7 posts tagged “scuba”

Just did a quick turn around trip to Vegas... I attended DEMA (Dive Equipment & Manufacturers Association) Show.  It was fun and interesting, but can't tell you anything that happened since it was in Vegas.  But I can say a good time was had by all.

We still have 1000+ photos to go through, but thought I would post a sampling of them.

It's going to be hard to summarize our trip to Japan in a single blog...  I'll try to hit the highlights, then post pictures with descriptions as we filter the 1200 pictures we took.  My new banner is Mt Fuji as taken from the Observatory on the 24th :)

19/20th of March

We left Atlanta on the morning of the 19th of Mar and arrived in Japan the afternoon of the 20th (dateline & 14.5 hour flight).  Upon arrival we spent about 1 hour in the lines for customs and immigration.  Marrisa & Rick met us at the airport (it was great meeting them in person, finally).  We then hung around waiting for Ellenor and David to arrive. 

 After David arrived, we found out that Ellenor would be coming on the 21^st due to passport issues.  We headed toward our hostel, the Ace Inn.

21 March

We got up in the morning and headed to the fish market after meeting up with David’s friend Don and his friend Alice.  It was interesting, and we had some very good, very fresh sushi.  We walked around some and went by a Kubuki theatre.  We then headed to Ginza district to see the shops/sights.  David and Marissa headed to the airport to get Ellenor.  Rick, Samma, & I walked around seeing sights, including a visit to Starbucks for Rick to feel like he was on vacation too…  Once they got back from the airport, we met up with Don & Alice again, and went to dinner before heading back to the Ace Inn for the night.

22 March

We got up and headed to Otsuki to spend some time in Marrisa & Rick’s neighborhood.  We had dinner with their friends Sato-san & Ureko-san.  Samma & I had brought Chateau Elan wine (Muscadine & Peach) and pecans.  Sato-san loved the pecans, and Ureko-san served up an excellent dinner including beer & sake.  We stayed at Chez MathewsWoods.

23 March
We puttered around Mt Fuji area.  We visited the temple and pagoda at Chubu and had some spectacular views of Mt Fuji.  We also visited the kimono museum.  We went to an Onsen for a wonderful bath.  When we got back the Chez MathewsWoods, I cooked corn-pon to take to school in the morning.  Samma wanted to take treats to Rick’s class that we were visiting. 

24 March
We got up and headed to school.  Rick had a plan that had the students asking us simple questions and writing down our responses.  It was fun and the kids were great.  After school, we headed to a small tourist trap village that make fresh buckwheat soba.  There were several springs in the village and I saw several cave entrances and was “jonesing” to jump in and see what there was to see.  We rode to the foot of Mt Fuji and visited the observatory (German Brewpub there had good beer) & the temple where the goddess of Mt Fuji lives (also the start of the trail if you want to climb the mountain).  After that we drove around the lake for some sunset shots of Mt Fuji, then met up with Marissa’s boss for Houtou, a local specialty.  We stopped by a department store and I purchased a nice knife. 

25 March

I got up early to fix corn-pon for breakfast, but had to wait for Rick & Marrisa to get some oil as I didn’t get the word & used the rice syrup purchased the night before to start the breakfast.  Made horrible corn-pon… After breakfast, we headed back to Tokyo and checked in at the Tokyo Hostel.  We hung out with Don that night.

26 March

We got up in the morning and headed to the Imperial Palace to visit the East Garden (only part of the Palace open to the public).  In the evening we went to a tourist area at had an nice pagoda and temple.  Samma bought me a jambi (sp? – Japanese PJs), and I picked up a Noh mask for Cathy at the Dive Outpost.

27 March

We visited the “worlds largest/busiest crosswalk” and it was wild to see the mass of people.  We also visited the Tokyu Hands – a “big” DIY store.  We met Don for dinner at a place he had been trying to get us too.  We had all you can eat grilled meat.  We had to do the grilling and only had 90 minutes at the table, and were allowed to order as much meat as we wanted in 70 minutes.

28 March

We got up and headed to Kamakura to see the temples/shrines there.  We took the bus out to a temple, walked up to it and enjoyed the view.  After that, we walked to another temple that had a great bamboo forest.  After that we walked back to the main road, ate and then spent a little time on the main drag (it was an awesome cherry blossom filled street).  While walking, I found a liquor store that had some good hand crafted beer. 

When we left Kamakura, we headed to Atami for the night.  The hotel we stayed (Aiola Hotel) at had a bath, so we indulged before heading back to the room for more beer.  I bought extra in Kamakura and we had all bought some good handcrafted beer in Tokyo the night before.  

