skoobing

monday was scuba diving day!  i like to call it skoobing.  this was an all-day event.  being miss patty punctual, i had us in front of our hotel at 8:05 a.m. to await our scubavan (supposed to arrive at 8:15).

.....

at 8:50 a.m. the instructor rolled up to our hotel.  it's ok, i think he was late because he got held up at a russell brand lookalike contest.  he obviously won.  so we hopped in the van with mr. bedhead and he started driving us over to the local military base where we would get our first instructions on how to skoob safely.  the military base here in honolulu is just like the one in huntsville - super secure and you must have your ID to enter.  guess who didn't have his ID.  nope, not logan.  the instructor!  the guy was the biggest stoner.  so we get to the base, and a hop, skip, and a hide-a-guy-in-the-backseat-under-some-towels later, we were in the pool with our equipment learning to not hold our breath.

has anyone been skoobing before?  ok it's kinda intense because the instructor is like holdthisbreatheheredontholdyourbreathoryoulldieblowoutyourearsokgo.  um.  what.  can you repeat that?  how about 9 more times?  why is this tank so heavy?  is everything supposed to hurt?  ok good, just checking.

i was having a ton of trouble with "equalizing" which is where you hold your nose and gently blow out in order to "pop" your ears.  our instructor, no surprise here, said "well let's just get to the ocean, i'm sure you'll figure it out there."  his reassurance skills are lacking.  not great for a skoob teacher, but at least he's not a surgeon.

so we make our way over to another part of the island where we hop on a boat and head out on the radiant teal water!

we suited up and dove right in!  there was a guide rope that descended from the surface down about 40 feet to the ocean floor.  logan was a natural, of course, and i took my time.  my ears did fine!  the sea life down there was just marvelous.  we saw some giant turtles - one of them was almost as big as me!  it's incredible how graceful they are for being so large with a heavy shell.  we saw tons of colorful fish and they would swim up all around us.  it was kinda exactly like a scene from the little mermaid.  we also saw some eel (eels?) but they ran away from me :(  yes, ran.

we did two different dives and each one lasted about 45 minutes.  this experience was well worth the money (thanks, NASA!) for all the skoob time we got.  our instructor, whose name is "geo," took us back to the hotel and we showered and fancied up for dinner.  we made our way over to duke's because we've been hearing about this excellent waikiki-front restaurant all week.  once again, we dined by torchlight mere feet from the sand and surf.  my sweet husband didn't even complain when i asked him to stop talking about weird/gross stuff like cannibalism since we were in such a romantic place.  dinner ended up being rather quiet, though...  then it was early to bed so we could get up at 4 a.m. to embark on our thuper thecret hawaii adventure!