rush has started, time to head to Al Sabo to ride
9:12 - Mark tips over on his bike after stopping without unclipping his shoes
9:22 - Mark tips over after being told by Cori he would yet he tried anyway
9:37 - 7 miles in the books
11:43 - Lunch at the Big Burrito
1:15 - Cori finds her first stage of a multi-stage geocache
2:05 - The multi-geocache ends with a fail as one of the stages is in a swamp
4:23 - Grilling chicken on the grill begins
4:25 - Cori, the guest, is now grilling corn on the cob (we are horrible hosts)
5:05 - Dinner turned out pretty good
5:52 - Driving over to South Haven to watch the sunset
9:05 - Ohhh Awww the sunset was mediocre
11:15 - Time for bed, long day tomorrow

Sunday:

6:45 - I'm up, the girls are still sleeping
9:47 - We FINALLY get to the trail and begin riding
11:29 - 17 miles into the ride, Becca decides to go off the trail and into a swamp
11:30 - Mark tips over again trying to rush to Becca's aid
11:33 - Becca, Cori, and Mark are all laughing hysterically at what happened
1:42 - We all made it 34 miles to South Haven and were all smiling
3:00 - Becca showers the nasty swamp off herself
3:23 - Lunch at BW3 to watch the Wings and have wings
3:43 - Cori states she sucks at mini golf
3:44 - The decision is made to go mini golfing since the Wings were winning
4:15 - Mini golf sucks, Cori won
5:37 - Oh the cherry pie and ice cream is soooooo good
6:00 - Kevin Spacey movie night starts
10:30 - Mark slept through both movies and is now going to bed

Monday:

7:15 - It's morning already?
9:16 - we are now dodging walkers on the Celery Flats trail
9:32 - Mark tipped over for the fourth time of the weekend
9:49 - 8 more miles are in the books
10:29 - The girls are at the 9th street park attempting to fly kites
10:41 - Cori tricks Mark into flying her kite
10:42 - Cori's kite is now smashed into the ground
10:43 - 10:57 repeat the last two steps over and over
1:30 - Microwave pot roast could only be better if we didn't eat all the pie
2:00 - 4:30 Watching movies and plain hanging out
4:31 - Becca gets her dirt bike gear out, the discussion starts
5:01 - Cori finally heads home


In all, it was a very fun weekend. The main stats: a hair under 50 miles ridden and I tipped over 4 times on my bike, Becca's new name is swamp ass, and Cori got lucky at mini golf.

Not a Treasure Hunter, I'm a Treasure Finder!

I admit it, part of the fun of diving is seeing amazing creatures, the underwater landscape, wrecks, all the normal things associated with diving, but the other part is finding lost treasure! Lets be honest, if you are going to have a hobby, might as well have one with the chance of getting rich. Before you get too excited about my discovery and start asking me for a loan, lets face it, not to many pirate ships sailed in the inland lakes in Michigan.

Last night was the official start of Wednesday Night Dive Nights with the local area divers. The destination was Gull Lake, but the other side that I hadn't dove before. It turned out to be a great night for a dive with the outside temps in the 70's and the water temp was in the 50's. Becca and I headed out and found the two boats, the swing set, and a couple of the other objects. This side of Gull Lake didn't seem as cool as the other side, so then I took us on a search pattern trying to find some of the bigger fish. I thought the highlight of the dive was a dead crayfish I found, it wasn't much, but at least it was something. Soon after, I found a bullhead, that once we scared it, it took off in a silt trail frenzy. Next was a bass laying in the weeds. Finally, my orthodox path directed us to where something in the muck caught my eye. To me, it looked like a sardine can, I though "oh great, I found junk", so I let Becca reach for it, figuring to give her the disappointment of crap. Much to my surprise, when she touched it, it's gold band immediately came into view! Treasure! Real Treasure! I can't remember what phrase I shouted through my regulator, but it probably was more of a squeal then anything.

I'm sure One-Eyed Willie personally plundered this gold(plated) watch himself. In his haste to outrun the authorities, the watch slipped from his grasp (I mean his arm was severed off in a sword fight) and sunk harmlessly to the bottom of the lake, so I could find it 200 years later! Okay, so it's a crappy Citizen watch that some drunken fisherman dropped, but it's still my first official underwater treasure, so I'm sticking with my One-Eyed Willie story! Aaaaarrgh!

Three Weeks Later (I only wanna go back)

Three weeks later, I'm still thinking about my Cozumel trip. Come on, I only logged 787 minutes of underwater time! That's hardly enough to even scratch the surface of what underwater discoveries were to be had. I did come back with plenty of video footage, even though I complain about how I wish I could have done something different (or bitch about missing that amazing 45 seconds of the turtle that I missed by turning my camera off), overall I'm very happy. For my first time warm water diving and my first time taking underwater video, I'm most pleased with myself for learning on the fly. My video tape from the first day to our last day, frankly looks like two different people were taking it. That overall change has me extremely excited looking to the future of what kind of video I'll come back with on my next trip.

Here are three videos that I put together showcasing some of the great finds I was treated to over the vacation. They are HiDef (so definitely don't just watch them small, once you start you'll see a HD button on the right).

