SCUBA Superhero

Wow. It’s been a stressful month of school for both Jen and me. Fortunately it is now spring break. Jen is de-stressing by returning to St. Louis for a week.

I am de-stressing by becoming a SCUBA superhero. I am taking an Advanced Scuba Diver course in Puerto Galera, Philippines. To complete this I need to complete 5 tasks before the local High Master of Scuba.
1. Dive to the deepest depths of the ocean and retrieve a translucent and blind sea creature of my choice.
2. Breathe various gases while diving such as nitrox, pure oxygen, liquid oxygen, and helium. (On the helium dive I am required to sing funny songs into a sound recorder).
3. Infiltrate a hostile scuba facility at night while dressed all in black. I must plant an exploding device and sink one of their ships, which then helps me with task #4.
4. Penetrate the “wrecked” ship that I caused the previous evening.
5. Explain in detail my wreck dive to the High Master of Scuba. I must use the verb “penetrate” at least 5 times without laughing.

Wish me luck.

Hammertime at Scubataha

Ahoy me hearties! I can speak like this because I’ve been at sea. I certainly haven’t been at sea this whole time (since my last blog entry), but I was winded since making that Thriller Video.

Why have I been at sea? Glad you asked. Jen and I (and 18 other teacher friends) were on the scuba expedition of a lifetime. You know it was life changing, because my friend Fred and I made t-shirts to commemorate the event. And we got tattoos that match the t-shirts.

We flew to the island of Palawan (known for monkeys that do naughty things in public) and then boarded the Stella Maris, which is much like a Carnival cruise ship in quality, but nothing like that in any other way. The Stella Maris then set sail for some crazy atoll, Tubbataha, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. An atoll is an island that started to grow up from the ocean, but then gave up about one foot short of breaking the surface. Then, in tropical places, coral goes apeshit on the atoll and grows everywhere. Fish like coral and warm places, so they go to atolls for spring break, much like people.

Our dive master’s name was Ivan Drago. He was actually German, but he was muscular, blonde, and if he ever said, “I must break you,” at any point in his life, it was probably during the filming of Rocky IV.

Our ship then parked near the atoll and we scuba dove three to five times every day. Even at night. It was crazy-go-nuts. We saw sharks, sea turtles, octopi, iridescent jellyfish, and more. There were two highlights. One was a hammerhead shark that was nearly as awesome as MC hammer. The second was a giant manta ray. Manta rays and hammerhead sharks are famous for disproving the theory of Intelligent Design because there is absolutely nothing intelligent about their design.

Then we sailed back home. This consisted of 12 hours of rocking back and forth so intensely that I went into the fetal position and promised myself I’d never go on a boat again.*

All in all, awesome trip! Definitely doing it again next spring break!


* Did you ever see that Bugs Bunny episode? The one where the ship rocked one way, and the soup slid towards Bugs, and he took three quick bites. Then the ship rocked the other way, and the bowl slid towards Yosemite Sam, and he took three quick bites. It was exactly like that. I live in a cartoon.