So, Texas (and now Iowa), you want me to move there from California? Well, try this in YOUR backyard.

The way I do the math, 2½ out of 4 ain’t all bad.

 

I established this here blog many a fortnight ago to showcase my global adventure humor writer chops, and clearly, I have left the habitué wanting. (Take that Maureen Dowd..you’re not the only one with a thesaurus.)

 

Yes, wanting; wanting something more than my half-ass humor.

 

And, I guess going two weeks without a measly missive of a post does not really fit the definition of being a writer.

(As if the quality of my writing skills could be based solely on the frequency of my pontifications.)

 

At least I seem to be making a mild attempt at the global adventure aspects; to wit, scuba diving in Honduras, skiing in Utah, and yacht sailing in the San Francisco bay, all in just the last few weeks.

 

    

 

A couple of days ago, I excitedly waxed my sticks after hearing the forecast for a foot of fresh pow in the Lake Tahoe area. What started out in December with promises of fathoms deep of the frozen fluffy-soft white stuff has morphed into rock, dirt, and brush covered ski slopes with recent proclamations of “western states desperate for snow.” 

 

Lake Tahoe is only a couple of hours away and offers some of the best winter recreational opportunities imaginable.

 

After spending the day on the slopes proving I don’t have half the skiing skills that I imagine, I can then go lose oodles of cash on the blackjack table, when I imagine that given enough time and money, surely I will win all that money back.

 

    

 

But, as it happened, I got a better offer when I had the chance to drive a couple of hours in the opposite direction to spend the day on what is one of the most cherished and challenging sailing venues, anywhere.

 

We cherished the spectacular views of sailing off the San Francisco city front, just downwind of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, while the America’s Cup mega-multihull sailing speedster practiced nearby, with their appurtenant helicopter and rigid inflatable boats (RIB’s) in full pursuit.

 

   

 

The challenge was not getting run over by a mammoth Matson container ship that seemed to come out of nowhere.

 

Apparently, these behemoths move deceptively faster than they appear to, at upwards of 25 knots, as in, “I did NOT see that guy coming directly at us!”

 

    

 

Our skipper was not entirely sure we would clear the shipping channel under sail power alone, especially given the infamously strong tidal currents in the bay.

 

I honestly did not know it was physically possible to get a sailboat’s engine started and shifted forward into flank speed in mere seconds, all before the containership’s captain could even blow his warning horn for the fourth time, as he was picking up the radio to call the Coast Guard on us.

 

    

 

We were able to scoot out of path of the leviathan with furlongs to spare—and, I’m sure the skipper only looked as concerned as he does in this picture.

 

As you can tell, the locals, who witnessed the whole event, barely raised their heads in concern.

 

    

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Why scuba divers are different from normal people.

The fish probably think it is as funny as hell.

 

And, at times, it actually feels like that. Hell.

 

Normal is boring, goes the old cliché, but when it comes to scuba diving, boring may be a lot more comfortable.

 

Normal people think better than spending thousands of dollars and countless travel days getting to someplace, just to get sick, bit, and be uncomfortable.

 

So, exactly what is it that makes scuba divers seem at least slightly off-kilter?

 

I can think of a few things.

 

1. It takes a whole lot of special shit to scuba dive. Very expensive and heavy shit.

 

Would normal people get into recreational activities that require an enormous amount of specialized equipment, costing as much as an entry-level compact car, and taking up as much room as one?

 

Normal people take up sports like golf, where you can get by with a bag of clubs that you can sling over your shoulder, and a couple of balls in your pants (in case you lose one). Contrast that to a typical scuba diving trip that requires two huge rolling suitcases, each weighing damn close to the 50-pound airline limit.

 

And, many divers lug along a third, rigid case for thousands of dollars of underwater camera equipment, for which they must pay exorbitant excess baggage fees.

 

        

 

 

2. Contrary to the old saying, getting there may not be half the fun, unless you define fun as self-medicating or drinking yourself into an unconscious stupor.

 

The trip to popular places to dive often begins with a very long flight, which means breathing stale air, eating lousy food—or none at all—and sitting on your ass for upwards of 14 hours.

 

Unfortunately, many of the so-called primo dive spots are literally located on the other side of the planet. Fourteen hours confined into a narrow metal flying tube, crammed with coughing kids and their plus-sized parents, may not be Dante’s Inferno, but it’s hell on your butt.

 

Often those long, red-eye flights leaving at midnight just lead to piling into a rickety, third-world airplane, like the prop plane I took to Cozumel from Cancun years ago, where the wind whistled through the gaps around the door and windows.

 

And, with the foreign accents of the flight crews and lousy onboard sound systems, you can’t even tell if they are speaking in English when they are giving critical flight information…like how to close and open an automobile-style seatbelt that has been around since the early 19th century.