The Journey...of New Friendships

"It's not the destination, it's the journey" That's the quote from my new friend who came down to visit this weekend from the far north. I hope she really means that because our destination didn't go as planned.

The "destination" was to get some biking done on the Kal-Haven trail, grill out, then head to South Haven to catch a sunset and maybe get some kite flying in (I'm not super disappointed about missing the kite flying!). The "journey" became hanging out watching the weather, grilling steaks while holding an umbrella, a trip a quarter of the way to South Haven before turning back once the next batch of storms hit, and finally concluded watching a movie. The weather really didn't cooperate with what I had planed for the weekend, though the temps were nice, that was about it.

Sunday turned slightly better, even though overcast, we did get a bike ride in. We biked the new side of the Kal-Haven trail taking us from the original trail head to downtown Kalamazoo where the trail stops and construction is going to start for this year. The ride turned into a fun ten mile bike trip on smooth pavement. Even though trail is in new condition, with the rain from the previous day, there were a few puddles scattered here and there. One would think that I'd be the "boy" of the bunch, splashing through the puddles, getting dirty, causing trouble, yet I was the only one actively avoiding the mess! Instead the two "girls" were the troublemakers! I'm not sure there was a puddle they avoided on the whole trip and both ended the trip with spotty mud spots on them! Their moms would not be impressed when laundry day rolls around.

Even though the weather could have been better, I think we still had a fun weekend and look forward to getting more biking in....and finding much bigger mud puddles to "dare" them to ride through!

Earth Day

This was my first official Earth Day experience. I try not to be a total inconsiderate bastard to future generations by trying to be green. The key word is trying, so I have five computers running at the same time all the time! Figured since I'm a little naughty with excess power consumption, I would at least do my part and help do some clean up of the environment. I suppose if I mention that this clean up project was underwater and would allow me to get this year's first lake dive in, it wouldn't be looked at as a shallow excuse to get some diving in as my real motivation, would it?

The air temps were only in the 50's, the min water temp was only in the 40's, but it was great to say I dove in Michigan in April! The dive site was a lake called Pretty Lake in Texas Corners. It was pretty before started, but it's even prettier now. I think I'm in love with my semi-dry suit. Even in that cold water, it really didn't even feel cold. The only extremities that felt cold were my feet and I blame that on the only boots I have are for warm water diving. Out of the four other divers that joined us, all of them had dry suits, and just proved how tough we are.

I was actually surprised with the amount of junk we found, a pair of goggles, water bottle, tons of hair ties, socks, what seemed like a half roll of duct tape (that felt like I was wrestling an anaconda) and various other junk. The majority of the dive and junk finding took place at eight to nine feet, not exactly real diving. Once I felt like we did our good dead, then it was lets head out and explore a little. We did see some good sized perch (though they could have been bass), but the highlight of the dive was finding on old wooden row boat! It was sweet! It was sunk in the muck, about twenty six feet under, and looked like it had been there forever. The sunlight was setting, yet it almost perfectly illuminated it and the green plant life growing around it. Becca and I did our now almost standard underwater high five signaling we found the highlight of the dive and I know I even did an underwater boogie (which I hope she didn't see). To make our discovery even more special, we were the only ones who found it and even the camp workers didn't seem to know it was out there.

So this Earth Day experience will always be remembered for finding a boat!



Here we are post-dive and our lips aren't even blue!

Cozumel Day 6

This whole trip had one hidden goal of getting to go dive deep. I'm not sure why I find irony so much fun, but keep that in mind as you read about the day. The day of dives getting called off on Day 3 pretty much put an end to all hope of getting the dive I was really looking forward to on this trip. As it turned out, even though I gave up all hope of getting the signature dive of Cozumel in, we came within a few dive lights of being able to do the dive. As it turned out, a couple of the less experienced divers decided to take Friday off and left us with an experience group of divers. Our guide attempted to convince the charter to take us to The Devil's Throat, but the only way that they would is if each diver had a dive light. As it turns out, Becca and I were both ready to go because we had our lights with us from the night dive the previous day, but nobody else had theirs.

As it turned out our last day of diving did take us to a deep wall dive. When I asked the Dive Master the important "How deep is our limit?" question in the hopes that I'd at least be able to break into triple digits, he answered "3000 ft if you want". Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but it told me that there was a good chance I'd be able to at least leave Cozumel with a 100 ft dive, which makes missing the signature dive much easier to take.

This picture is my computer as I hit 100 ft. I'm actually at 104 at this moment, but my computer was freaking out because I had my max dept set for 100. As it turns out I hit 107 and I was very happy with that number. Well, that was until I saw a school of fish and began video taping and although I felt myself drifting down, I thought I had gone up and it wasn't a big deal. When I stopped filming and looked at my computer I was shocked to see it saying I hit 117! Whoops! The rest of the dive I felt really guilty for being naughty and dropping down that deep, so I tried to stay much more shallow the rest of the dive. I think I spent the entire rest of the dive about 10 to 15 feet above Becca. As it turned out, she could read my computer as I dipped down and she gracefully matched me, so we'd have the same record.

The last dive of the trip also turned into the shallowest dive, a whopping 32 ft was the max dept. This whole trip, I was most excited about getting to dive deeper then I had gone before. The irony of this trip, turns out the shallowest dives were the best dives! The reef and coral of this dive made it feel like we were the first people to dive here. If it's possible, it seemed like this place had the new reef smell on it, it was that pristine!

