The alarm sounds off at 6:30 a.m. This is vacation? Even at home it's only 7:30. My feet hit the tiled floor that feels cold from the A/C and I pad out to the kitchenette to push the button on the coffee maker. I've poured and measured the night before so I can do this with my eyes closed. I find my smart phone and connect to the internet. This will probably be my only chance to check email for the day since my husband and our diving companion, our grandson, will be volleying the connection back and forth between them the rest of the time.
Breakfast is simple. Getting Tyler up is not. I remember when his father was twelve going on sixteen. Bob has readied all of our equipment needs. The first day of diving we take everything to the dive center at Ocean Frontiers. The rest of the time they will set up and rinse our equipment for us. It's a luxury much appreciated when the diving gets serious and the body gets tired.
I look at the beautiful blue sky with its scattered columns of clouds and wonder what makes them so white and so tall. They are much different from our fat clouds at home that form a compressing dome over our heads often times. The morning sun is rapidly warming everything. The afternoon will probably be extremely hot and very humid. We find the dive boat with our equipment on board and settle in. A short introduction, a head count to see if all are here, a check of the equipment, and we are off.
The diving proves to be spectacular all week long. Visibility excellent at almost every site. Critters abound. Snappers, grey angels, squirrel fish, rays, even a few reef sharks and one huge peacock flounder are only a few of the magnificent marine life we enjoy.
Diving is not the most glamorous sport in the world. Strapping twenty pounds or more of equipment and weights on your back and waddling in swim fins to the back of the boat is not graceful at all. And then there's that wonderful indentation in your forehead and cheeks from the squeeze of the mask that seems to last forever. It does distinguish the divers from the beach-goers.
Glamour aside, it is an amazing opportunity which I am grateful to enjoy.
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