Catching Up: Halloween

So it has bene a while since my last post. I think I got really worn down by the travelling in the last month. But enough with the excuses...

One story I have been wanting to blog about is what I did for Halloween this year.

Picture being in Miami, FL. The weather is in the low 80's and South Beach is just a short drive away. Everyone tells me that the town is going to be crazy and wild. Sounds like a great time but I wasn't interested.

I decided to drive down to Key Largo and go Scuba diving instead. I went to bed extra early the night before and got up at 5:30am to make it down there and catch the boat. I had travelled the entire semester with my dive equipment taking up a large portion of the space in my car and I needed to get some use out of it.

I had heard about a small dive shop in Key Largo from another diver I met in the Caymans last summer. He is a doctor in Maryland and dived all over the Caribbean. I told him that I was often in Southern Florida for business (it makes me feel like such a grown up to say that). He reccomended a dive shop called Quiescence. Here is their site: http://www.keylargodiving.com/ (and if you are wondering, quiescence means "a state of repose, still, tranquil, serene, the essence of quiet).

I arrived at the shop around 7:30 ready to dive at 8am. I walked in and showed them me C-Cards (cards that prove you are a certified diver) and started filling out the paperwork. The captain came in and informed me that the seas were running 3-4 feet. I have very limited experience diving in the ocean so I really don't know what to think. Not wanting to sound like a complete amateur, I smile and tell them that its no big deal and I'm ready to go. (How bad can 3-4 waves really be right?)

We walked down to the boat, loaded up our gear and I met the captain and my dive buddy for the day.

This is Captain Steve.

And this is my dive buddy, Thierry (its pronounced like there is is no "h" in it). Thierry is from Guyana (any ideas of where that is?). He was quite impressed that I knew it was in South America. I guess geography in 6th grade was good for something after all. Also, he is a dive instructor so it was great to be paired with someone who really knew what they were doing. He also had an underwater camera with him so most of these pictures were taken by him. He was a great guy and spoke several different languages. French is the primary language spoken in Guyana and he had a pretty thick accent. I had to try to keep from laughing because all I could think of was a part from the movie "Along Came Polly" where one of the charasters is a French scuba instructor and his famous line is (in a heavy french accent) "You for Scuba?"

The waves were much worse than I anticipated but luckily I keep Dramamine in my car just for times like this. The other two divers on the boat were a mother and son from Ohio. They had just gotten certified and this was their first dive in the ocean. They made their first dive and were so sea sick that they stayed in the boat for the second one.

Once you got under the water, the surge from the waves was not too noticeable. On our first dive we came across several large grouper (pictured above). The secodn grouper we saw was hidden under a ledge and was easily as big as I am. They are harmless but it is still a big fish to be swimming near. We also saw a spotted eagle ray. It passed by too quickly to get a good picture, but here is a link to see one: http://www.akamaidivers.com/images/eagle%20ray.jpg

They are quite beautiful and graceful underwater.

The second dive we dove a site called "The Winch." As you can see above, they were not too creative when thinking of a name. The winch is leftover from a shipwreck in the late 1800's and there was some other debris around the area. On the second dive, there were baracuda everywhere. Eben though there has never been a case of one attacking a diver, it was still pretty creappy to see a large school of them swimming slowly through the water.

I tried to get close enough to have my picture taken with them, but it didn't turn out as well as I had imagined. Scuba divers are pretty noisy underwater so the fish tend to keep their distance.

We also spotted a moray eel. He stayed hidden in the coral though and after seeing one swim when I was diving in the Caymans, that was okay with me.

We also spotted a few more large grouper as well as dozens of other smaller fish.

Both dives were only down to about 30 feet so we had almost an hour of bottom time. As we were coming back to the surface from the second dive, the bottom of our boat was oscured by fish. There were dozens of them swimming around underneath it. As it turns out, the other two divers were sea sick and had thrown up over the side of the boat, thereby attracting fish. It made me kind of laugh, but I felt bad that they got sick and couldnt enjoy the dive.

Overall, it was a fantastic day, even though the waves were a little rough. I would dive again with this shop in a heartbeat and will hopefully get to go again in April when I am in Miami again.

Hitching a Ride

WARNING: Somewhat gross pictures of roaches and a story about roaches follows.