Sad to leave, but left with fifteen dives in and a total of thirteen hours underwater, so I'd say a successful trip!

Cozumel Day 5

If it's one thing I learned from having our Day 3 canceled, it was even though I'm on vacation, don't assume you can get dives in. I passed on two afternoon dives because I was being lazy, then lost two dives with Day 3 getting canceled, so by this time I was worried that I was missing chances to dive and I wasn't going to miss any more. So, Day 5 was doing every dive I could. I did the two scheduled boat dives, did the afternoon dive, and also did the night dive! Out of the 24 hours of Day 5, I was underwater for 3 hours and 45 minutes!

The first dive of the day was a wreck dive, called C-53. It was a fun dive, but it probably was my least favorite of the whole trip. Now, it was my first wreck dive, which was cool, but it also feels fake because for one thing the cargo ship was sunk on purpose and the other reason is the water is so clear it just didn't seem real to me. Oh and lets not forget the 40+ divers all in the water exploring it at the same time, it reminded me of looking in the aquarium with the bubbles coming from the treasure chest only this time everywhere you looked there were bubbles coming up from the ship. I would have much rather did this dive with only our group, instead both our dive boats did it at the same time. Towards the end of the dive, I did get a very evil look from Becca as she noticed that I used much more air then her effectively shortening her dive.

Second dive is a blank - Fix this (need to go check my video to see if anything interesting happened)

The third dive of the day, I went solo. My dive buddy was out of action with her ears, being the true friend that I am, I left her on the beach and went out without her. I'll share the video with her, so it's almost like we both went, without having to carry her gear or get wet, plus she got to drink on the beach (I don't feel too guilty). It was a small group for the afternoon dive. I think everybody was starting to get tired and water logged, so only three other people from our group went our two guides, one other guy and myself. I'm always getting teased for how much air I use while diving from my real dive buddy, plus getting the evil eye earlier in the day, I was all about being good on air. This dive with the two guides, who are very experienced divers and one seems to gills and doesn't even need air, I concentrated hard on my breathing to conserve air. I ended the dive cutting my air consumption in half! I still think it was a fluke, but in addition to really trying to control my breathing, I also made sure to let the current do all the work. In the end, it allowed for 66 minutes of dive time and the only reason we came up was we ran out of things to see. This really turned into a fun dive with us about four wide at all times searching about three to four feet off the bottom for small treasures. Found a couple of flounders and the highlight of the dive was a seahorse.

The last dive of the night was another night dive. This time I decided to leave the video camera in the room and get a dive in without worrying about capturing the moment and wanted to take everything in my own internal video camera. I think it turned out well because we didn't get as lucky as the previous night dive, but we still saw some eels, octopus, and a few crabs and it was fun just trying to hunt for things without dragging the camera around. Becca did take the small camera just in case we saw something really amazing.

At the end of the day, I know I was asleep about thirty seconds after my head hit the pillow!

Cozumel Day 4

The first dive of the day was at a site called Palancar Caves. Up until this point, all the coral formations had been almost like ground cover. The Palancar Caves reminded me of the Grand Canyon or maybe Luke Skywalker as he skimmed the surface of the Deathstar. There were times when there were easily thirty to forty feet of vertical coral walls on either side as I drifted between them with less then ten feet between them. Pictures couldn't do the sensation justice, though no real caves, it did feel like you were in a cave. I set a new depth record for myself at 88 ft. It was also a very eerie feeling to drift out past the edge of the coral wall, look down, and see no bottom except an ever deeper blue abyss below myself. Drop something here, forget about ever seeing it again! The end of the dive brought us to a white sand and coral bottom where we saw a huge stingray with a fish swimming directly over it like they were best buddies. Exiting on the boat brought is into jellyfish city. I thought for sure I was going to have stings all over me as I exited the water in thousand of what felt like squishy eyeballs.

The second dive site of the day was called Tormentos. My memory of this dive is already shot (that just proves I should have did the write up on these the day of instead of waiting!). I do remember the current here was stronger then anything so far, the underwater world really zipped by. We did find a lobster that we tormented, so I assume that's why it's called Tormentos!

The night dive was my favorite of the day. The octopus was by far one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. The ability of it to move and adapt to avoid detection is simply incredible. In addition to being able to change color in an instant to camouflage itself, it's ability to change it's shape was amazing. At one point with a handful of divers all surround and flashing it with search lights, it moved to what I can only describe as a piece of coral that was like a huge mushroom, then the octopus sat on top of it and changed color, had we not been chasing the poor thing and watched it try to trick us, I would have completely lost it. Until you see something like that with your own eyes, telling somebody about it, or even not watching it live, it still doesn't give a real sense of how impressive mother nature is. I'm still bummed I missed my minute and a half of watching that huge turtle eat, but watching this octopus may have been the most amazing thing from this trip.

Cozumel Day 3

The dive day that was invisible, Cozumel Day 3. All night what sounded like a floor waxing machine turned out to be the wind howling through our storm shutters. That wind didn't stop for the whole day and more importantly didn't stop in the morning to cancel all the dive boats. What do you do in Cozumel when you can't dive, well you geocache of course! First stop of the morning was finding at least one geocache so we could at to our trophy list.

