Well it’s been a while since I wrote my last story, but this week is all about turnabout being fair play.

Every week we divers head out to our favorite spots to dive. Once there, our shore support team kicks into high gear and gets us down below so gracefully, we never really appreciate what they go through to make our day so great. Well this week, I learned a valuable lesson.

You can tell school is back in session, you can tell this by the amount of rampant infectious disease floating through the air. By this I mean simply you cannot make it one month with a family of 4 children, 3 in 3 different grades,and two different schools, from bring home a cold or flu. I mean come on, is this really necessary? Many people simply refuse to keep their sick kids home. Why, I don’t know, nor do I care about their parenting “issues”. What I do care about is the fact that their kid infected my kid, and my kid infected me, and if I am infected with a cold or flu, I can’t dive. Plain and simple you just cannot equalize with a stuffy head or any form of congestion.

Well this isn’t the only reason I have not written in a month or so, I mean come on, if my cold or flu lasted that long, I would have had to have a talk with some of those parents. The real reason that I have not written so much, is that I just haven’t been diving that much. You may ask why such a devoted diver just didn’t dive so much, well technically I did, but it was in a pool, and not much to write about down there, unless you count the one carat diamond I found at the bottom of the local college’s pool. And before you ask, yes it was returned to the college, I mean someone must be missing that diamond from a very nice ring I am sure. So you may ask “why are you diving in a pool”. Good question. And here is a good answer.

My wife and shore support team has finally decided to give diving a try. So she went to Kalipso Dive Shop, paid $425.00 USD and got herself into a dive class with a great bunch of instructors and friends. So I agreed to accompany her on her dives, she insisted it include me entering the pool with her just so she felt safe. Yea safe, in a 4 foot deep end of a college pool with lifeguards and all. How embarrassing, me strapping into my gear to head down a whopping 3 – 4 feet. Oh what fun that was folks. To sum it up, imaging this. Close your eyes, AND GO TO SLEEP FOR AN HOUR. That’s how pool diving is, except your awake for ALL of it. Let me tell you, I couldn’t wait for her confined water dives to end so we could get on with the open water dives. Not that I expected it to be much better, but better. The dive shop we Frequent/live at, is a great place, best dive shop and group of people ever assembled. They had no problem letting me do the dives with Goobs (remember, my wife’s nick name is Gooba…Goobs for short). They even LET me carry the dive flag for her group. How lucky is that? Ha-ha, well anyway I got to go with her on her first open water dive. It was great, she loved it and did a fantastic job, I was so proud of her. She went to King’s beach in beautiful Newport, RI . I took a map shot from Google earth and pasted it below for a reference point. King’s Beach is where the National Free diving Spear fishing Championship was held just last month, so you know this is a very active area for game fish and the hunters that chase them. Well her first set of open water dives went as planned, in, down and out all as expected, no problems, no fuss no muss. I like it like that.

Well her next set of open water dives was not quite so cut and dry simple. You see, I worry about her, mainly cause I love her more than anything else this planet has to offer, so I wanted to go down with her and make sure she was fine.

Well here comes that School is open problem that I hinted at in the beginning. My kids brought home a sickness that made me want to crawl in a hole and stay there until life was good again. Not going to happen. I got stuff to do. Her last class was on a Sunday, my son had a Hunter Orientation on Saturday, and I had to attend with him rather than stay home and get better. He did great and had a great time, me…not so much. To me it was 8 hours in an open field in full sun, listening to a group of guys tell kids how to handle a gun safely, and how to hunt. Well I been a hunter for almost 30 years, and this was so low level to me, I could of died from boredom, and almost did. Well almost anyway, because this flu I had would have been the first suspect in my untimely demise. Well ok one bad day down. I should have been at home in bed resting, but this was so important to my son, that this was my only real option, besides I could rest all day Sunday right? Wrong! My wife had her dive class that day and that was so important to her that I also had to attend this. 

When I hunt, I stay in the forest, not sit in a field for 8 hours, when I go diving I am underwater, not on shore for 6 – 8 hours there either. So what does all this mean? It means that a very very red man sits here typing this, and not just because I am part Native American either. I am a roasted Native this week.

