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cycling / Friday / IU / photo / video — Comments Off on Everybody has to have a moment
25
Mar 22

Everybody has to have a moment

At 4:30 this morning … and for the rest of the morning …

And today, it was Poseidon’s moment. He made the most of it.

The riding game chimed in.

So it was a long day, with little rest. At work, I wrapped up a three-month long project, and wrote my way out of the entire thing. It was a planned, and good thing.

I left right on time, and my lovely bride and I took a nice little walk.

She just had surgery on her leg on Tuesday, and she’s making great progress, as we expected.

The nice thing about our current walks is that she isn’t walking faster than me. This will last for two or three weeks, tops.

We have started noting signs of spring on the path behind our house. Here are some of the lush blooming things coming back to life for the new year.

I am eagerly looking forward to this becoming routine, and not something upon which we remark. (It’s the end of March and “spring” is finally coming upon us. Note the jacket. Not pictured: the gloves I’m wearing at the end of March.)

This shrub is in our yard. No idea what to do with it this year.

For now, we’ll just admire it. And the weekend, which is now upon us! Happy weekend to you! And you and you! Happy weekend to all of us.

adventures / Cozumel / Friday / SCUBA / video — Comments Off on Friday dives
18
Mar 22

Friday dives

And, now, the saddest photo a diver can have.

That’s the last one on my new-to-me SeaLife camera, which has performed well this week. There’s tons of video, most of the good stuff you’ve seen, and many photos to share. Not bad for a used and older digital camera, though I suspect I need to upgrade the battery. My lovely bride, meanwhile, was shooting on our GoPro this week, and she has been putting up some of her highlights on social media. Be sure to check those out.

One gentlemen we dove with had a special SeaLife iPhone case, and the top-of-the-line phone inside. The rig itself cost about $600. So he’s just floating around with two grand in his hands, and that’s too much risk for me. Of course, at one point he swam alongside a ray and his camera was showing the individual muscles on the fish. It was amazing, but I could never forgive myself for spending that much money on a hobby accessory, or for messing it all up. It was impressive, though. But you’ll just have to content yourself here with my 2014-quality imagery.

That’d be a strange thing to feel inferior about, no? Here are the 1080p videos and 13 GB photos I’m taking at 85 feet.

Because you can’t safely dive and then fly in a 24-hour period — more of that chemistry stuff — we had our last two dives of this trip today. (We fly back tomorrow afternoon.) You can see some footage here.

We were supposed to have 20 dives on this vacation. We got in 13, including that excellent add-on night dive.

I ran into a wall in our condo and managed to sprain my wrist. I’m allergic to something in the flower beds or the forest nearby. As we sail away from the shore I get better. When we get back to the beach I start closing up again. My descents and ascents were slow and slightly painful because of all of that. We spent two days in Dallas. But the local food has been good. The diving has been great!

If you go to Cozumel, stay at Residencias Reef. Dive with Scuba Tony. Every diver we met on their boats was a repeat customer, and it’s easy to see why. That repeat customer word-of-mouth means a great deal when you’re talking about something as important as your safety. If we ever go back to Cozumel, we will definitely dive with Scuba Tony again.

But now, sadly, we must return to the regular world. Sort of.

(And I’ll get around to posting photos after the next little adventure, which takes place next week.)

adventures / Cozumel / SCUBA / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Thursday dives
17
Mar 22

Thursday dives

We had four more dives today, our last full day of diving of this abbreviated trip. Cozumel is famous for its drift diving … the currents just take you away, and you don’t even have to do much swimming. In all, the diving has been a wonderful experience.

Now if only my sinuses and ears would cooperate. Maybe they’ll be better tomorrow, when we will, sadly, have our last two dives.

adventures / Cozumel / SCUBA / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Wednesday dives
16
Mar 22

Wednesday dives

We got in five dives today — two this morning, two this afternoon and one night dive — equaling my personal best.

Without getting into all the details, the pressure underwater does a few things to the chemistry of the oxygen in your bloodstream. None of it is bad when monitored correctly, and it only presents a short-term cumulative effect, about 24 hours or so. There are tables and computers to monitor all of this, for safety reasons, and you spend a lot of time learning the safety measures before you get your certification. You keep this stuff in mind. Most dive days feature three or four tanks because of that accumulating bottom-time. We added the fifth dive this evening just to make up for part of what we missed. We took all of this into consideration for our dive profiles as we are experienced safety-first divers.

Here are a few of the highlights of our four day-dives.

I didn’t carry the camera on the night dive. Night dives are different experiences. You can only see what’s directly in your flashlight beam, and I didn’t want to juggle that much in the dark. But that was the best night dive I’ve ever experienced. Turtles, octopi, crabs and lobster at every turn.

Four more dives tomorrow!

adventures / Cozumel / SCUBA / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Tuesday dives
15
Mar 22

Tuesday dives

We finally had our first dives today. Of course we could not go out this morning, because the universe is fundamentally against the trip in some cosmic way I can’t comprehend.

But this afternoon we got in two dives, two years and three days late, and I finally got to try my new-to-me camera. It’s a little SeaLife I got on ebay. It’s the third most expensive thing I’ve bought there, and you take it under water on purpose. I think I’ll find it captures better video than photos. And we’ll get to the pictures, but how about this video?

Tomorrow we’re getting in five whole dives, which is a full and ambitious day of bottom time.

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