 

Then, you get the thrill of landing in the pouring rain and strong winds on a narrow runway, which has been eked into an opening in the jungle. 

 

Finally, after an interminably long trip, you crawl, zombie-like, into a sketchy looking van for the ride to the dive resort. This is where you learn that those faded lane lines on the road offer only suggestions as to how many cars, motorcycles, and massive trucks can squeeze by each other. With any luck, by now you are hopefully passed out from jetlag.

 

All this to get to someplace with undrinkable water, questionable cell coverage, undependable electricity with weird outlets, and something called 220V power that may cause certain electrical devices to start smoking before they blow up.

 

 

3. Scuba diving sometimes involves a lot of throwing up.

 

Not infrequently, getting to those special remote dive sites involves spending anywhere from five minutes, to many hours—and, in some cases, even days—sitting on a bucking boat on rough seas, which for some means suffering sustained sessions of seasickness.

 

Bouts of violently expelling those strange green eggs and, “What kind of meat is in this sausage?” you had for breakfast is not conducive to going down 100-feet underwater, which depends on a chunder-free scuba regulator to breathe.

 

        

 

 

4. Suiting up to scuba dive requires almost as much stuff as Felix Baumgartner needed to skydive from space.

 

First, you get to stuff yourself into a tight, neoprene rubber suit, which results in a not entirely flattering, but entirely new body shape.

 

Next, you pull on this complicated underwater vest, called a BCD (which I think is an abbreviation for Bulky Cumbersome and Dangerous), to which a heavy, steel tank (hopefully) full of breathable air is attached, with various air hoses, one connected to a blocky metal and plastic “regulator”, which you stick in your mouth.

 

I have no idea how a regulator regulates, but I know it depends on a diaphragm, so it should be safe, as long as it doesn’t spring a leak. That could lead to a very unexpected surprise.

 

        

 

Finally, just before jumping ship, you put on a dive mask—that for those of us who are proboscisally endowed—squeezes your nose in a narrow rubber covering, and then you pull on these huge floppy dive fins, which tend to provide for a rather sexy appeal while walking…if you are a duck.

 

Oh, did I mention that the BCD vest has pockets into which you voluntarily stuff heavy blocks of solid lead weights?

I wonder as I jump into briny depths, why is it that all I can think about is some episode of the Sopranos?

 

          

 

 

5. Normal people don’t go jumping into freezing water and call it fun.

 

While most divers consider scuba sites with warm water to be true nirvana, many popular sites are less hospitable in that regard. The aforementioned wet suits are rated in “mil” of thickness, as in, “I’d give a million dollars to stop shivering.”

 

In chilly water, you get to cover, not only your torso, legs and arms in thick, restrictive rubber, but also your head, hands, and feet. Mobility is really no longer an option.

 

And, for the hardcore, those divers who frequent really cold water often wear something called a “drysuit.” This style of thermal protection has the benefit that the rubber is much thinner, thus more flexible and allows for much more freedom of movement.

 

On the down side, wearing a normal wetsuit allows one to, ah…relieve themselves (not that I would ever admit to that practice), whereas the unwanted liquid simply flows into the ocean. With a drysuit being water tight, any liquids that enter the interior area cannot leak out and just stays in there during the entire dive.

 

If you happen to notice a distinctive puddle around the feet of a drysuit diver when they get back on the boat, well, let’s just say, it probably ain’t yellow sweat.

 

       

 

 

6. You will probably never hear a normal person exclaiming, “I went swimming in dirty dish water.”

 

Diving is certainly more enjoyable when you can see the colorful fish and beautiful coral, and divers use the term “viz” to relatively compare how clear it is underwater. The term viz may have come from how much coffee you drank at breakfast and now must “take a viz” to relieve yourself into your wetsuit, which as mentioned, flows directly into the surrounding water.

 

Of course, that is not the only thing that results in cloudy water clarity. It is also those cruise ships that ply the same waters with upwards of 6,000 people relieving themselves. You don’t think they haul all that “stuff” back to port, do you?

Yuck, that is just disgusting.

 

 

7. Sometimes the sea strikes the scuba diver, and that can hurt.

 

Normal people tend to question why a totally vulnerable scuba diver would willingly swim among 14-foot sharks with rows of razor-sharp teeth, six-foot long moray eels with gaping mouths, and various fish with highly poisonous needle-like spines.

 

The threats to bodily harm don’t necessarily end when you get out of the water. Many of the popular diving locales enjoy the presence of malaria, yellow or dengue fever-carrying mosquitoes, typhoid fever infested food or drinking water, plus poisonous snakes and vegetation. And bats.

 

        

 

 

8. Sometimes the scuba diver strikes the sea, and that can hurt, too.

 

All it takes is a strong ocean current to drive a diver into amazingly sharp, hard coral, sometimes causing a profusely bleeding wound . (See the previous chapter on 14-foot sharks.)

