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)