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Diving for the First Time in Twenty Years

The one thing I completely forgot about was seasickness. The boat was rocking, and my stomach was rolling… it was not a good combination and it was time to get in the water. The kids first open water dive and I was so ill there was no way I was going to be any help to either of them. Thank God for Gigi, their instructor and our dive master. After spending the day with her yesterday, I knew they were in good hands.

Malone buddy checked me and I made my way to the edge of the boat. Thinking I would be scared, I hesitated at the edge, but nothing is a better motivator than nausea. I walked right into the water and swam to the rope to wait. Unfortunately, my stomach liked bobbing around the surface about as much as on the boat so I was feeling pretty bad by the time we all started our descent.

As we went down, I started to panic. My ears weren’t clearing, my air felt sluggish, my stomach was still rolling, my mask was fogging – you get the idea. Everything was going wrong and I was starting to freak out. I figured if I was having this much trouble the kids must be having a hard time too. After a long three minutes of sheer terror where I decided that I was just not a diver, that my air tank wasn’t working, that this whole idea (which was mine in the first place) was a huge mistake – just to name a few, I looked around and there was Colin happily swimming in circles waiting for me to come down and join him.

Suddenly I was calmer. I scanned for Bryce and found him communicating with Gigi, also a dozen feet below me. Everyone was happy and safe and fine. Breathe! Soon my mask was not an issue, my breathing was calm and my stomach settled. Malone was already filming the boys and I started to enjoy the dive. The first moments of terror dissipated.

Watching the boys underwater was one of the greatest moments of my life. They are naturals and flew through their dive skills with aplomb. While Malone and I took in the ocean life around us, they flooded their masks and cleared them, buddy breathed, threw their regulators aside and found them again. Skills I remember doing so very long ago.

It was really our fourth dive where the magic happened for me. Everyone was confident in their skills and we had all been diving together for three days now. Colin and I smiled so big we both flooded our masks and Bryce was playing around swimming upside down.

As the boys ran through their skills with Gigi, Malone and I explored a beautiful natural wreck with some of the most amazing corals I have seen yet. After the “lesson” was over we all explored it. Flying slowly just a foot or two above the deck was a dream come true. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of the movies. And to top it off, a beautiful reef shark cruised slowly by us. I fist pumped in the water I was so excited.

Today we do a shark dive. Where we go purposely close to sharks and then feed them! Yup- we’ve come along way this week.

 

The Kids Getting PADI Dive Certified in the Bahamas

 

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that the thought of watching my kids jump off the side of boat into 60 feet of water along an underwater cliff that drops to nearly 7,000 feet is keeping me up tonight.

The boys have wanted to dive for years, ever since they experienced a few hours of snorkeling in Hawaii. That first experience was reinforced a couple of years later when they spent an hour in an introductory class for kids at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Since we live just over the hill in Carmel, we are at the aquarium every time a relative or friend comes to visit. During the class the boys put on dry suits and floated in an enclosed tide pool. I have video of Colin at eight years old desperately trying to kick to the bottom. He just couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let him go to the bottom as that was the whole point, right?

We spent today in the pool with GiGi, the boy’s instructor, an amazing young woman from Romania who has been teaching dive class for four years, both here in the Bahamas and in Thailand. It was a long but satisfying day. The boys spent the last few weeks taking an “e-learning” class from PADI so they would be ready to go straight to the pool. We, and more importantly GiGi, were impressed with the recall of what they had learned.

At dinner tonight we reviewed the fun of the day and talked about the excitement, and fear, associated with tomorrow’s first open water dive. As a father one spends a lot of time saying, “listen to me. Do as I say.” But, tonight, I made the point that tomorrow, if told to do one thing by me and something different by GiGi they were to do what GiGi says. Colin smiled and responded, “yeah dad, we know to do what the instructor says but it still makes me feel safer to know you will be there to make sure nothing bad happens.”

I guess that is one responsibility that you can’t put onto someone else.

Biking with Bats –Zion National Park

Stepping off the shuttle with my two boys in total darkness, my stomach clinches. Our plan was to take the shuttle to the top of Zion canyon and bike the nine miles down in the evening light. Evening light – light being the operative word. It is now dark. As in no light, no twilight, nothing but darkness.

“Watch out for deer on the road,” our driver says to us as we unload our bikes from the shuttle’s rack. We are the only passengers. “Last year a woman came up here and thought it would be fun to bike down in the dark, without a headlight, and hit a deer. Both ended up hurt pretty bad.”

“Yeah, ohh-kay,” my husband says as I adjust the boys’ headlamps.

What the heck have we done? I ask myself as I send my children off ahead of me. Leading the way is Bryce, our fearless 15 year old, with the brightest head lamp clamped to his helmet. Colin, our 12 year old, puts himself in the middle and my husband, Malone, and I share our tandem bringing up the rear as we ride through the darkness. With only three headlamps, I am given the third as it is the only one with a “red tail light.”

The views, they said, would be amazing in the falling light. I can’t really say. Can’t see anything but the reflective seats of the two bikes ahead of me. And that is what I do the entire way – shine my light hoping to illuminate their way as we make our way down the canyon.

We have the ride of our lives. The bats come out and fly with us. The deer stay on the side of the road, thankfully, but we see their glowing eyes as we whizz by. There is no one else around and we get to experience this part of the canyon alone – quite a feat for a park that gets over 30,000 visitors a day this time of year.

And it dawns on Malone and I – the metaphor of this ride. The kids are fearless, the path clear, the sky dark but we have an experience of a life time. We both know that not all of our trip will be this successful or amazing – nerve racking and sanity checking yes – but it’s nice to know that every once in awhile we get it right.

Bryce Canyon, Zion and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon

We had a great time exploring these three national parks. Among other adventures, we survived torrential rain in the bus “boondock” camping near the north rim. The mud was impressive.

We were all alone a short walk from the Fence Post trailhead, right on the rim. While we were exploring the parks we took the opportunity to let Bryce practice driving a stick shift, our jeep.

Hope to come back and add some of the stories, but here are a few pictures…