Even though it was windy, walking around in 70+ temps with the sun beating down took more energy then I liked. Our mission ended with one find, then we retired. I headed to the pool for some much needed sun on the rest of my body that the wetsuit covers and Becca headed for a nap.

Lunch time proved there were many anxious divers ready to go, but no hope for a boat dive with the conditions, so a shore dive was scheduled. Becca sat this dive out to rest her ears and did her impression of the little deck hands on the dive boats running around helping everyone. For being a shore dive and one not over any kind of coral reef, it turned into a very enjoyable dive. For one thing even though the waves were smashing into the seawall, once under, there was very little current. It was nice to be able to stop and hover to really check something out. For what I can only describe as a vast dessert of white crushed coral bottom, it had a surprising amount of life in it. There would be little formations of something, for example an old part of an engine block, which would have all kinds of life around it. In that example in addition to the ten fish around it also was home to a spotted moray eel. Another example was a natural coral piece the size of a basketball with two lobsters calling it home and again this small city of life all around that basketball and thirty feet around it nothing but dessert. It went on like that over and over again, a sea snake, small sting ray, puffers, and the splendid toadfish (which is what is in this picture). So just like my boat dives, this splendid toadfish is invisible.

The day ended with us as a group, well about 20 of us, going into town for dinner as a change of pace from the all inclusive food of the resort. I thought the food was decent, but it actually really wasn't any better then the food at the resort in my opinion. It was fun to get out and socialize a bit more. I met the opposite of my parents tonight, they are retired and have traveled to about every corner of the globe it seems like. I believe their daughter said they go someplace new every six weeks, maybe that was a joke, but it sure seemed like it. They both are a walking travel encyclopedia.

My invisible dive fish:

Cozumel Day 2

I dedicate today to the Queen Angelfish, she is my favorite fish at the moment, but her angel powers did not help me today. What was our most amazing day of diving yet, turned sour when looking at my video from this mornings dives. I missed what I can only describe as the coolest 30 seconds of diving yet, a sea turtle was feeding and was surrounded by Queen Angelfish, my heart was racing as I was witnessing this, it was beautiful! That moment is now forever ruined because what I didn't realized until I got back to the hotel, I actually stopped the recording when I thought I started it, missing everything, yet capturing an amazingly horrible piece of footage as it recorded while dangling beneath me.

I am totally pissed at myself for missing what I'm sure would have been the treasured footage of the trip. To make matters worse, Becca is having ear problems. We called off the afternoon dive today because she was in that much pain and thought it best for her to rest it. So, that's what we are doing tonight, rest and recovery. Hopefully tomorrow brings better days.

The first dive of the day took me down to 78 ft (Becca hit 79, she always has to beat me). It was a gorgeous dive through coral caves and walls. The downside was for as many divers in our group, let alone other dive boats, it was too much action for such a confined space. It would have been a spectacular dive had it only been a small group. I did get the turtle footage in my preview clip, so I have to be happy with that (though the one I missed was a hundred times more impressive).

The second dive was my most favorite dive to date. It was a shallower dive, maybe 55 ft, but the current was very strong and required almost no work. I suppose one negative was if you saw something cool, you didn't have much time to enjoy it. The variety of both the coral formations and the abundance of fish, it also happened to feature my sea turtle that I missed. In my preview clip there is a short clip towards the end where the world goes zooming by with little or no visible fish, this is what the current was like.

One other noteworthy occurrence from today, our boat got pulled over by the Mexican version of the DNR. I like the bribes down here, two bottles of Coke (the drink, not even the power), and they left us alone.

Cozumel Day 1

The dive part of day 1 is now complete, two more are in the books. The first dive is where these clips took place. The first surprise fish were two good sized barracudas, much larger then the baby one Becca and I had seen in Maui. I would guess 2, maybe 3 feet in length. No sooner did I get done filming them, then I turned around and saw what I can only describe as "mom"! She was huge! In the video it's really hard to get a frame of reference, but I'd say she was a good 5 feet of fish! There definitely was a moment for thought of "loss of limb would be very possible". Turns out that a school of divers is very intimidating, so she backed off.

The special fish on today's spotted list were a sliver of tail of a nurse shark, those barracudas, a sting ray, lobster, and something I have to look up but for now I'm calling a two tailed star fish. Previewing my video, I'm very happy with how it's looking. The filter on it makes it look so much better! My only complaint so far is very dive is a drift dive. It's great because almost the only time kicks are needed is to avoid coral formations. The down side, is if something cool is spotted, you are most likely going by it without much time to concentrate on it. It reminds me of those first generation of movies where the stage coach was real and the background was spinning behind them, that's almost what it feels like.

The first dive also included a fun zig zag in a coral formation cave. Becca already wants to punch one of the other divers in our group in the face because for some reason he decided to climb over her to follow me. I think it's just because my butt looks so good, but she wasn't overly thrilled with him. She happened to be taking video herself and it's not only did he definitely climbed over her, but a few choice words can be heard through her regulator (we'll just edit that part out of the video). On part I particularly enjoyed was looking back to check on Becca to see her "shivering". Keep in mind, I'm sure the water temp was 80, her days of diving Michigan may be long gone!

