Post AKCR Thoughts : Pt. 2 - Water, Glorious Water

Why are some of us so drawn to water?

I have thought about this many times. Motocross athletes impress me - but I have zero desire to become an expert in that sport (unless they add a "Double Backflip Into A Warm Lake" category. Though I guess that'd be kind of stupid. Nevermind).

But if there's water...

It's just the most amazing substance on earth - in a lot of ways, it's the opposite of fire. Nothing can live in fire, nothing can live without water.

There's a religion / belief system called Aruveyda that deals with this. It's similar to a lot of other generalized groupings that take people's personalities and seek to answer the questions of who the person is and what they like and why.

I prefer Brain Types because it's much more specific and delves deeper into core motives, but on a flight back from Australia a couple years ago I sat next to a guy named Peter Crone and we had a great convo about both BT and Aruveyda (he's big into that) - I found it pretty interesting, and while generalized, fairly accurate.

The irony is I am very much a water AND a fire person. A bit of a paradox, perhaps? :)

Yes indeed. But it's the combination of the two that make me who I am, and it's the combination of warm weather (sunshine, heat) and water (rivers, lakes, oceans) that make me smile the most.

Push, pull, hot, cool, just give me sun and water.

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Slow motion flight and the Master Designer

Spotted Eagle Rays in flight (photo Google images)

I saw a school of probably 20, maybe more, Eagle Rays while diving in Bocas del Toro today (off a site called "Hospital Point", for the curious).

My eyeballs are bruised from hitting the glass when they bulged out of my head as the Rays gracefully - and almost unnoticed - slipped by.

Watching underwater wings gently flap to propel these creatures forward has got to be one of the most spellbinding visuals I've ever seen in person. It's hard for me to even put into words, and I'm usally too verbose.

But beyond the motion, the designs of underwater creatures have just blown me away the past couple weeks. Some are so strikingly gorgeous that I can't take my eyes off of them. Some are so hideously ugly, that they're beautiful. And some make me think, "that's an awesome design idea for a pair of shoes...a minimalist couch...a race car..."

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Seabob - Face Level for really, really, rich people

Sent to me by a friend and colleague in the face level sports industry. At around $14,000 though, all I can say is "why?".

$14k for one of those Seabob thingys? Come on. It's cool at first glance but when you break it down:

1. You can't see jack when you're on top of the water. Why spend that kind of money when you could get a couple awesome wave runners for that price and see just fine?

2. Diving deep so fast like they do in the promo video would blow my eardrums without being able to pressurize on the way down. It looked real, so they must have hired free-divers who don't have that problem. And if someone tries it with scuba equipment, they just paid $14k to commit suicide, because surfacing too quickly will overexpand and explode your lungs if you fill them with air at depth. And yes, I did just learn that. Consider it a community service bulletin. ;-)

3. I can only imagine the damage to sensitive reefs that the Spyros Latsis' of the world will do on these things after a few drinks on their mega-yachts.

MKTG

From a marketing standpoint though, they're brilliant - they even got a trance song written just for their product, and it's pretty good (although it sounds very familiar for some reason...but with different lyrics). Rather than a catchy jingle, how about an actual work of musical art? Subconscious branding with the hook Seaaaaabob!...that'll be going through your head all day.

(update - totally is a ripoff of an actual trance song tho)

Somebody with a zillion bucks made a toy for his or her cronies, and is marketing to them (and people who want to act like they are them), and probably making a killing with the markup (Paul Allen, maybe?). Kudos to them for that!

What do you buy the very rich man who has everything? A toy like this. What do you buy the man with lots of toys who always needs to have the latest and greatest toy that his other wannabe reallyrich friends don't have? A toy like this.

Personally, my preference would be buy a sick wave runner that I can SCUBA from, and get the best of both worlds...but that's just me.

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First Dives - Barracuda, Morey Eel, & a Seahorse

I'm told that it's very rare to see Seahorses, so I am feeling quite blessed today. My first dive was pretty sweet, about 30 minutes, max depth of 40ft. It was amazing. My instructor Irving must have thought I was a bit loco, because I was flying like superman and doing rolls and twists and even throwing some flips in for good measure.

It's something that pictures don't do justice, being 40 feet down on a sheer wall so completely vibrant with life. To look up and see that, just, wow.

