Catalina Island, finishing my scuba cert.
Saturday morning 430 am, we drive to Long Beach and wait for the 615 boat. We take the 1 hour long boat ride through nothing but fog the whole way, until we're about a 1/4 mile from the island and it opens up and is gorgeous. Avalon is a very cool town. Everybody has golf carts instead of cars. There are about 4000 people living on the island and they all have carts, some plain, some really cool, some super beat up, some custom. We get off the boat and go straight to casino point which is where the big ballroom is that all the soldiers used to go for USO dances during ww2. There is a jetty behind it that everybody gears up as that is where the marine sanctuary is. No fishing, no boats, no nothing, just divers. Lots of em. probably about 100-150. Thats a lot of flippin gear. These bags are not small. The tanks are not light.
We set up our gear and go through descriptions of the dive and what we're going to review, learn, whatnot. The conditions were pretty ideal. surface temp was like 75 degrees. water temp was 52, visibility under water is 30 feet. we had full suits, hoods, gloves, and booties so theres no shivering, plenty of sweating. We go down the stairs and stumble over some boulders and into the water and we're in. Pretty much just drops off right there and goes down about 10 feet, then 15, then 20 down to 70 feet really quick, you don't even realize it until you look at your gauges. There is a kelp forest. It looks like seaweed on the top of the water but when you're at the bottom you see it grows from the bottom and has tons of fish hanging around it and goes all the way to teh top of the water. We get acclimated and then you sink yer arse to the bottom and then swim through the kelp forest. The fish lots and lots of fish, spotted bass they look like plain ole fish with spots, bright, bright orange Garibaldi, and blackfish which look more blue and have an electric blue stripe going along the length of their back. All of these fish swim right up to within and inch of your face. Hell they're as curious about us as we are of them. There are tons of sea cucumbers with actually look like big poop logs. Everytime i saw one I chuckled to myself. There are tons of fish that look like kelp, or rocks, or sand and you just have to be close enough to see their eyes and then you see the whole contour. but they're well camoflaged (yeah i don't wanna spell check that one)
We finished 3 dives (20 minutes, 42 minutes and 32 minutes) and went to the hotel which was nice, but it was TINY with two twin beds. Master Vic took a nap, while Matt (the instructor) and I killed beers. The first 3 tasted like gold running down my throat. I guess i was pretty dehydrated cause it was just damn good to put it down fast. We then went to dinner at an Italian place on the beach with the whole class. There were 10 of us and we people-watched the boardwalk and had appetizers and cocktails. I ate and ate and ate, then ate the rest of vics pesto and veggies, then ate the rest of Matt's pesto and veggies. The hunger was not too much unlike the beer thirst. Plus it was a long day of serious workout between the diving and the carrying of the gear. The dive master, the instructor and I went to a gourmet coffee place and i got a chocolatiatto. GOOD and full of caffeine. Everyone else went to bed. It was like 730. Matt and I decided to hit the bars (and theres alot of them). Apparently it's quite easy for non locals to hook up but we just bounced from place to place drinking just about everything until the last place at the nightclub. We were pretty drunk and went back to the hotel to find people wandering around like us so we grabbed the rest of the beers that we had in the room and hit some guys room that had him and about 7 girls in it. Nothing fantastic at all and shit for conversation and not a single bright bulb in the lamp, so we finally crashed at about 330 just so we could get up at 7am and hit breakfast and dive logging with the group. Safe to say I didn't quite make that one. Matt and Vic came and grabbed me afterwards and we went diving again. We coulda gone for 3 dives but I found out that the dives aren't too fun with a nasty hangover. (why did i drink Jaeger? Don't even like the shit). That dive was our final and all we needed for our certification. Vic, Glenn (the master diver), and I packed our gear and headed for the boat at about 11am. Did we get on the boat? nope, how bout the next one? nope, the one after that? we were supposed to but our tix were for 6pm (so we could dive all day by ourselves if we wanted to. Well if your ticket is for a later boat then you have to go standby and we didn't get the first couple and finally did with the third and we ran to get the gear. I was running in flip flops with two LARGE 60 lb fully loaded gear bags, two bags of weights, about 70 lbs, and my backback of about 20 lbs, just so they could deny us. (i think this is why my shoulder feels like it was ripped from the socket). So we spent most of the afternoon sitting on the pier waiting for a boat. I introduced Glenn to my ipod as his minidisc wasn't working and he proceeded to listen to it for about 5 and a half hours. Glenn is crazy cool, turns 42 in a couple weeks. He's british, and has a family in malibu. He talks like a sailor is raucous and brash but is crazy trustworthy, knowledgable, and cool. He liked one of our shirts that I was wearing so we may do some work for him, but he asked me if I could design him a logo and we'd barter. He could get me a $900 regulator at cost and that's how he'd pay me. Also a dive watch/computer about 900-1200 for dirt cheap. He came up to me after a couple hours with the pod and told me he was going to pick one up this week and that my music collection was pretty sick and if I could just load my music onto it for him and we'd barter some more. I said hell yeah. All these people felt like they'd been my friends for years and I could say anything to. Freaking good peeps.
So we finally got onto a boat at 2:45 after I really went off on the guy that blocked us from getting on the boat because we had gear and it wouldn't fit. I went off on him and he got a middle finger to his face and a pretty severe, curse laden ass chewing. I told him I knew he didn't care but that he was a fucking asshole anyways especially now that I had to carry all that gear back with the sweat puring off my body. I smelled like a buffalo. Sunscreen, tons of salt water, rubber sweaty wetsuit smell, hours of sitting in the sun after diving. I was now ripe to say the least. People moved away from me when we got on the boat so i just went outside and watched for flying fish for the hour ride back. I was still loving the perfect weather and wind on the water. I'm tired, a bit burned, all the hair on my arms is bleach blonde, and my hair is light. I'm ass tired, and almost as sore as I've ever been, it hurts to hold my arm on the steering wheel. Plus we managed to put three peoples gear and luggage with three full grown men into Dusty (my car). If you ever want to see what a camry looks like at that stage imagine it with an elephant sitting on the back. Pretty funny. I got a shower and aloe on me, a very large burrito in my belly and no alcohol. My hangover is finally gone. I'm not going to listen to dive instructors that tell me effects of drinking disappear the second you hit the water. Cause that's b.s.
I gotta say that it was one of the best experiences in my life and look forward to dives in tropical waters next month. Good people, good food, good location, good drink, good dives, good conversation, and the promise of hanging with them all again and again cause we'll be at the shop alot and the local dive spots. I'm going to bed. my gear is soaking, and it's 920 and still in the upper 80's and no A/C in this house. Dammnit!