The second dive didn't have anything "cool" happen, but that isn't being fair either. The world down there is absolutely unreal. I could probably dive the same spot over and over again and you'd still see something new every time. Oh, I guess something memorable did happen now that I think of it. My fancy hat, well it's not a permanent souvenir of Cozumel. A wind gust got me on the boat and sent it sailing! Not sure what it is this trip, but already of all the stupid things are happening to me!

We got back to the hotel around 1 in the afternoon. Becca was feeling a little jet lag, so we decided not to do the afternoon dive today. It worked out well because it gave me time to checkout my video and get an idea how it turned out. Initial reports, I think I'm going to be super happy with it. Oh, by the way, as I'm typing this blog, I'm sitting on my patio, slight breeze, overlooking the pool in 80 degree temps. Think it's 39 back home, call me when it gets to 80 and I may come back!

No idea what tonight is going to have on the agenda. I think we are going to relax and just enjoy it not officially being Monday tomorrow!

Amazing Start

Unlike our recent travels, the travel to Cozumel didn't involve running to catch planes, finding canceled flights, or crossing our fingers that we made it onto the plane. The only surprise was that our nonstop flight from Detroit to Cozumel actually had an hour layover in Charlotte. Even with that unexpected surprise, it wasn't to bad because it got us a full meal, which we'd need for the rest of the day.

Landing in Cozumel, the check-in through customs is interesting. My favorite part is the final check to see if you are going to get "audited" is done by pushing a button. If it comes up green you go, if it goes red, I'm not sure what happens, but I can only imagine it isn't good. My finger proved to be green and somehow Becca didn't even have to push the button, I think she's an illegal!

The drive from the airport was interesting. The lush greens that I know from Maui aren't there. This island looks like my yard come late August when the grass is all brown. I swear if somebody dropped a match the whole island would go up in flames, yet it wouldn't either. Every structure that I've seen so far is pure concrete. I can only imagine it's to withstand a hurricane, but it's very odd to see no wood or iron of any kind in the frame work of buildings. It also is very apparent to me that projects get started here, yet never get finished, so it's my kind of place!

Because our group size is so large it two planes to get us all here. We happened to be on the second group and the first group got on the island a few hours before us. As we were checking in, the first group guide asked the second group guide if he wanted to get an quick afternoon dive in. Becca immediately stepped in and said "yes"! We hadn't been on the ground for more then an hour and had already had an unsanctioned dive scheduled! Rushing to get our gear unpacked, then collect it all for a rush out to get some diving in, I hardly had time to enjoy the colorful alcoholic drink I was handed just by arriving at the hotel.

Fast forward about 30 minutes and maybe another 30 minutes waiting for the boat to arrive and Becca, our two guides, and myself were off! Not bad to have our own private dive party. This worked out absolutely perfect because it now gives us a great idea of what to expect, how things work, and an overall pre-jitter kill dive. But what would any dive be without a story, well I'm here to deliver! My adventure started with entering the water, starting my decent, only to watch one of my weight pockets go plunging to the bottom! Try as I might, I couldn't get more then half way to it because I didn't have the weight needed to get down. After some half assed hand signals to Becca, she figured out what had happened and went down and got my weights and we were back in business. Lesson learned, make sure those are snapped in good (glad we only were in about 40ft of water and not the 3000ft, no bottom dive).

We didn't bring any of the camera gear for this dive. We mainly wanted to get comfortable with what to expect. That's good and bad. There were some amazing coral formations on even this very easy dive. The guides afterward said this was nothing to what we will do, but I'll say this, money spent on this trip...totally worth it after our first dive! Some of the coral formations were out of this world, I've never seen anything like them. I know it's not saying much since this is my first official warm water dive, but it was very impressive. Fish everywhere, I'll have to pay better attention to the types that I see, but I definitely saw many things I haven't seen before. The visibility is crazy, I could see for what felt like forever, which was funny that Becca and I were usually as close as we are in the five feet visibility of Gull Lake. We got two 25 minute dives in, before our official dive vacation starts tomorrow.

The evening ended with a walk into town and back and then dinner at the hotel. I'm hurrying to write this because it has been a long day of travel and dives and I'm ready for bed! We officially start our dive trip tomorrow morning at 8:15 am. I'm a little geeked (if you couldn't tell by my tone in this entry)

Safety Check(not)

Got my new toy just in time to get some practice with it before the trip. Here's my new Ikelite underwater housing for my Sony HC7 camera. I'm very excited about being able to capture the underwater world of Cozumel on it's first official trip. The "Pool Party" before the trip featured a very full pool as everybody seemed to want to get some practice in the water.

Instead of practicing our buddy breathing, hand signals, and water entry methods, you know all the important things that could keep us safe on our trip, here's me practicing to be the BEST break dancer underwater!


Pool Breakdance from PhotobyAce on Vimeo.


It wasn't all fun and games, okay yes it was! I'm blaming being more concerned about getting a feel for my new housing then I was really practicing the things we should have been going over. I put too much money into this housing to not put it to good use, so I'm going to be confident that Becca will save me if I need it! (Now that my dad is officially worried that I'm not taking my safety seriously, I'll skip telling about the really cool shark dive that I want to do next time!) My buoyancy with the camera was better and worse then I expected. I started out having a little trouble floating comfortably with it, but once I dropped some weight, it got much easier. My videotography could use some work, especially at the end of this clip, but in my defense, Becca and I were playing catch! Here's a small sample of what we did:


Pool Party from PhotobyAce on Vimeo.