 

And, would a normal person pay to swim into a dark, enclosed metal wreck of an old sunken ship with jagged rusty edges? Not only do you risk a severe cut to your skin or air hose, and a tetanus infection, but you have to remember your way out from the dark recesses of the wreck.

 

We also dive in sinkholes in the Yucatán area of Mexico, called cenotes, which lead to totally dark, water-filled underground tunnels, some of which are thousands of feet in length.

Down there, the only “up” is solid rock.

 

 

9. Sometimes your fellow scuba divers strike you, albeit by accident.

 

While the ocean is truly vast and seemingly endless, divers often congregate to view the smallest objects of undersea life imaginable. This is especially true when the divemaster bangs against his metal tank to draw the attention of the group, especially those with the thousands of dollars of underwater dive cameras—or a few who actually carry a big magnifying lens when diving (Yes, Pam…I’m talking about you).

 

This signal leads to a mass migration of the divers who attempt to see a tiny pigmy seahorse, small, colorful nudibranch or other near-microscopic thing, all at the same time. This swimming stampede may result in flaying fins and flinging cameras, which can pose a threat to dislodge your mask and your ability to see things, such as your gauge that tells you if you are about to run out of air.

 

       

 

 

10. Does putting on a cold, clammy, wetsuit sound like fun? How about doing it day after day after day?

 

The fact is, a lot of diving takes place in tropical environs, which becomes tropical due to what? The answer is, it stays wet much of the time. That wetsuit you took off the day before has not only not dried out at all, but also has become even more difficult to pull on.

 

For those of us of a particularly hirsute nature, it is kind of like trying to pull on an undersized, semi-stretchy rubber protective cover over an ample-sized hairy, ah…leg.

 

Wait…it’s exactly like that.

 

        

 

So, as you can see, scuba divers are normal in ever way.

 

Or, maybe we just think that after breathing in air that has been enriched with something called nitrox. Before you think we are diving deep while high, nitrox doesn’t give you a buzz. As a matter of fact, divers use it to prevent “getting bent.”

 

We wait until we get back to the resort bar to get bent, where it’s rum punch all around.

 

         

 

What’s not normal with that?

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Who cares if I sneak over to Cuba from Honduras? Apparently those CIA drones do.

It was on my recent flight to San Salvador, El Salvador, with Javier Bardem, while enjoying a clearly healthy breakfast, I was reading this month’s Outside magazine.

 

Sure, Lindsey Vonn posed near-naked for the magazine cover, but, I’m happily married; so just like I used to tell the wife-person when I “read” Playboy, I was only looking at the articles.

 

And, just like those “professional models” in Playboy, we guys tend to lust over things that are out of our reach.

 

For me, that includes my longtime burning desire to take in all the sensory pleasures of Cuba. As I mentioned in our last visit, that would include the,

“…fine cigars, aged rum, magical music, and classic cars…”

 

Notice, I did not mention the incredibly hot, sexy Latinas that inhabit those dimly lit cantinas of Havana, since as I just mentioned, I am happily married and those voluptuous women wearing threadbare half-shirts and skintight shorts that barely cover their…well, I hardly think about them at all.

 

A while back, I reported that during a scuba trip to the popular destination island of Cozumel, given a similarly simple connecting flight to Cuba, I supposedly skipped the temptation to visit my mysterious mistress of desire.

 

In other words, I would like to say that I did not go to Cuba when I had the opportunity on that occasion. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

 

After my recent week of incredible diving in Cuba Roatan, I needed to avoid any underwater forays the last day, which all divers must do for 24-hours before flying home.

 

That is either to allow my body to purge any remaining excess nitrogen in the bloodstream—which could go to my brain and possibly kill me—or to make sure I have time to polish off that large bottle of Flor de Caña rum that I purchased when I got there—which could go to my brain and possibly kill me.

 

Such are the risks that a global adventure humor writer takes, all for your amusement and reading enjoyment.

 

So, it was that last day of the trip that I decided a kayak paddle would be a good way to while away the time; unfortunately, I forgot my place.

 

Things were going peachy, just until I noticed I had garnered the attention of the locals and obtained a navel escort of sorts. Needless to say, I began to paddle towards shore with just a little bit more urgency.

 

  

 

It was then that I remembered that I had left my passport in the room; the passport that would have made it clear that I had strayed a little off-course.

 

Could I claim that I really thought this was Honduras? After all, it was only a few nautical miles to the southwest.

 

The actual distance was just under 900 kilometers, which we Americans do not really understand, but when converted to nautical miles, given the prevailing wind and current directions, it was only just mostly an inconceivable distance to paddle in a morning jaunt.

 

I could plead cluelessness; that sometimes works with the wife-person (actually, almost never).

 

As I approached the malecón, I could not help but notice that I might have a problem claiming that I thought this was the Honduran city of Coxen Hole (which would be a great name for a porn star).