You see, this week I learned something. As a diver we don’t spend much time at the surface with nothing covering us up, we have a wetsuit, a dry suit, a something suit, but rarely are we fully exposed to unfiltered sunlight for hours and hours on end. Well let me tell you my fried, not only is the sun still there, but it is as hot as ever.

I had no idea what our shore support went through on a weekly basis. I mean the sun, the bugs, the crowds, the kids screaming and yelling and playing like maniacs. My good man, I had no idea the shore life was so, so, so…. Horrific would be a good word to use. I mean I drive to our spot, get suited up, go diving for an hour to an hour and a half, head to shore, have lunch, which is already made by the shore team, change tanks after a little boasting about what I seen, and head back down below for another 1 ½ hours. Then back to shore, have a snack, pack the gear back into the truck and head home with some great memories while I enjoy a nice cigar on the ride home.

Well let me tell you… this is not the case for the shore support that helps us divers accrue so many great memories. They have it tough man, very tough. For instance, did you know how many times an hour a kid has to pee? Or that lunch you scoffed down, did you know how hard it is to make that a sand free lunch? I don’t think you do. Well I do. NOW! How about just watching the dive flag move across the surface, have you any idea how much worrying a shore support team does? I do…NOW!

And how about when they do surface? Then strap on a second tank and descend again? Have any idea how gut wrenching that is to the shore team? I do. NOW! Know what it’s like to sit on shore for 6 to 8 hours just watching seagulls try to steal your lunch? I do. NOW! And do you have any idea how little sun it takes to roast you like a red pepper over an open fire? I do. NOW!

This is a map of the site my wife finished her dive class at. The red X marks the spot I learned the greatest lesson in my life. The lesson of just how much a shore support team has to love a man or a women to do what they do. I love my wife, and would do this again for her any day…well maybe, it is terribly boring just watching that dive flag move all around the blue circled area.

What a wife, what a woman, what a friend. I dropped the kids off at the baby sitters for the day, she brings them with us when she is on shore support. That’s right, a 6 yr old, a 10 yr old, and a 1 yr old. Yes 1 yr old. All on shore with her, waiting for me and my 13 yr old son to return to the surface. I could not do this every week and still encourage my diver to dive. I would be all like, well do you have to go every week? Couldn’t you take a break this week, and any other excuse I could find to NOT do this again this week. Not the case with Goobs though, every week, ready, willing, and able. She packs all the bags, herds all the kids to the car, herds them down to the beach, and gets us through a dive day with what seems to be military precision. When I did it for her final dive class, I was also much like the military, except it was like a military pull out from a war zone and my side lost the war and was getting our buts kicked every inch of the way. CHAOS. Plain and simple, this coupled with Panic, apprehension, worry. That’s what I would say to sum it all up. That little red X in that picture is where I learned the greatest lesson about diving. Without a fantastic shore support team, diving wouldn’t be so easy or fun, so this story is dedicated to all the surface support teams we count on to get us through a fantastically fun day at the beach. My hood…. and mask…. is off to you. Great job, and wow I had no idea what you poor folks went through up there on the surface. I do, NOW!

The end result of this weekend is the best I could imagine. My wife is now a newly certified PADI diver with her very own Open Water Certification Card. I bought her all the best gear I could, starting with a Brand new Scubapro outfit. She has the Scubapro Everflex Women’s Steamer suit, the matching hood, gloves and boots, and a Scubapro Regulator and all. She has everything she needs to be the newest member of our dive group. Me, My loving wife Goobs, and our oldest son Greg II. What could be better. Most guys have a hobby, one which most of us fight our significant other to do, well I managed to convince my wife to try my hobby, she loves it, and now we will be spending much of our quality time in silence, well except for the bubbling of 3 divers.

This article is dedicated to my Little GoobaDiver. She worked very hard and deserves this. So in closing let me just say this.

Goobs, I love you and all you do for me, I don’t deserve someone as good as you, but I am sure glad you put up with me. Congratulations, great job on getting certified. I cannot wait to show you some of my favorite spots, you’re going to love this.