Home > Blog

Time: 1:56 pm
Duration: 32 minutes
Water temp: 76 F
Max depth: 76 feet
Buddy: Ben
Cumulative downtime: ??

I don’t remember much about this dive. It was good, but not terribly memorable. Or maybe my memory just sucks (a distict possibility!). :(

Time: 10:32 am
Duration: 46 minutes
Water temp: 77F
Max depth: 36 feet
Buddy: Ben
Cumulative downtime: ??

The second dive of our morning trip was shallow, to prevent nitrogen narcosis. It was nice, though. Not very exciting, but nice.

Time: 9:25 am
Duration: 33 minutes
Water temp: 76 F
Max depth: 96 feet
Buddy: Ben
Cumulative downtime: ??

When we woke up the next morning, the wind was completely quiet. :) The water was still as well. Perfect conditions for an afraid-of-the-waves diver! And apparantly everyone else, too, because we had a full boat, complete with Stan, who Ben found lying on the boat in a seasick disaster two days prior. His new wife, Meg, is a dive instructor, and wanted desperately to dive; poor Stan had just gotten his “Discover Scuba” certification (which teaches you the most basic stuff you need to know) and wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as she. But he came, and he didn’t get sick! :)

This dive was a series of steps leading out to the ocean, which is surprisingly deep. (6000′ or something, in just a couple of miles; is there a subduction zone I don’t know about here?) We had our choice: 90′ or 120′. I chose 90′, since I was still a little cautious, but made it down to 102′ — a new record! (My computer seems to have forgotten about that, but I remember it!) We saw a school of big (one foot) black-and-white-striped fish and two barracuda.

Time: 2:10 pm
Duration: 28 minutes
Water temp: 77 F
Max depth: 62 feet
Buddy: Ben
Cumulative downtime: ??

On day 5 of our 8-day trip, the wind died down. Finally. I still opted out of the morning dives, but when I heard the conditions were good, I couldn’t help but beg in on the second. I had to do a “check-out” with the divemaster at 15′ on the rope — remove my mask, remove my regulator, and put both back in. No problem, except my hair got really tangled. I fixed it again on the surface, and then we were off!

The dive was OK. I’ll take a minute here to say that if you want to go on a dive trip, I recommend Bonaire. The owner of Small Hope Bay Lodge started talking about the reef, saying that “It’s not the absolute best in the world, but it’s fun, and you can drink all you want here for free.” OK, I paraphrased that rather liberally, but you get the point, right? As far as color, corals, fish, eels, etc. goes, Bonaire wins hands-down. That being said, though, it was fun. Very fun. Perhaps it was my strokes, which should, apparantly, keep me from diving that gave me the extra thrill, but whatever it was, I had a GREAT time. Oh, and my ears behaved well, too! And I didn’t experience any vertigo, which may be because I wasn’t sitting in 15′ of water, as Anna suggested, or it may be because there was a horizon, as I thought.

Marion’s Place is a wreck dive. It’s a sunken barge, and you can swim to the main part (i.e. the barge) or two of the pieces, which are fairly big. We didn’t see any cool fish.

[The words this time were comb, ramp, and box. Enjoy!]

Jake headed over to the taxi stand. “I’d like a taxi,” he said to the man in charge with his back to Jake.

“It’ll be a couple minutes … AAH!” he shouted as he turned around and got a glimps of a gorilla standing in line. Then, into his microphone, he said, “This is the taxi stand requesting police and/or animal control right away!”

“Good grief,” grumbled Jake. He turned and walked away. He’d have to get to the poker tables some other way. But how?

He headed up the RAMP leading over the road and headed to the parking garage. “Maybe I can hitch a ride from somebody,” Jake thought.

The choices were slim. There was an old man gingerly COMBing his hair in the rear view mirror — “Too old,” said Jake — and a lady applying lipstick — “Too ugly!” he exclaimed. He was about to try walking to the poker rooms when he saw somebody he thought he recognized on the street.

“Is that …” Jake thought. “It couldn’t be!” He climbed onto the side of the garage and climbed to the ground using a downspout.
“Hello, Mr. Moneymaker!” he shouted. Mr. Moneymaker was just about to climb into the car, but he turned around.

“What the heck …” he said, looking around for the source of the noise. Seeing nobody, he ordered his driver to go ahead and go;
that’s when Jake shouted again.

“Hello, Mr. Moneymaker!” he said. “It’s sure nice weather, isn’t it?”

Mr. Moneymaker stared at Jake with wide eyes, and ordered the driver in no uncertain terms to go NOW. Jake, fed up with Las Vegas’ fright of gorillas, stormed over to the car. “Let me in,” he said, and Mr. Moneymaker obeyed. “Haven’t I seen you on TV? You’re the reigning World Series of Poker champion!”

“Yes,” Mr. Moneymaker stammered, as if he were incapable of answering with multiple words. He nervously turned a BOX of cards over and over in his hands.

“Well, take me to your hotel!” Jake said with glee. “I can’t wait!”

[This is a story written for the writing class I attend at church. It features Jake, who is, if you don't already know, a gorilla. :) Each week, we're supposed to use three random words in our writing; this week, those words were suitcase, trunk, and lightbulb.]

Jake sat sadly on a trunk in the foyer of Grandma Scott’s house. He’d been in Boston for two weeks — TWO WEEKS! — and he was getting sick of it. On the way here, Mom puked on his shoulder in the car, and when Grandma found out, she’d relegated Jake to the clothes washer. When Grandma saw Jake walk (well, be carried) in the door, she simply said, “Eww.” Not “Hello!”, not “Did you have a nice flight?”, but “Eww.” Jake didn’t feel very welcome here.

“Thanks for having me, Mom!” said Kathy, wrapping her mother in a big bear hug. Then, she opened her suitcase and stuffed Jake inside.

“I’ll see you in Denver!” she said.

“No!!!” Jake wailed, but to no avail. “Do you know what they DO to baggage? It isn’t even pressurized down there!” But, alas, thats what Jake was stuck with. On to the airport they went. They checked in for an on-time departure, and while Kathy happily sipped a tall mocha-creme frappucino from Starbucks, Jake sat upside down in the cold on a truck on the tarmac.

Four hours later, he was startled awake by the plane touching down on the runway.

“Man, I’ve got a MAJOR crick in my neck!” he grumbled, unaware that he’d slept through most of the flight. Ten minutes later, the suitcase was thrown onto the luggage ramp. It was then that Jake became suspicious.

“Why is it so warm?” Jake wondered. “I thought we were having snow in Denver! He slapped the suitcase in frustration, and lo and behold, it opened. He crawled out and let the sunshine bathe his face.

“Ahh! It feels so good!” he exclaimed. Then he noticed the “Welcome to McCarren Airport in Las Vegas” sign neighboring the runway, and he started to panic. “Oh no!” he sobbed. “Mommy! Mommy, come find me!”

And then a lightbulb went off in his head.

“I think I’ll play a little poker,” to said to nobody in particular. “Then when Mom realizes that her luggage was lost, she’ll *really* miss me.”

Click here for the awesomest obstacle course known to man. :)