 

   

 

But, then it came to me.

 

It is not this government that minds me visiting and spending copious amount of American greenbacks…it’s OUR government that minds, as if somehow my purchase of a few cigars and bottle of rum might help prop up the régime of some ancient revolutionary on his deathbed. 

 

But, mind they still do, and that might explain the noise I heard coming from just over my head.

 

When I looked up, there was this strange skeleton of a flying object that was…HEY, it was one of those small drones that I had read about in the latest Outside Magazine—once I got past the pictures of the near-naked Lindsey Vonn.

 

   

 

Cool, I thought. Must be some guy out playing with his new toy. Basically, these new personal drones are kind of like those old radio-controlled airplanes. And, as the Outside article pointed out, these things are easily obtained; you can even buy one from Amazon, which you can control from you iPhone.

 

That was just until I saw the long, narrow object with the trailing smoking plume, apparently headed my way.

 

  

 

WTF? I thought. Who would be firing upon me, an American citizen in mostly good standing, just because I was paddling in the wrong neighborhood?

 

That was until I made it closer to shore and caught two guys red-handed—and by “red” I am not talking about their political affiliation.  Check out their matching government issue, logo shirts (although I never did see their stinking badges).

 

  

 

And, while this was nowhere near the Bay of Pigs, after a week of sans showers or shaving, I was beginning to look pretty sloven.

 

Maybe this scuba diver I met on the shore won’t mind the smell.

 

              

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My jet lag from all that world travel felt just like a hangover. Or, maybe it had something to do with those 37 hours of alcohol consumption.

The most reliable, time-tested “cure” for a case of mind-numbing jet lag is pretty much along the same lines as for a severe, head-splitting hangover.

 

Just stay home and don’t drink anything stronger than low-fat milk.

 

Of course, with that strategy you would miss seeing much of the planet’s special places. Or, an up-close and personal view of the inside of your floor-mounted, porcelain bathroom appliance.

 

As I have been intermittently reporting, I just got back from a dive trip to Fiji, which apparently is not really just around the corner.

 

At this point, I don’t clearly recall that anyone warned me that this trek would entail a three-hour drive for a one-hour flight, and then a ten-hour flight, which lead to a three-hour bus ride in the pouring rain on a windy island road, to get where we began a one-hour boat ride across a wind-whipped, lumpy sea, only to transfer to a rain-slicked small metal dingy, which took us almost all the way to the beach at the resort.

 

          

 

          

 

And, all of that doesn’t include the many hours spent at multiple airports, which includes getting X-rayed, magnetometered, patted and probed, and dizzy from watching the luggage carousel go round-and-round, while praying that my dive bag did not end up on Mt. Fuji instead of at our beach on Fiji.

 

The bottom line is, all that traveling added up to many hours across a multitude of time zones, which left us sleep deprived, succumbing to diet disasters, and generally mentally debilitated. Our bottom line was about 37 hours “pillow to pillow” (from the bed at our place to a bed at their place).

 

Or, as otherwise described: jet lagged.

 

By some strange happenstance, as if to taunt my compromised physical and mental state with preventive methods after it is too late, I came home to the latest edition of the Wellness Letter to which I subscribe. As if reading about getting in better shape will somehow trump poor eating and a lack of exercise.

 

One of the featured subjects for the month was, “Easing the Turbulence of Jet Lag.” You can link to the short article for yourself, but you have probably heard it all before:

 

1. Get to your destination late for eastward travel.

 

2. Before you leave, go to bed early for eastward travel and late for westward travel.

 

 

               

 

3. For a late flight, go right to sleep on the plane—as if you can ignore the constant stream of announcements, seat-belt demonstrations (REALLY…after all these years, you still have to show us this?), food and drink cart deliveries, and talkative seat neighbors.

 

         

 

 

4. “Drink enough.” (A lot more on that in a moment.)

 

           

 

 

5. Re-set your watch (assuming you are one of the three people on the airplane that even still wears a watch).

 

6. Expose yourself outside. (The last time I tried this suggested method, I promptly got arrested.)

 

                          

 

7. Take drugs. Sleeping pills, maybe not. Melatonin, maybe yes, but who knows?

 

     

 

8. Ignore diet cures. (Gee, I thought that those dozen Cinnabons I bought at the airport WAS to prevent jet lag.)

 

Of course, a couple of those preventative strategies require some knowledge of whether you are traveling eastward or towards the west. It is my experience that smart phones, Garmin and Google have pretty much replaced whatever comprehension of navigation most people never had, in the first place.

 

In that case, I suggest just skipping directly to method No. 4.

 

Personally, the whole concept of crossing multiple time zones leaves me to avail myself to “drink enough.”

 

Our flight from LAX left on a Thursday evening. We arrived in Fiji on the subsequent Saturday morning. The flight was just under ten hours.