Who needs a safety check when I have a good dive buddy? Less then a week before the real fun starts!

Sometimes A Smile Is All You Can Do

This past weekend was one of those valuable learning experiences, although very embarrassing to admit, it something to laugh about now. This may be common knowledge to some, but bike peddles are threaded differently based on which side of the bike you are attempting to remove them from! I'm sure I could stop this blog entry with that statement and no further explaining would be needed to paint the picture of what transpired over this past weekend, but what fun would that be?

With our exercise craze, we both are hoping this summer is going to be about putting lots of miles on our bikes, visiting other bike trails, and continuing to be active. If it's going to be done, it's best to do it right, so we decided to make the investment in new bike peddles and special shoes that lock you to the bike. How better to follow through on your goal of biking more then if it's physically hard to remove yourself from the bike? Okay, that really isn't really the reason. The point is provide your foot and muscles to have more of a push and pull type motion providing more power as you ride.

The first peddle went on easily, the reason, we just happened to pick the normal one. Becca, being the man of the operation, tried as she might on the left peddle and couldn't make it budge. Then it was my turn, same result. Next was a team effort of Becca holding the bike upright as I put all the force I could behind my weight as I'm physically standing on the wrench in an attempt to force the peddle to loosen. At this point the cats who were intently watching the activity, sensed this wasn't going to end well and they disappeared (probably to Twitter their other cat friends how stupid these two humans were).

While I attempted to find a long pipe to slide over the wrench and proved even more leverage, Becca by playing with her bike, figured our mistake of which way we really should be turning the wrench. At this point, if the peddle wasn't tight to begin with, it was now super tight with our original efforts. I found a plastic PVC pipe that I use close my skylight shades with. Even though the plastic isn't what I'd call heavy duty, I was so frustrated with our efforts to this point I wasn't concerned about breaking three dollar piece of pipe. Believe it or not, it worked like a charm. It created enough leverage to undo my standing on the wrench to tighten the peddle on without even breaking. It's one of those moments that afterward, we just look at each other and smile. I'm sure both of us were thinking, let us never again speak of this moment, but it's such a classic moment of us the story must be told.

I will however not tell the story of Becca's first experience using her new peddles. So, this picture is my favorite of the weekend. This was about 6 hours before our peddle fiasco while we were at Meijer Gardens, but the point is even though the smile didn't stay the big for the whole day, at the end it was the same.

The Coundown Begins

It's official, my trip next month is close enough that I can actually start getting excited about it! On Monday was the meeting for the trip, to get our itinerary, know things to bring, get a general idea of what to expect, and most importantly what weapons to bring to avoid the drug warlords. I'm really not worried about the warlords because first of all, I've seen Mythbusters and bullets can't do any damage to the body through more than just a few feet of water and I plan on being much deeper. Second, even when on land, I run faster then Becca.

It looks like it's going to be a blast. I'm most excited about a small side trip where the two guides are going to make a special trip to the southern side of the island for deeper dive at what is called the Devil's Throat. It really sounds like a sweet dive where it takes you through a tunnel and will easily be the deepest dive to date for me. Be prepared for the story between Becca and I as I can already see it now where each of us tries to swim away with who will go the deepest (I'm already planning on sticking my arm in the sand if I have to, just to beat her at something). When they first brought that side adventure up, my comment to them, immediately count the two of us in! So, it's possible it would only be the four of us going, which would be extra sweet.

My Birthday seems to come earlier and earlier every year. Yesterday, with my gift from my secret admirers, I ordered my underwater housing for my video camera. I decided with the smaller still camera, the video camera makes the most sense to try to capture this experience. I'm hoping to get it soon, give it some trial runs in the pool before we leave, and be ready to go so that I can share the Devil's Throat at 130ft!

A hair over four weeks away and counting down!

Left Brain Meets Creativity

Just when I think I've witnessed everything the Internet has to offer, that's when I get served a dish of humble pie. Not being one to ever turn down pie, I have to admit, it does taste pretty good and it was a pleasant surprise.

I made a new friend this week. What's different about this friend? Well, we have never seen each other. We don't have any idea what each other sounds like. We don't share mutual friends, work together, or even live that close to each other. The only real thing in common that we share is an iPhone app. Even though none of the traditional friendship common bond type things apply, there is one quality that I find in every good friendship I have, this person challenges me. Where I struggle to do anything creative, this person is almost the exact opposite. It's a refreshing change to hear a different perspective on a topic. Even though I'm always right, it never hurts to listen to the other point of view! :)

In addition to the point of view differences, friendship is about learning from the other person (at least for me). Take Couch Surfing for example. That was one of the first new things I learned that I had zero knowledge of before this week started. Who knew that people traveled around the world staying on strangers couches? Not necessary the safest concept out there and I don't plan on doing it any time soon, but it is an interesting idea. I obviously didn't know about it, but my new friend did. I'm sure it won't be only completely new thing I learn from my new friend either.