29 March

Samma & I got up early, packed and headed down to the lobby for our diving adventure.  Thomas (from Sweden) the owner of Japan Underwater Explorers picked us up and took us to the boat.  They had a drysuit for Samma rather than a wetsuit, so there were some issues, but all in all we had a good time. Dive 1 was on a wreck, dive 2 was a sea cave :) After the diving Thomas took us to the train station where we ran into the rest of the group and traveled together up to Yokohama.

We checked in to the hostel at Hayashi Kaikan a part of the Yokohama Hostel Village and headed to Chinatown to see the sights and eat.

30 March

We visited the Raumen Museum.  We took the Shikansen (Bullet train) back to Tokyo, and that was cool!  We visited the fashion district to gawk at the people.  Then had supper at Mysterious “Neo Tokyo Fooding Bar”.  It was fun but a bit smokey.  We stayed at the Ace Inn that night.

31 March

We were free in the morning to look around, and after checking out, we headed to Ueno to see the park.  It was raining, but still a wonder way to spend the morning.  The cherry blossoms were great.  After spending time in the park, we caught the train to Mitaka to visit the Ghibli Museum.  The museum was interesting.  There were some awesome exhibits, including the workshop where he worked on his drawings.

After the museum, we headed back to Tokyo to eat and find a place to stay -- Love Hotel night ;)  Since one of the only things left on our list to do was Fugu (Blowfish), Marissa & Rick took Samma & I to a  Fugu  restaurant.  We ordered a mixed batch of Fugu -- sashimi, fried, grilled, pickled skin, and boiled.   It was good fish, Rick & I each got pieces that had a little poison on them and ended up with numb tongues for about 45 minutes.

After that we headed to the Love Hotel district.  Samma & I picked the Hotel Sonnau for our stay.  It was interesting with a blacklight in the tub room.

01 Apr

We got up in the morning and headed to Ueno Station (our meeting place).  Samma & I visited the the Ueno Zoo to kill time.  It was a nice little zoo.  They had Pygmy Hippopotamuses -- very cool. We then headed back to the station to meet up with everyone else and get our luggage out of the locker.  At noon we headed to the airport to check in.  Our flight left Tokyo at 3:30PM in the afternoon, and landed in Atlanta at 3PM in the afternoon of 01 Apr, having flown 12 hours and lost 30 minutes of time on the first.  We got home at 6PM and were in bed at 9PM ending the longest April Fools Day of my life :)

I lead a trip for the shop to Crystal River, FL to snorkel with the manatee and to get in a couple of dives.  We started the weekend by leaving Atlanta at 7ish PM on Friday night.  We arrived in Homasassa, FL at 2AM, and to make sure I had everything ready for the divers put in a 6AM wake-up call...  Since the cat we are taking for a test drive needed meds, we took it with us.

We met at the dive shop (American Pro Diving) at 7AM Saturday morning and headed to the pier to get onto the pontoon boat for our morning outing.  First stop was King Spring to snorkel with the manatee.  There were tons of manatee & people at the site.

After snorkeling for a while, we donned our gear and dove King Spring

cavern.  It was a nice little dive, nothing special.

We headed back in and broke for lunch.  For lunch we headed back to the hotel and checked on the cat.  We also got some lunch at a local sub shop (not very good) :(

For the afternoon dive, we meet back and the shop and headed to Rainbow River to do a drift dive. 

They took us up the river about 1 mile and dropped us off.  We drifted down

the river for 69 minutes,  This was a fun dive.

The group decided to eat together at the Seagrass.  Food was ok, company was great.

Sunday morning was another early start.  We had to be at the dock at the Seagrass at 7AM to get on the pontoon boat and head up the river to the spring at Homasassa.  The manatee were ok, but not a good as they were at King Spring.

Well, I got a set of door magnets and a window screen for the back of my truck to advertise my dive business.

 

I will try to get some better pictures of it up, but these will do for now to show them.

I had these done at Sign-a-Rama

We made it back...  We had used seven bags to get all of our gear to St John.  One with dive gear, three with camping gear, and our carry on bags with clothes, plus my DAN daypack with my camera gear in it.

Once we landed and got our bags together we took a taxi to the Charlotte Amalie Ferry dock in time for the 3PM ferry.  Only to find out the schedules had changed, and the next ferry would not run till 5:30PM.  So we hopped another taxi to Red Hook to catch the 4PM ferry.

Now we were nearing our destination.  We stopped by Low Key Watersports to drop off dive gear and to sign up for four days of diving.