 

You do the math…what happened to most of Friday?

 

Did I mention that we flew on Friday the 13th? (Cue the Twilight Zone intro.)

 

On the return flight, we left Fiji on Saturday night, crossed the largest ocean on earth, and got home mid-day Saturday; yes, the same Saturday! In other words, we got home before we even left.

 

Talk about a rift in the space-time continuum. Anyone got Stephen Hawking’s phone number?

 

Is it any wonder why I “drink enough” while doing all this trans-global gallivanting?

 

We scuba divers log our dives for future reference—like, was it ten or twelve times I had to pee in my wetsuit during that dive?

 

So, for this trip, I decided to log my beverage consumption, just to make sure that I would “drink enough.”

 

• The night before we left I had a wee dram of whisky (as in Scotch).

 

• At our first airport, I ordered my requisite Bloody Mary (Absolut vodka, a double, as I recall).

 

• On the SWA flight to LAX, they had a special on a gin & tonic, so what else could I do?

 

• I quaffed a drinkable red wine to accompany the fine airport cuisine at LAX.

 

• On the long Air Pacific flight, I sampled Fijian Bounty Red Label dark rum, which the label claims is “over-proofed.” I imbibed this high octane spirit, only slightly diluted with orange juice.

 

• At the airport in Nadi, I enjoyed my first—of many—local Fiji Bitter beer.

 

• En route we stopped at the Hare Krishna-inspired, Indian-influenced little town of Sigatoka where I purchased a bottle of the aforementioned Bounty rum.

 

As you can discern, world travel is not for the faint of heart, or for that matter, anyone leaning towards temperance.

 

Thank goodness, I do not suffer from either affliction.

 

              

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Frank’s Fiji Fotos: Heee’s back…just not quite all there, yet. (Yeah, so what’s new with that?)

Resetting my watch and brain (minus 5 hours, plus 1 day); unpacking; drying out (in more ways than one, as you will find out); risking severe paper cuts going through a mountain of mail; but, in the meantime, here is one picture as to what terrible threats to my person I experienced across the Big Pond.

 

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I’m off to Fiji on the next submarine out of the Nevada desert. Shhhh – the Navy asked that I don’t tell.

Some say a secret subterranean submarine system exists under the Nevada desert, extending from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

 

How else would you explain all those lobsters crawling around out there?

 

Thus, begins Part Two of my trek from the desert to the deep, as mentioned in Part One.

 

Just as I am about done shaking all that desert sand out of my skivvies, I am packing for a dive trip where I sometimes load my shorts with a lot of ocean sand.

 

This has been known to happen as I lay about the beach, after sipping on one too many a local rum drink.

 

The funny thing is that I got to thinking about the sea while I was still out in the vast areas of sparse sagebrush, under a deep ocean-blue desert sky. 

 

Well, first it was really under the glaring lights and glitzy sights of the Las Vegas strip, where I got a taste of ocean activities among the cigarette-smoke filled gaming palaces.

 

The Golden Nugget casino hotel has a $30 million, three-story waterslide that puts a victim, I mean swimmer, right through a shark-infested saltwater tank.

 

 

       

 

 

While I was somewhat skeptical of sliding into a pool of meat-eating sea creatures, the wife-person kept encouraging me,

“No, go ahead dear. I think they have already eaten. You’ll be fine. Wait, first tell me, where did you leave the car keys?”

 

 

      

 

 

Having survived that experience—thankfully, sharks prefer smooth-skinned chum—we were on our way into the outback.

 

(Finally, an advantage of being blessed with a two-inch thick mat of body hair from head-to-toe.)

 

 

      

 

 

Once back on the desolate desert roads, we came into the Middle-of-Nowhere—which could be the official name of any number of small town-like places you encounter along the way—I came to a sudden stop when I found a full-sized sport fishing boat, which you might see off the coast looking for large game fish.

 

Apparently, the intended sea-going game of this boat was not fish, but delicious crusty crustaceans.

 

 

   

 

 

But, finding sharks and lobsters out in the middle of an arid desert was only the tip of the iceberg (which, for all I know, we might find on our next visit).

 

As we drove through yet another small isolated town replete with McDonalds, gas stations and the ubiquitous Wal*Mart store, we saw a sign that had to be read twice to confirm if it really said what I thought it said.

 

According to the sign that is along a well traveled Nevada state highway, the United States of America/ Department of the Navy has a Naval Undersea Warfare Center in the Middle-of-Nowhere (or in this case, Hawthorne, NV).

 

There, I said it.

 

 

   

 

 

Shhhh. Am I hearing black stealth helicopters hovering over my house with Seal Team 6 at the ready to repel into my man-cave, blog-central world headquarters???

 

Whew, no; apparently it was only a little gas from the taco truck lunch I just had.

