2003-07-28 - 6:05 p.m.

The air is so dry that your tongue ends up looking like a saintly relic.

The pressure makes your joints creak and your ears are constantly roaring with the din of the battle between the tiny pockets of air keeping your Eustachian tubes inflated and the seven hundred billion tons of water trying to flood your skull.

Nitrogen bubbles through your blood and makes you feel as if youve just run a great distance under the influence of a drug which removed all the symptoms of exhaustion except a certain tingling in the backbrain.

Your skin wrinkles and folds in strange ways as it is pervaded by salts and you end up looking like a Mafia informer after two weeks cement-shoe vacation in the Bay of Biscay.

You become aware of millions of tiny translucent organisms sharing space with every square inch of you, and in some circumstances getting quite personal about it.

No matter how much you paid for your mask, salt water gets into your nose and rims your eyes.

You know down to the very core of your being that you are simply not meant to be there.

Its marvelous.

I received my official NAUI certification (wanting only the little laminate card to arrive by mail and thus make things officially official) not too long hence, courtesy of the good folks at Scuba Quest in downtown Sarasota.

Pricey textbooks, excellent course. If anyone would like a very affordably-priced never-viewed video version of the NAUI textbook, or perhaps an audio copy listened to only by a little old lady on Sundays, be sure to contact me.

There were at least six instructors that I can recall, plus one gentleman who came by to tell us about expansion injuries in a thick Texan accent that added a much-needed touch of levity to phrases such as An air embolism will almost certainly cause extensive brain damage, and is usually fatal.

My favorite instructors were Double J and Big Mac (Now, some would ask why I felt the need to provide aliases for two people who, in all likelihood, none of you have ever met, and would only be able to find through the most rigorous detective work, even if I provided their first names. Shut up, thats why.) The former was a large ex-hippie with a waist length silver ponytail and some fascinating stories about how easy it is to smuggle things on SCUBA. The latter was a highly animated jolly fellow with a nut-brown tan and a penchant for making bizarre movie references.

We alternated between classroom sessions in the store conveniently located next to Saharas and a little tienda where I could buy forty-cent cans of Boing! To wash down my kebab and the Arlington Aquatic Center, a friendly park just off Waldemere, featuring as its centerpiece a seventy-foot wide pool with a thirteen-and-a-half foot deep end.

The classroom sessions were, unfortunately, not entirely riveting, especially if you had actually done the reading previously, although it was a great way to hear stories about terrible scuba injuries and anecdotes about how great it is to dive in Cancun. A sort of stick-and-honey harmony, I think. I did learn how to do dive tables, though, which was very entertaining, since I havent had an opportunity to do anything remotely approaching mathematics since the 11th grade. And I had the opportunity to read Florida Roadkill and The Hammerhead Ranch Motel between answering questions about nitrogen narcosis and Boyles law.

The pool was a good deal more fun. I was using a set of borrowed fins and snorkels for a while, courtesy of the Fitness Center (and I might even return them before the next hunters moon) as well as an official Scuba Quest loaner mask. I got full marks on the water tests, holding my breath for a pools breadth swim and then swimming a half kilometer back and forth, and then treading water for ten minutes. Tiresome, certainly, but while I may be a bit of a ruminant on land, Ive always had a touch of otter in my blood that puts me at ease in the water.

I got to work in the training group with an ex-Navy SEAL named Mike who taught us the rudiments of diving techniques. There are a series of motions one has to learn with the dedication of an acolyte learning the Hail Mary or the seventy-four northern koans.

- Take off the mask and retrieve it. Two head tilts and a mask clear. Okay signal.

- When the regulator is floating free, bring the right arm down in a straight sweep past the leg and then straight out at right angles to the body. Pull the B.C. strap with the left hand and hook the right arm at the elbow. Retrieve the regulator from the confining arm with the left hand. Clear it. Okay signal.

- Remove the weight belt. Hold in the right hand at 90 degree angle to the body. Drop straight down. Deflate B.C. and tilt head upwards while scissoring up, left hand held up, exhaling constantly.

Fun stuff, to be sure.

Theres a good deal more, but youll have to pay your own damned fee to learn it. I did a good job in the course, overall. I was never penalized for leaving the dust cap off my regulator or wearing my mask on my forehead (Thats a sign of distress, you schmuck. If you want to take your mask off, wear it around your neck.) I got myself a nice round 98% on the final exam, tying for the highest score in the class.

And then we got to go diving out in the wide world.

First we went to Lake Denton (Denton, Denton! Weve got GOOD intentions!) in central Florida. I hitched a ride with my dive buddies, the Outlaw and the Cop, and we took in the wonders of Zolfo Springs and Ona, home of the largest fence post manufacturer in North America. I had a nourishing breakfast of an uncooked footlong British Petroleum hot dog and some Cheese n Onion Pringles, and we were ready to dive.

All the way down.

32 feet.

To the bottom of a muddy lake.

There was a wrecked rowboat down there. And some bream.

Yeah, okay, THAT wasnt so spectacular, but the next day we went TWENTY MILES out into the Gulf of friggin Mexico (which I understand is under consideration by Rand McNally and the shipping interests of North and South America as an official name change).

We came to a place called Tri-Ledge and went down sixty feet along an anchor line to the sandy bottom, dappled with rich indigo and sparkling blues, where a massive goliath grouper lurked and watched me with a wary eye (perhaps remembering the verbal whupping I had given his cousin), and moon jellies pulsed through the water, pausing only to give me a nice barrage of stings down the side. I watched soldierfish and French angelfish and blue tangs dart around each other and ran my hands past a shelf of anemones, snorting CO2 as they all contracted out of sight simultaneously as my shadow passed over them. After a nice break, we went on to Brake Drum, so named for the huge Mack brake drum that somehow ended up here, now occupied by a rather snippy toadfish. I swam through a cloud of crevalle jacks and picked up a Fruit by the Foot wrapper. Sour apple. Ah, paradise.

I followed some tiny purple reef squid and saw the shadow of something huge pass by overhead. I listened to the shifting murmurs of the ocean and felt the oppression of silence in a beautiful alien environment.

I held on to the anchor line of the 40 foot boat at fifty feet of depth and felt the rope surge back and forth in my hands, playing the tune of a limitless tide, and I breathed long dry breaths and watched my swirling eddies of bubbles surge like madmen for the surface.

Marvelous.

Simply marvelous.

- \/\/heel

*****

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