After getting diving stuff out of the way, we grabbed a taxi to Cinnamon Bay, our home for the next six nights.  Once there, arriving just before the office closed, we got propane and matches (mine had been confiscated by TSA because I had five packs of matches and the regulations only allow for four).  We set up camp (under a tarp someone had left behind), cooked supper, and crashed after a short walk on the moonless beach.

The diving was awesome, most of the reefs were better than I remembered.  We had lunch each day in town before taking a cab back to the campground.  Twice during the week we carried our snorkeling gear back to camp to play in the bay.  Nice place to snorkel.

Since Thursday was Samma's birthday, we had planned to relax and do whatever she wanted to do.  She decided we needed to add an additional day of diving, so we extended our package for an additional day.  And since it was her birthday, I requested one of the sites be Carvel Rock, her favorite site of the trip.  Capt. Bob humored us :)  After diving, we bummed around town for most of the day, took the public bus over to Coral Bay ($1 per person) and back.  We even had supper in town at a real restaurant (SoGo's) for her birthday!

Friday morning came to soon.  We went for one last swim in the bay before we packed up camp.  Once packed we grabbed a cab to town and got the rest of our gear from the dive shop, and made it to the dock in time to catch the 10AM ferry to Red Hook.  From there to the airport to sit and await our plane. Once in Atlanta, dad picked us up at the airport and we took him to supper at Longhorn (Samma wanted steak... she hadn't had steak as a 43 year old yet...).

Mark asked me to help him with the college Study Abroad program this year, so naturally I said “sure, no problem, it’ll be fun!”  Well fun it was, but exhausting too.  So here goes:

Day 1

Arrive at airport at 6:30 after getting a call from Coop that Mark was running late and wanted to know how much room we had to put gear if we picked him up.  So after dropping me at the airport, Samma went to get Coop at his office.  Mean while, I used the Kiosk to check in and put my bags in at baggage drop-off.  As the kids started to arrive, I had them each try the Kiosk, some could, some could not check in at them.  Since they would be helping carry Pelican cases of gear, I had them wait for Mark to actually go through baggage drop-off.  Mark arrived at 7:40, almost 2 hours prior to flight time.  We packed his pelican cases and started getting kids to go through ticketing.  Well long story longer (shorter) myself, Coop, and 4 kids (Aerial, Taylor, Heather, & Andrew) along with two paying customers from Southern Swim & SCUBA made the flight.  6 more made it on the next flight, so Coop & I had 10 students in the Bahamas for diving that afternoon.  Chris (Mark’s brother) & his friend Rob met us at the boat, The Morning Star, our house for the next 7 days.  And out we went.

Dive 1 (“Tiny T’s” Depth 44, BT 57mins)

This was to be a checkout dive to start finishing the kids up on the certifications.  I was to dive with Torrie & Lauren (who did not make any dives in the quarry) and do skills, while Coop dove with the rest that had not been drinking at the airport waiting on the flight.  My two decided they were too seasick to dive, so I took my camera and did a solo dive.

After the dive, we headed back into Port Lucayan Marina to relax and sleep.  Well, Torrie and Lauren decided they were too seasick to get back on the boat once they stepped on shore, so they got a room at the marina and dropped out of the trip (meant they were leaving the trip and paying their own way home).  There were lots of calls back and forth with Mark and Dana over the course of the night getting the wording for the release they were to sign.  After going to bed, we were awakened to the fact that one of the kids in a drunken stupor at 2:30AM had decided to dive into the pool at the marina (ignoring the 4 foot depth, no diving signs) and hit the bottom of the pool.  Chris went to check on him, but they had already called an ambulance and want to take him to the hospital.  They stitched him up and sent him back to the boat at 4:30AM.  3 less cats to herd ….

Day 2

When we got up we burned a lot more time on my cell phone talking to Mark about Jordan and what should be done.  Since there was nothing to do about Jordan, Coop went to the airport with Torrie and Lauren while I went out with the boat to finish up the checkout dives for the kids we had left (down to 7 of the original 10 that showed up).

Dive 2 (“Shark Junction” Depth 44, BT 72mins), Dive 3 (“Plate Reef” Depth 66, BT 60mins)

On both of these dives I took down students for a dive, completed all of their skills and took them back to the boat after a 30 minute dive.  Once dropping them off, I went to enjoy myself ;)  Dive 2 had a junked recompression chamber sitting on the bottom, dive 3 there were 2 lionfish (non-native Indo-Pacific intrusive fish)  at the mouth of a small bluehole. 