 

Nevertheless, here are some interesting facts about this not-so-secret, desert military base of undersea navel operations; and by “facts” I mean I found them on an internet website that I am sure is not totally by or for paranoid conspiracy theorists.

“There are stories that California and Nevada sit on a shelf underneath which lies an eastern portion of the Pacific Ocean. Maybe the Pacific Ocean extends under that shelf to Hawthorne Nevada (and even further?). From sources I consider reliable submarines can travel under the U.S. as far as St. Louis. Maybe farther east. Maybe all the way to the Atlantic.”

“There are stories that Navy submarines can travel from Puget Sound direct to the Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho.”

“Maybe there is some kind of access from the surface of the desert within the area occupied by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Hawthorne. And maybe if you go deep enough there is a huge part of the Pacific Ocean in which the Navy conducts Undersea Warfare training.”

“A high ranking Naval officer on a top- secret nuclear submarine that has been (and is) exploring and mapping these enormous caverns and passage-ways underneath the West for over 10 years now.”

“A well-known U.S. nuclear submarine lost its way in these passages and disappeared forever.”

 

If you want to go beyond these few quotes and really delve into the “facts” presented at this website, things get even more interesting with information like this,

“What is being passed off as the ‘San Andreas Fault’ are large, unsupported chambers that are in the process of collapsing.  When the BIG ONE finally hits, many scientists in the know believe that most of California will break off like a cold Hershey bar and slide into the ocean!”

 

Huh, what does sugary sweet treats loaded with the dreaded high fructose corn syrup have to do with submarine passageways under the desert?

 

And, certainly you should not be dissuaded with the veracity of these “facts” when you read tidbits like,

“…a Russian submarine spotted near there that day…”

“…a statement which was made by a prominent Bigfoot investigator…”

“…the area is full of strange people wandering around in black suits…”

“…claims relative to the area have stated that alien life forms are being released there…”

 

So, tell me, what’s there not to believe?

 

Well, back to packing for my dive trip to Fiji.

 

Won’t they be surprised when I pop up to the surface in a Los Angeles-class nuclear powered submarine……

                                               ……clutching a cold Hershey bar?!

 

 

      

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Some tales of the Nevada desert just must start way out at sea.

This is Part One in my latest episode of a continuing saga on our recent trip driving across millions of miles of the Nevada desert—or maybe it just seemed that far.

 

City folks might think that there is little out there other than sand and sagebrush, but the truth is you never know what you might find.

 

 

Take for instance the strange phenomena of the sailing stones in the middle of Death Valley,

“ Where rocks move in long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.

Various and sometimes idiosyncratic possible explanations have been put forward over the years that have ranged from the supernatural to the very complex.”

 

And, it has been my personal experience that the desert is just a good place to get away from normal.

 

Maybe that is why so many abnormal exceptional people—like me—so love to spend time in the desert.

 

It is also a great place to drink “a little too much” without worrying about running into anything taller than your ankles.

 

While we have been to the lowest spot in North America, which is known for an expansive area of salt flats, on this trip I expected the only salt I would encounter would be on the rim of my Margarita glass.

 

But, before I amaze you with my astounding recent desert discoveries, let’s talk ocean.

 

When I am not clutching a “handle” (meaning the convenient half gallon-sized jug) of my beloved “blue bottle” (meaning Bombay Sapphire gin), while sprawled out on my camp chair under a tarp tied to the pick-up truck out in the middle of a parched desert, you might find me somewhere at some far-off locale, swimming with the fishies under the sea.

 

As I prepare to transition from the former to the latter, I have been following a number of interesting—if not bizarre—recent news stories.

 

As “1.5 million tons of debris is heading toward North America from Japan’s tsunami a year ago,” a large ghost ship is nearing the eastern Pacific after an almost 5,000 mile crew-less journey.   

 

 

   

 

Now, as an ocean sailor and open water scuba diver, a huge fishing boat with no running lights could ruin an otherwise perfectly good day. The owner of the ship knows where it is…he just doesn’t want it back.

 

Wouldn’t that be like if my truck lost its brakes and was rolling into your bedroom and I just walked away, saying,

“Well, it’s your problem now?”

 

In the meantime, keep watching the ocean currents because the scientists are saying the path of tons of floating garbage, including large ships, has shifted and may “double-back” towards Hawaii, and eventually join forces with the “mother of all debris fields,” the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or Gyre) which extends over 270,000 square miles of the North Pacific.

 

In other news, there are a couple of really, really, really rich guys getting their pleasure out in the deep blue sea.

 

You probably heard that the Avatar and Titanic movie guy, James Cameron, just made a solo decent in a shiny, bright green—kind of coffin-shaped—tube to almost 37,000 feet under water. That is nearly seven miles down.

 

 

   

 

Does Cameron understand that you only get one take on this movie making operation?