My most recent visit was to LSU in beautiful Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Needless to say since it was Louisiana the bugs were prevalent and quite big. My last night in town, I was sitting in my room chatting on my computer when a cockroach comes flying through the air and lands on the wall in front of me. First of all, since when do cockroaches fly? It buzzed right past my head and freaked me out and then landed on the wall in front of me. I am not grossed out by much but cockroaches give me the willies. Caroline suggested that I kill the cockroach but I chose to take a picture of it instead (See picture below). I realize that there is not much to provide some persective, so you will just have to trust me that this guy was huge. It is easily one of the bigger roaches I have ever seen.

I snapped a few pictures of the roach and then it scurried off into some dark corner of the room. I didn't think much of it and went on chatting and doing work and then eventually went to bed. I got up early the next morning and packed my bags and drove 450 miles to Tallahassee, Florida to do my visit at Florida State. I get into Tallahassee and eventually check into my hotel. I settle into the room, put my bags down and start to unpack a bit. I grab my toiletries kit and walk over to the bathroom. My electronic toothbrush was low on battery when I brushed my teeth that morning so I wanted to pull it out and charge it. I unzip my back and that same, gigantic cockroach come crawling out onto the bag. I freaked and did everything short of screaming like a little girl. I dropped the bag out of pure reaction and the roach ended up landing on my bare foot. I freaked out for a second time in 5 seconds and jerked my foot back. The roach ran into the closet.

I am shaking because of the adrenaline and because I was caught completely by surprise. Who really expects a roach to come crawling out of your toiletries bag? Most likely the roach I had spared the night before had crawled into my bag and hitched a ride from Baton Rouge to Tallahassee. I figured that that roach already had once chance so I grabbed a bunch of tissue and went over to the closet and promptly smushed that little vermin. Then I threw him in the toilet and flushed him. (As an aside, Caroline named him Gus. Rest in Peace Gus).

So thanks to the roach I am simply disgusted and have to clean out my toiletries bag. I threw out half of my stuff and am still thinking about tossing the rest of them. All I can think about is some roach scurrying all over my toothbrush and my other stuff. Its enough to keep me awake at night. Gross, gross, gross.

Someone's Been Sleeping in My Bed

I am visiting the chapter at Ole Miss this week. This week is homecoming week and Oxford is not a big town. The combination of the two means that there are no open hotel rooms and since I needed a place to stay, the chapter put me up in a condo nearby. The condo is much nicer than any hotel room and there is plenty of space. An added benefit was that I was able to pull all of the dirty laundry out of my car and do it. I was down to my last pair of clean underwear and running low on shirts.

I didn't have many meetings the first night so I settled in and was watching some TV when there was a knock at the door. It was around 9:30 or 10:00 and I was not expecting visitors. Not only I am a little uncomfortable because I am in some someone's house (and have no clue who that someone is), but now there is an unexpected knock.

I opened the door and there is a middle aged woman who looks quite surprised to see me. She smiled and tried to be polite when she asked me who I was. (Now, here I am stuck. I can barely explain what I do to people I'm sitting next to on airplanes. Now I am in a strange town, in some stranger's condo, and there is someone who I have no clue who they are asking me what I am doing.)

I try the easy explination first: "I am Daniel and I'm visiting some friends here in Oxford." This, not surprisingly, only brought on more questions. I eventually explained my positon and what I was doing in Oxford. She asked how I knew the owner of the condo. "I don't actually," I replied. Someone from the chapter brought me over and told me I could stay here. She explained that she was the next door neighbor and was coming voer to borrow a bottle of wine and some vodka because they had run out next door. (Now, not only am I in some strange place and have no clue how I am connected with the owner, but the neighber is over asking me what I am doing here and borrowing alcohol. All I can think of is that I am going to get blamed for the missing alcohol and that would not be good.)

As she is leaving, the woman (I never caught her name) mentions that the owner and her daughter were coming into town the next day. Now I am really starting to get worried. Not only am I in a stranger's home, but she probably has no clue I am staying there and now she is going to come into town and find some stranger sleeping in one of their beds. Not only I am not sleeping well already, but now I have the idea stuck in my head that I will be woken up by some angry woman demanding to know who I am.

Luckily, there was no angry home owner to deal with when I woke up but I fully packed my car just in case I needed to make a quick getaway. The rumor is now that the owner is coming in on Friday so I am packing my car again tomorrow morning. I hope I have some place to sleep tomorrow night. I expect nothing short of an adventure.