Seeing other divers is pretty freaking cool too. It all looks so different, in an amazing way.

On the first dive it was mostly brightly colored tropical fish, none of which I can identify by name, as I don't yet know them or the other living things waving in the current.

We got to see a several foot long Morey Eel stick its head out of its lair and warn us off opening and closing its big ol mouth, kind of like snakes do. Pretty sweet.

The rest of the fish were unafraid and for the most part, totally unfazed.

Seahorse (Google images)

On the second dive Irving saw the Seahorse and pointed it out. I remembered the owner of Bocas Water Sports telling me he'd gone 1,000 dives before seeing one, so we stopped for a couple minutes and I got my face as close to it as possible just to watch it move gently in the current. Simply beautiful.

Later on our way back to the boat Irving got my attention and pointed ahead, where a 6' Barracuda was silently patrolling by. Yikes! Luckily it was looking elsewhere for dinner.

 
Barracuda (Google images - if you're wondering, I'm just enjoying life without having to photograph absolutely every moment, for a while - it's doubtful they'd be as good as these anyway)

2 dives and an overwhelming amount of, well, living stuff. Diving is seriously the coolest feeling. There's no adrenaline (that's a bad thing coz you'll use too much air!) like the other Face Level sports, no competition like ball-sports, it's just, it's the most serene, peaceful, "I am truly alive and creation is blowing my mind" feeling I've ever experienced I think.

But that might just be me, coz I'm a water baby.

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mi virgen bucear

Trumpetfish and some other kind of fish (photo Google images)

Today was my first day of PADI class in the water. Mi profesor se Irving (pronuncia "eer-bing"), un hombre donde Bocas con seis anos de buscear.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed when told that we were going to be going through the first couple "confined water" dives just off the back dock behind the shop. From my perspective, that was an awful place to even think about touching the water, let alone immersing myself for an hour, considering the location - Bocas Water Sports is located right next to one of the busiest water taxi docks in BdT.

Alas, I was sooooo wrong. Not only was the water quite clear, it didn't even sting when I had to practice breathing some 8m / 25 feet down sans mask. But besides that, the fish! The coral! The LIFE under there, incredible!

Es similar de perder su virginidad in a parked car on a crowded street - on one hand, it's really trashy, so while it's quite common nobody wants to fess up to having been there (if not the first time, everybody's been there at least once). But on the other hand, everything is wildly fascinating, you really don't have a firm grasp on what you're doing so you feel a bit clumsy, yet while you're bumbling around you can't help but think it's the most amazing thing you've ever done, coz it's the coolest sensation you've ever felt.

That was me under the taxi dock in Bocas del Toro en mi virgen bucear (my virgin scuba dive).

Instead of a pristine coral reef, there were sunken dock pilings. Instead of tall kelp gently waving in the current, there was a rusted bicycle standing on end, front tire spinning like a mermaid's hamster wheel. Instead of caves and ledges, there were old tires piled haphazardly.

And yet, while 15hp outboards chugged by overhead and I found myself challenged to get the movements right to stay in the position I wanted, struggling at times to keep from overexerting myself and hyperventilating, getting overexcited and forgetting to breathe (sound familiar? haha), still...my eyes were as wide open as they could be, not wanting to miss a thing, awed by the beauty of life, the indescribable wonders of Yahweh's creation.

Of course, hand-in-hand with the metaphor, I realized I was diving under a busy water taxi dock in a polluted bay - just imagine what it will be like the next time, on a real reef where everything is pure and sparkling, and the time after that, when I'm more comfortable with what I'm doing, and the time after that as my confidence in dancing with the currents grows, and...! Yeah. You get the point.

The picture at the top of this post I pulled off Google images, but there were several of those trumpet fish down there - I got my face just a few inches from one as it swam by (or so it seemed - diving magnifies everything because of light refraction). The other fish was boring by comparison, pero he visto muchos de sus primos - Angel Fish, all sorts of brilliantly colored fish, las escuelas de pezos swimming by, starfish the size of my head...I felt like I was in a giant aquarium or something, but the dented cans of cerveza and other trash that littered the bottom reminded me otherwise.

I actually get to go to a reef manana. And the next day. And the next. And I guess that's where the metaphor ends. ;-)

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