 

In the meantime, internet gazillionaire Jeff Bezos  (ever hear of some business called “Amazon?”) is mounting his form of wet pleasure with an adventure down to “only” 14,000 feet under water, to attempt a recovery of the Apollo 11 rocket boosters. These Saturn V engines were part of the famed moon mission by Neil Armstrong and company.

 

They have been down there since I graduated high school (yes, flying machines HAD been invented that long ago) so there is no telling what sea creatures have since moved in.

 

Maybe Bezos can talk Cameron into just grabbing the rocket engines on his way back to the surface.

 

After all that, to quote Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant,

“…but that’s not what I came to tell you about.”

 

I came to talk about how I found the ocean way out in the middle of the Nevada desert.

 

In Part Two.

 

         

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Breaking News from NPR: I need a lot more body fat for safer scuba diving. Now there’s news I can use.

And I thought my pre-dive trip fitness program was following a diligent direction of adequate aerobic activity, weekly weight workouts, sensibly stretching, and conscientious cuisine choices.

 

The dedicated dive trips I have been taking every year to the far corners of the planet don’t come cheap and I always want to Be All I Can Be and be Seal Team Strong (yes, just like the Army and Navy recruitment posters advertise).

 

My goal is to keep up with the serious scubanauts of our trips, who often dive as many as five dives per day, day-after-day.

 

I even somewhat maintain the training regime once I get to the places of paradise where we dive, as I continue to consume cautiously, and drink discerningly.

 

But, thanks to a Breaking News story on NPR, I now learn what I should have been doing was to crash out on the couch and energetically eat as much fatty and high calorie food as Takeru Kobayashily possible.

 

You see, apparently, these fishy experts have learned that there is something special about dolphins that makes them virtually immune to shark attacks.

“It turns out dolphins have a remarkable ability to heal quickly—and seemingly painlessly—from severe shark bites.”

“The dolphin wouldn’t hemorrhage…or have any infection, which is miraculous. And despite having sustained massive tissue injury, within about month the animal will restore its normal body contour.”

 

This is a nice to know shark statistic since on my last few dives to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Cozumel, I have—as Tony Soprano might say—been swimming with the sharks.

 

Many of them. Many bigger than me. Many within inches of me.

 

Actual photos taken by M. Johnson on our dive trip to the Philippines. (Yes, that’s me…on the right.)

 

So, what is the big biological, physiological, oceanographical secret?

 

Well, simply put, the dolphins are fat.

“Dolphin blubber makes compounds like organohalogens that act as natural antibiotics and keep the tissue from getting infected.”

“When the animal restores its wound, it regenerates the complex structure of blubber. It doesn’t create a scar; it produces a sort of patch that ultimately is woven back into the surrounding tissue.”

 

So, the real question that comes next is, exactly how many organohalogens are there in greasy hamburgers, gooey donuts, and 48 oz. fountain drinks?

 

But, wait, you ask.

 

How was this earth-shattering, vacation planning, pre-trip preparation information determined?

“To do this research, [the scientist] reviewed the "clinical histories" of dolphins who succumbed to shark bites.”

 

Wait one. Doesn’t “succumbed to shark bites” mean that they died?

 

And, wasn’t the whole scientific finding that dolphins did not “succumb” to shark bites?

 

O.K. Now I get it.

 

These must be the same scientists who claim that my ice cream is low fat, yet the more I eat the fatter I get.

I really thought that half a gallon a night would make a visible difference. (Oh, it did. It did.)

 

Hey, I guess it’s getting me that real blubber body I strive for that will protect me from shark attacks.

 

Or not.

 

        

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It’s time to cast away from a great week of diving in Mexico. I even made a new, close friend.

As the sun sets on the Caribbean, we contemplate our many hours immersed—literally—in an amazing undersea world that, regrettably, most people will never experience.

All that is left to do is to pack piles of damp neoprene and hope to hell we can stay under the airline’s maximum luggage weight allowance, or expect to pay the steep penalty.

 

There have been some interesting times had by all.

 

The wife-person opted for her own peace and quiet (as in no snoring), so she stayed home.

Given the recent success that politicians have had by reaching out to meet new people (read, young women with certain assets) I thought I would see exactly how that works.

Hell, I do Twitter and I have a camera and the bathroom has a mirror…what else do I need.

 

So, here is the pose I thought best exemplifies my rugged persona and incredible physique (it is amazing how long I can suck in my gut while taking a self-portrait).

 

       

 

So far, the only response I have received was from the company whose fine wetsuit I was wearing.

 

They said I am giving their brand a bad image and to cease and desist from ever wearing their product again.

 

You will recall that I had a visceral bout of déjà vu when I surfaced from a recent dive to find myself floating alone in the vast ocean, and without my visual signaling device; the bright orange, inflatable diver’s safety sausage.

