Last Saturday I woke up at seven in the morning. Wake-up calls rock. I think I will live in hotels for the rest of my life so I never accidentally oversleep again. And the whole making my bed and keeping things in order. Not going to do it. Not going to happen.
Entropy, man. Entropy. Life is a failing fight against entropy. I apologize to all hotel maids, past, present, and future.
It’s a rainy, overcast day. My ride comes, a pick-up truck retrofitted in
tuk-tuk style. I’m not sure if “Unsafe at Any Speed” has been translated yet.
The dive master who jumps outta the truck asks me “Sprechen sie deutsche?” “Nein.” In the back, are two middle-aged couples who sprechen-sprach all the way to the dock twenty minutes away. We pass Karon beach to the South, which by the look of it is a lot more tranquil than Patong. There is an elephant on the side of the road at some tourist-wallet draining facility. Outside of some homes and businesses are Buddhist temples in miniature, similar to what I’ve seen on occasion in Taiwan.
The dock has hundreds of boats. We wait around for a few minutes and then I realize when people start to board two Universal Studios-style golf cart mobiles for transport down the pier that I’ve signed myself up to ride a cattle boat. There will be twenty-some divers on the boat.
The original place I wanted to go was an hour-and-a-half away by boat. But the dive master (who never introduces herself) called the night before and said it was cancelled, after asking me if I spoke German and telling me she thought my voice sounded German (probably because I had just woken up from a nap and answered the phone, “Ja.”). This ride will be three hours or more each way. Next to the tea and coffee is a cookie jar of free Dramamine. Both ways, the boat rolls more than Willie Nelson with a kilo of pot.
So, if anything, I know I am sea-sickness proof.
The good thing about the cattle boats is that they have onboard air compressors, so you don’t have to lug as many tanks that can be dropped on your toes. I was watching the crew refill them, and it looks like the air intake has some sort of cleaning chemical that fizzes out as they fill the tanks. I was curious how it avoided sucking in carbon monoxide fumes from the engine exhaust.
Also, there is a platform so you can take a giant stride off into the water, rather than doing a James Bond dive backwards like I’ve done on smaller boats.
But those pluses aside, I don’t find it very relaxing to be on a crammed boat. Part of the fun of diving is just taking a boat trip.
The first tank was the best one of the day. It started out a little off, because I didn’t have enough lead weights to descend, so I had to signal for the dive master to loan me one to put in my BCD pocket. I try to look at my dive logs to try to know this stuff in advance, but I guess I’m getting more and more “buoyant” over time.
We went max depth about 25 meters (82 feet), and the first creature I spotted was a purplish cuttlefish on the seabed. It wasn’t doing anything, just holding in place and looking at me with its eye. Prehistoric groovy. Or as they call it here in Asia, "jerky." Not too much later, the dive master spotted a sting ray, partially covered with sand. It’s neat when they shake off the sand and fly off. Fly away undersea birds. Fly away.
The undersea flora mostly reminded me of diving in Bocas del Toro. There were some resplendently fluorescent purple anemones, but the colors of the most of the rest of the corals were more subdued. I’m wondering if some of the 365 degree fluorescence pictures I’ve seen are photographer’s tricks or if I just haven’t dived in the right places under the right conditions.
There were gelatinous clumps of thousands of eggs in a few places but I didn’t notice any predators chowing down on the all-you-can eat embryo buffet. But I can have a short attention span.
On the second dive, the other guy in our dive group tried to point out what he later said was a black-tip shark. But I didn’t manage to see what he was pointing to through the underwater mists. I did notice some small 1 to 2 foot long sharks, but didn’t give them enough notice to ID them.
Randomly, I am pleased to report that as to my $7 dollar Wal-mart watch (made where else), water-resistant to 30 meters ain’t no jive.
Fei chang hao.
Now that I have a few dives under the weight belt, some things are getting to be effortless.
I can equalize without much fuss. I can control my descent, maintain a good distance from obstacles and control my buoyancy. I forgot some of the equipment basics not having had a chance to dive for about ten months, but that knowledge quickly came back.
(I did witness one blooper, a new diver on returning to the boat didn’t turn off the tank’s air valve before disconnecting the octopus, so with the loud whoosh of air he probably felt a bit dumb.)
The obstacle to me in becoming a better diver is finding how to use less air. I’m starting to wonder if it is a physiological phenomenon, as I feel at ease when I’m diving, so I can’t account for nervous breathing as a cause. Lance Armstrong has a heart that can pump twice as much as the average person, maybe I have lungs that suck up more air in each breath. VO2 Max? I be wonderin’. Or more precisely what’s my VO2 Min.
I don’t move my hands, I try to fin as little as possible. But I take Big Gulps of air. 64 ounces. I’ve noticed that even some three-hundred plus pound guys manage to use less air than me. Med incred.