Photography has always been an outlet to try to at least prove to myself that I'm not entirely left brained. This is my favorite photo from this weekend. When I spotted it, I immediately knew the effect I wanted to try with it. It's hardly super creative, but it's dedicated to my new friend. I hope just by knowing them, it will unlock more of my creative side, in turn, I hope I can offer something they need in return. Here's to our friendship, may we both continue to learn from each other.

Opening Season

It was opening day for butterfly hunting season yesterday. I can't say that I was in my blind at the crack of dawn, can't even say I made it for the official opening, but the point is I did make it! The number of targets weren't plentiful, but my aim was true and I did walk away with a number of keepers. The trick this year is trying to make butterflies not look like the other hundred butterfly pictures I already have. Can't say I was successful at that, but that's what I'm going for this year.

The Lost Week

It was a dark and stormy night...isn't that how most mysteries start? I'm going to spare you the expense of flipping four hundred pages to find out how this mystery ends. The mystery of The Lost Week was because of a head cold. No visits to the gym, no special adventures, the past week consisted of trying to breathe and trying to conserve Kleenex to prevent having to visit the store.

Now that this season's cold is out of the way, lets get back to the fun things.

Follow Me - Take Two

A few entries back I was playing around with an app called Brightkite. Well, here's another one called Loopt. Each has some advantages and some disadvantages. Loopt may have pulled into the lead a little because it allows me to add this widget to my blog, though it looks like a picture, it really is a recent history of my last few check ins. I can't play with it yet, but Google is getting close to releasing their version of this same type of service call Latitude. I have a feeling that Google's will be the winner, but at the moment, I like this little player. So, at least over the next few days, I'm going to try to keep Loopt updated and Becca might get lucky because I think it will be fun to "track" a Geocaching adventure.

So, if you want to stalk me, all you have to do is look at this entry (hint hint Shania Twain).

Lifted a Ton

Last night was another visit to the gym. I brought my normal gym buddy, Becca, though she wanted to take the dance class (umm...no!), so I decided to work on legs with the weight machines. Luckily I wasn't alone, I happened to bring a new friend, my iPhone, which happens to be loaded with a new app called Gym Buddy. You know how I've been complaining about not keeping very good track of my progress, well this app promises to do just that and tonight was it's trial run.

It took me only a few minutes to add each of the machines I was going to use and build "My Leg" workout. Gym Buddy comes preloaded with a number of exercise types, but I found it easier to build ones to match exactly which machines I use in the gym. Then it was time to start pumping iron, started my music and let the sweating and grunting begin. It was super easy to pick which exercise I was doing, enter the weight and the number of reps I did per set. I won't say I breezed through the exercises, but it didn't add any hassle to my workout at all. In fact, now I feel sorry for the people who walk around with a little log book. Music and log all in one place. Now if I could only add the iNeedWater app for my phone, it would eliminate carrying around my water bottle!

I think this gym buddy is going be a perfect partner to keep track of my progress. Too early to chart any progress, but this screen is showing my totals for the night. The number that jumped out at me was 3,375 for total weight I lifted (okay, so it took me 408 reps to do it). Obviously, no point of reference there, but to lift over a ton of weight I think is impressive! I never put any thought into how much total weight is lifted in a given workout, I'm always thinking about the total per exercise. If I'm at a about a ton and a half now, wonder how long before I can get two tons out of my legs?

Letters on My Mind

With the massive amount of time I've been spending at the gym lately, other hobbies have been suffering. Okay, part of has been the horribly cold weather and it really hasn't been massive amounts of time. But just like with exercising, muscles need rest to build up, it can't be all work and no play. With the great weekend weather, I decided to take a quick visit of my favorite relaxation place, Meijer Gardens. This is my favorite shot from the weekend.

If I Get Kidnapped...

Last year, I was totally amazed at the ability to geotag a photo with it's exact location where it was taken. This year, it's an improvement on that concept, how about not only tagging the photo but doing it in real time? It's now possible to not only take a picture of my favorite beach on Maui, with my exact location, add any thoughts associated with that photo, then post it for the world (make that the three people who are interested in me) to view within seconds of taking it. That's the latest toy I've been playing with my iPhone.

The app I've been playing with lately is by Brightkite. I'll admit, the name is dumb, but it has some possibilities of being handy. Maybe handy is a bit of a stretch, because the most useful application I can think of at the moment for this is if I were to get kidnapped, my first thought would be to locate myself! If I ever go missing, Here's my Status.

Since I don't find that scenario very likely, I'm going to attempt to keep it updated with my current adventures, however unexciting. In my previous blog I was complaining about not keeping track of my gym visits, well one of my first uses of Brightkite was tagging my last visit. My Friendfeed does pull in anything I post to Brightkite, but provided I find myself using it, I'll probably add a "Find Ace" link over on the right. I'll be at the gym at noon, follow me there, if you want.

One Month Results (don't judge what's in the mirror)

Well, one month of a gym membership and look at the results! Isn't this how most New Year's Resolutions go? This is a perfect example of don't believe everything you see, there's no way I'd be caught napping during the day! Clearly, this is a clever Photoshop, because we all know how busy I've been at the gym lately. Me nap, never!