 

As I mentioned, luckily my dive guide found it on the bottom and returned it to me (which I repaid by buying him a beer tonight at Margaritaville, here in Cozumel).

 

Wouldn’t you know it? Today, again, I surfaced to find my dive boat some distance away. But, this time I had my good friend, the slender,athletic(?) safety sausage, who has kept me company when no one else was around.

(Although, I must admit, she really does not say much.)

 

She and I have really bonded on this trip, and I promised her I would never let us drift apart on the open ocean again.

 

                       

 

CAUTION: This is what happens when you attempt a blog post after too many days in the Caribbean sun; too much swallowed seawater; and maybe a little bit of nitrogen narcosis.

 

       

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Stuck at sea without my sausage. This time it took four boats to find me, but thankfully, not one search and rescue plane.

Anyone who knows me understands that taking a vacation with me is sometimes a crapshoot.

 

Occasionally, what starts out as a mild adventure, transmogrifies into a potentially life threatening situation, where something goes awry—which is most often my fault—and adds to the consternation of my family and friends.

 

But according to the world’s leading travel adventure writers, they say this is often what makes for the most entertaining of travel stories.  That’s the good news.

 

The bad news, as a wannabe global adventure humor writer, I should be writing about these personal calamities…not being the subject of them.

 

Years ago, I got a story published about windsurfing in the Sea of Cortez, along the central Baja coast. The CliffsNotes version is that I was on a short board, sailing in high winds and huge seas.

 

Did I mention that the winds were blowing directly offshore (as in, the hell away from land)?

 

About eight hours, and seven+ miles out to sea later, with the sun setting over the rocky spine of Baja, I got picked up by a boat, but only after it took a search plane three trips to find me, and ultimately direct the boat to my location.

 

         

 

A pre-blogsite PDF version of that story can be found here.

 

This leads to something similar that happened yesterday on our second dive, which was off the southwest shore of Cozumel. What we lacked in high winds and huge seas, we made up with a gale-strength current going along the shoreline, seemingly headed at flank speed for Panama and points south.

 

For the sake of someone on—or, in this case, under—the ocean, the equation for great fodder for someone else’s travel story is:

An offshore wind = strong current…good bye, nice knowing you.

 

One personal trait that divers don’t like to ask other divers (at least in public) is, “How do you suck?”

 

Of course, what I am referring to, is how fast do you breath in—or suck—a tank full of air. Divers take pride in being relaxed and having a calm and controlled breathing pace. This is (or at least should be) considered The Zen of Diving.

 

I, on the other hand, am a heavy breather.  Maybe it relates to the comments some of my “friends” have made over the years that some people—meaning me—seem to be closer related than others—meaning them—to our relatives who still live in the jungle. Think long arms and lots of hair.

 

In any regard, the result of this anomaly of my alveoli, is that I go through air faster than Lindsay Lohan goes through court dates.

 

Our “bottom time” (no, it’s not what you think it is, you perverts) varies greatly.

 

Our time underwater typically lasts anywhere from 30 minutes—for a diver who is called (or at least should be) A Big Hoover, after the vacuum cleaner, not the dam, to well over an hour—for a person who is called (or at least should be) Wow, Those Are Some “Big Lungs.”

 

Anyone who is underwater for over two hours should be (and is) called “dead.”

 

So, albeit a little late down this road, the CliffsNotes version of yesterday is that I came up from the dive before the others and while the current was substantial down amidst the reef, once you got into clear water, the current picked up so fast I thought it might have given me a case of whiplash.

 

As I broke the surface, once again, I found myself floating in solitude. I saw some boats in the distance, but not the one I rode in on. Following the Navy Seals Manual about what to do at sea, after screaming like a girl and flailing my arms around in mad desperation, I reached down to inflate what is known as a safety sausage.

 

This is a six or eight foot inflatable tube, about four inches in diameter, in bright colors. Kind of like if a beach ball was rolled out into the shape of a Cuban cigar (which, yes, I know of what I speak.) The idea is that you fill it up to semi-rigid and hold it up in the air until—you hope—someone on the boat spots you.

 

I keep this device hooked onto my diving equipment, but when I reached down to deploy it, it was as gone as Donald Trump from politics.

 

Luckily, one boat eventually happened to motor bye and I yelled up, “Dive Cat; they’re on [marine radio] channel 10,” to which he nodded, smiled…and then motored away.

 

This actually happened at least a couple more times; each time with boats coming by, and the skipper waving and smiling, and motoring off. WTF?

 

I’ll take friendly, but right then and there, I would have preferred to take an actual ride.

 

Eventually, my boat did come back for me. As it came out, my dive guide had found my sausage and brought it back up from Davy Jones’ locker for me.

 

Later, the trip guide suggested that I keep my sausage behind a zipper rather than just dangling from my dive vest.

 

Sound advice in any setting.

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