Silly grin

This is actually from last year (LCA in Tasmania), but Oscar, who took the picture, was diving around the world for many months and only made the pictures he took available to me the other day. I thought I had a good life, but Oscar and Annemarie clearly has this whole life thing figured out.

Those weedy sea-dragons are pretty cool. And they weren't the only cool thing there, if you get my meaning. Brrr. I prefer warm water diving.

Pathetic

It's the 4th of July, the kids are out playing, Tove's at the mall, and I'm following my new toy as it crawls across the map of the US towards me, courtesy of UPS tracking and google maps.

This fall, we'll go for two scuba trips: in addition to our yearly week in Hawaii, Tove is treating me to a week in Belize. Because I only turn 40 once, I'm told. Little does she know that if that trip turns out successful, I'm planning on turning forty the year after too!

Anyway. In preparation of all this, my new toy is a dive computer, and it should arrive in a few days. I always just rent all my gear, and as a result on some dives I then end up following the dive master like a dog on a leash because I don't carry my own computer. The divers who know what they are doing always like feeling like everybody keeps track of their own nitrogen levels.

But I will be leashed no more. Paraphrasing Braveheart: "They may paint my butt blue, but they'll never take our Freedom". Or something like that. I never actually saw the movie.

Of course, the trips are months away, and in the meantime I'll just have to amuse myself by taking long baths with my toy. Once it arrives. I may be turning 40, but that doesn't mean I can't act like a little child. I may not live the dream, but I can dream the life.

Am also considering taking a Nitrox course. Just because. Because that way I'll have more buttons I can press, and modes I can set, on my new toy. Anybody got suggestions on places that do that around Portland?

The incredible shrinking wetsuit

So I was in Maui the last week, doing my best to spend as much time under-water as possible, given the constraint that I also had to at least occasionally meet up with my family for dinners etc.

And I got in a solid lucky thirteen tanks, with the added bonus that I don't think I had a single dive where I came up with less than 1200psi. Which means that I'm definitely no longer the person that forces other divers to come up early due to being low on air. Woot!

So I was being good and sporty all week, but despite that, roughly half-way through the trip, I noticed that I had a much easier time fitting in the ML (male large) suit than the MM (male medium) ones.

And it wasn't just one of them that had shrunk - I checked a couple just to be sure. The suits that were a perfectly good fit on Saturday had suddenly shrunk and become tight by Wednesday.

It's magic, I tell you. Magic. The wetsuit-fairy is out to get me.