It's almost been a full month active in the gym. For somebody who likes to document things, I haven't paid attention to how many gym visits I've made this past month (though, it's been four this week!). I already screwed up this whole quest to get in better shape by not taking measurements or at the very least before and after photos. That makes tracking progress that much more difficult. Looking in the mirror, I can't see any differences. That alone puts any exercise program in danger of failing, but I'm tracking my progress a different way, and last night I witnessed something that has me "pumped".

One of the deciding factors for choosing this gym was it also had classes. My favorite is called Body Pump. It's a total body workout primarily using weights. The other class I've been taking is called Body Flow. It's more of a yoga, pilates, meditation mix of what I can only describe is trying not to fall over for fifty five minutes. The past couple of weeks, I've been doing more of the classes using less of the weight machines. Last night, Becca wanted to try the Body Jam class, which is more danced based. Hell would have to freeze over before I would willingly take a dance class! She was on her own for that class, so I went back to visit the weight machines.

The first chest machine that I visited was one that had me sore for days after using it the first time. I had started at forty pounds and struggled to do three sets of eight reps (I may have even cheated and did six on the last set). Last night, sixty pounds for three sets of twelve reps! (That's a 50% increase, thought I say it just because I like numbers) It continued like that on every machine I used last night. Every machine, I added a minimum of ten pounds of weight and increased my reps, heck on a couple I even did four sets instead of three. I am shocked at my increases because it really hasn't felt like I've done much. I'm actually sitting here excited about going back to the gym, which I'd NEVER thought would happen.

Okay, so that picture is real. Even though I have been visiting the gym often, I do still like to catch an occasional cat nap once in a while! Just like a picture never tells the full story, neither does the mirror. I'm the same person on the outside, but I'm much stronger on the inside. Can't wait to "see" what next month brings.

Winner by Default

This weekend I was hoping for some awesome action skiing shots. I love my fingers too much to subject them to the extreme temps of shooting pictures with bare hands in eleven degree weather. So, the cool skiing shots got downgraded to quick point and shoots to minimize the frostbite. I had hopes that the Meijer Garden's Orchid Show would present the photo opportunities I missed on the slopes with the added benefit of being indoors with heat! What seemed like a simple solution, became anything but. Taking pictures of orchids almost felt like taking pictures in eleven degree temps, it was painful in a similar way. Nothing really felt right, nothing looked right, so in the end this is my favorite photo of the weekend...by default.

My excuse, my fingers were still frozen from the skiing!

A Phone Call, 45 MPH, and a Plume of Snow

This past weekend was a visit to Caberfae Peaks, my old skiing stomping grounds. I've skied there so many times, yet there are always new experiences. Most blur together and get forgotten. The fact that I'm blogging about this one, you guessed it, it's a visit that will not be forgotten.



The first new experience was a cell phone call. Wow, nothing new and exciting about that, right? Not exactly. My Dad gets a kick out of any new sounds, so this was my attempt to take him skiing with me. At the top of South Peak, I called home, asked if he was ready, then proceeded to take a run down the hill, holding the phone to my head. I'm sure it was nothing more then wind noise rushing by, but I tried to yell out things that I was doing and seeing, "Turning, Turning, Turning", "Watch out for that tree...Ieeee", "Halfway Down", and "We made it". I was treated to my Dad laughing and "That was so cool". Success! This photo was taken right after I hung up at the bottom of South Peak.

Definitely a cool experience. One that I thought for sure would make the skiing in 11 degree, freezing temperatures completely worth it, instead I walked away with two great stories from this day (note the snow covering my jacket for the next part).



My GPS is one of my favorite skiing accessories since it's first use skiing last year. It was fun not only seeing the exact paths of every run, but the speeds I shushed down the hills. Last year's record was 39 MPH. Records are made to be broken and this year I got 40, then 43, and finally 45 MPH! We all know how competitive Becca is, well she was stuck at 39 MPH. One more run, one more chance for her to break the 40 MPH mark, sure I'll lead this time down. Lead I did, right into the record books!

After about eight to ten turns at the top of the hill (to make your run look respectable), when the hill begins it's steepest descent, that's when the tuck begins. Twenty, thirty, forty, the speed increases and it doesn't take long to reach what I can only describe as two rolling waves, really two small hills towards the bottom where the elevation goes back up for a short distance. The first was up and down, the second was up then an unexpected launch into the air where I never recovered only to land ripping one ski off as I landed and slid down the remaining part of the hill. As if in slow motion, my first thought was fear that Becca would be so close behind me that she'd never see that I fell and would come smashing into me. Still sliding down the hill, I looked back over my shoulder, where I was treated to almost a movie style effect of the sun rising over the hill, yet it was blocked by a HUGE plume of snow, all the while I'm still sliding! Becca did eventually come over the hill to find me, she did say it was hard to see me with the plume of snow, but she could hear me laughing so she knew I was fine.

In all my years of skiing, there's never been a time where I've wiped out going as fast as I did, slid as far as I did, walked as far to recover my ski as I did, or had as much fun laughing at myself. Since I'm talking about records, my best guess from my GPS log, I'd say from prefall to stop was roughly 211 ft.

Here's proof that I did hit 45 MPH (which happened to be run before The Plume):


All in all, a very fun day on the slopes. The final shot is Becca and I at the top of South Peak with smiles (Her's for witnessing the rare occasion of me falling and mine for knowing I had a great day!)