After these 2 dives, we headed back to the Blackbeard house, to pick up Mark, Coop and the other 5 students.  Once we had them safely on board, we headed out to get a dive in for them.

Dive 4 (“Shark Junction II” Depth 53, BT 62mins), Dive 5 (“Shark Junction II” Depth 50 BT, 60mins, Night dive)

On dive 4 I took the camera, found a Lettuce Sea Slug and got some pictures of it. 

On dive 5 I carried the video camera and I think I got some great shots of an anemone with an anemone crab, a Pederson shrimp, and an arrow crab all three on it (but kids watched the tape after Chris and I watched it and rewound it to the beginning so it got taped over the next day).

After the dives, we headed back to the Blackbeard house so that Mark could put Jordan on a 7:30AM flight back to the states for violating school policy by being drunk on the trip :(.

Day 3

I woke Mark up at 5:15 to get ready and get Jordan to the airport.  Mark was back on the boat at 7:30 after seeing Jordan through Customs at the airport.  Now we were ready to head back out and get on with the trip (down 3 students, average 1 per day… not a good start).  Thank whomever you like, the rest of the trip was uneventful as compared to the first 2 days.

Dive 6 (“Lucayan Caves” Depth 67, BT 67mins), Dive 7 (“Blair House Reef” Depth 57, BT 61), Dive 8 (“The Ethridge” Depth 72, BT 55mins), Dive 8 (“The Ethridge” Depth 84, BT 53mins, Night dive)

On dive 6, I took the video camera with Mark and 2 students (Heather and Michelle).  We got some great video of Blacktip Reef Sharks schooling (this is what went over the top of my other shots).   Mark & I were swimming in and among the sharks shooting video while the girls stayed a “safe” distance away.  I also got a great shot of a Spiney Lobster (he even wacked the camera with one of his spines I was so close).

Dive 7 I found another Lettuce Sea Slug and got Coop’s attention to show him.  He actually had battery life and free space to shot pictures of it… For once he got to get a picture of a nudibranch, I was so happy for him.

Day 4

We woke up in the Bimini Islands chain.

Dive 9 (“Victory Reef/Bimini Wall” Depth 82, BT 44mins, Drift dive), Dive 10 (“Bull Run” Depth 55, BT 50mins, Shark Dive)

Dive 9 was fun, just drifting along watching the world (sea floor) go by… relaxing dive.  Dive 10 was the shark feed and as my tradition now (I don’t believe in feeding wildlife) I sat on deck until the feeding was done and then joined the dive to swim with the sharks!  Great fun and I even got some good pictures/video of them.

After the dive 10, we went to the Sapona (a WWI concrete Liberty Ship) to snorkel and for some of the kids to do some measuring of fin kicks, etc.  After that we got chased into port at South Bimini by a storm.

Day 5

It started with “sleeping in”, a late breakfast and a trip to the Shark Lab where they study Lemon Sharks.  They had little guys in a pin for petting ;)

Dive 11 (“Moray Alley” Depth 47, BT 55mins), Dive 12 (“The Strip” Depth 40, BT 39mins), Dive 13 (“The Strip” Depth 42, BT 53mins, Night dive)

Dive 11 the kids were using graduated cylinders to test Boyle’s Law. 

Dive 12 I saw a Caribbean Reef Octopus (but had loaned my camera to one of the students working on AOW to take pictures for fish identification) so no pictures of it other than mental ones (and I assume yall can’t see them as well as I can).  Dive 13 I got a good shot of a Spotted Moray Eel.

Day 6

We woke up back up in the waters off Grand Bahama to do our final dives.

Dive 14 (“Theo’s Wreck Depth 110, BT 40mins), Dive 15 (“Seastar” Depth 85, BT 45mins)

On dive 14, I tried to get a good picture of some garden eels, I think I got an ok picture of a Goliath Grouper on this dive.

Dive 15, I saw a couple bearded fireworms .

There was one more dive on Shark Junction that I sat out, as I have dove this site multiple times and besides my left ear was starting to bother me.

After the final dive we headed back to the Blackbeard house to start packing up to be off the boat by 9AM the following morning. 

Day 7

Wow, it’s over, time to get everything off the boat and put away to fly home.  Once we had everything packed, we took a cab to Port Lucayan Marina to shop for trinkets.  Then a cab ride back to the house to pack gear into cabs and start for the airport.  Once at the airport, we played weight the back and swap gear around till every bag Mark & I had (ours plus all extra gear) weighted 49.something (50lbs max).  On the plane by 3:45 and in Atlanta, bags in hand ready for some peace and quiet and a relaxing weekend by 7PM.