Just Like The Alamo, If All Of The Mexicans Were Homos Who Were Trying to Get Married

While most of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates are a sorry lot, if I had to pick the most pathetic of the bunch, it would have to be former Senator Rick Santorum.  Like a Ming loyalist general fighting on decades after the Manchus conquered China, he continues on with his quixotic campaign to keep gays from getting married or serving in the military.

In an interview with a Shane Vander Hart of Caffeinated Thoughts, Santorum was asked by Vander Hart what some of the hills are that he would die on.

"The battle we're engaged in right now is same sex marriage, ultimately that is the very foundation of our country, the family, what the family structure is going to look like," Santorum explained. "I'll die on that hill." (Underlined for emphasis)

While one could argue that Santorum's use of such dramatic language was due to the way Vander Hart framed the discussion, Santorum has a history of being a drama queen when it comes to the issue of gay marriage.  This post was inspired by a letter I received in the mail a couple of years ago from the National Organization for Marriage, either written by or for Santorum and signed by him.

Santorum also seems overly concerned with people who like to have sex, and (shudders!) use contraception so that the act does not result in pregnancy!

"One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It's not OK because it's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

Santorum continued: "They're supposed to be within marriage. They are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal but also procreative, and that's the perfect way a sexual union should happen. When we take any part of that out, we diminish the act. If we take one part out, it's not for the purposes of procreation, it's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women. So, why can't you take other parts of that out? And then all of the sudden it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure, and that's certainly a part of it, and it's an important part, don't get me wrong. But there is a lot of things we do for pleasure and this is special and it needs to be seen as special."

Oh?  And how are things "supposed to be" Ricky boy?  Is he seriously saying that my wife and I, who have two children and do not intend to have anymore (I'm 42 and she's 48), should never have sex again for the rest of our lives?   For us, sex is simply all about pleasure, and why should it be about anything else?  And that is what makes it "special" for us.

Ricky, to borrow a line from the Robin Williams movie 'Good Morning Vietnam', "you're in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history."

h/t: Crooks and Liars.

A Quiet Voice on the Margins

In today's edition of The New York Times, there is an op-ed by two evangelical Christians, Karl W. Giberson, a former professor of physics, and Randall J. Stephens, an associate professor of history, titled "The Evangelical Rejection of Reason."

Giberson and Stephens rebuke the bulk of the crop of the Republican presidential candidates for being "a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism."

They make an important point that "evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced."

The two professors also rightly add that "Scholars like Collins and Noll… recognize that the Bible does not condemn evolution and says next to nothing about gay marriage. They understand that Christian theology can incorporate Darwin’s insights and flourish in a pluralistic society."

Theirs are voices that definitely need to be heard more by fellow evangelicals.  But alas, Giberson and Stephens can't resist taking a backhanded swipe at atheists by declaring that "even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins."

I wish Christians would make up their minds about us.  We're either a tiny, insignificant minority to be ignored, or we are a threat to the American way of life.  Of course, the truth is, we're neither.  We should not be ignored, nor are we trying to destroy the United States.   We are for the most part patriotic Americans who simply believe that belief should not be elevated over nonbelief in public life. 

The End of the World Is Near

We atheist bloggers had a lot of fun last spring with the publicity surrounding Harold Camping's prediction that May 21, 2011 would be Judgment Day.  As I wrote in several posts on my blog, I personally witnessed a number of people in New York City handing out pamphlets or holding up signs proclaiming the imminent doom of those of us who refused to repent.

Of course, Camping's dire prognostications did not come true that day.  Mostly forgotten is that Camping also warned us that the actual end of the world would not occur until October 21, 2011, which is this Friday.  The God of the Bible, cruel bastard that he is, couldn't hold out until Monday the 24th so that we could all have one last weekend of fun and decadence.  I still have the pamphlet I found many months ago, which confidently declares that:

"On October 21, 2011, God will completely destroy this creation and all of the people who never experienced the salvation of Jesus Christ along with it.  The awful payment for their sinful rebellion against God will be completed by the loss of everlasting life.  On October 21, 2011, all of these poor people will cease to exist from that point forward."

Tellingly, I don't see any of the street corner doomsters in New York City warning us about the approaching end of the world.  I wonder how many of them still hold out hope that the world will indeed end this Friday, even if they dare not express it because they have retained a small sliver of awareness that tells them "I don't want to look like a fool in public."

As for Camping's Family Radio website, all references to Judgment Day and the End of the World appear to have been scrubbed.  On this page, there's even mention of a Special Promotion from October 17 through October 24. 

That being said, Camping himself is apparently still sticking to his guns.  According to this article,
"Camping recently said in a statement, 'We can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011.'"

Yeah, whatever.  See you all on the 22nd.

Two Decades of Atheism

A lot of atheists who were formerly religious can probably recall the moment when they came to that inescapable conclusion that "I guess I am an atheist."  Likewise, it also holds true for many people who embrace a particular religious faith that they remember when they made the decision to give their hearst and souls to their beliefs.

Perhaps I am atypical in that I really don't remember the day I realized that I no longer believed in any divine being that watched over us and took a personal notice or interest in our lives.  I don't know if it was due to a book or something else I may have read, or that I had been through a life changing experience.  Whatever it was is lost in the mists of time.  All I remember was that it was the final step in a journey that had seen me abandon Catholicism while still retaining belief in a personal god that I could communicate with, until I realized that there was nobody there and my religious beliefs had all along been just a way to provide myself with a sense of purpose and importance.

What I do remember is that I had become an atheist sometime in the year 1991.  That means I have been an atheist for approximately 20 years, or nearly half of my 42 years spent thus far on this Earth, and almost my entire adult life.  It has been long enough that I can look back on the past two decades with a long term perspective.

Intellectually, becoming an atheist was a very liberating experience for me.  I was no longer under the rule of a watchful deity that expected me to go to church once a week, refrain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent or cared if I masturbated once in a while.  I was no longer a slave to an overseer who existed only in my imagination, and I was overjoyed at the realization that I was in charge of my life.  I did not have a crisis of morals either.  Rejecting Christianity or my own personal religious beliefs that had succeeded it did not make me want to lie, cheat, steal or engage in other terrible things.  Instead, giving up religion was like taking the training wheels off of a bicycle. 

I would be mistaken though if I were to say that my life was all peaches and cream once I became an atheist.  The early 90's were pretty good to me, but during the mid-90's I went through a rough period in my life.  For a while, it seemed hard to believe that I would ever get out of the emotional ditch I had landed in.  But throughout it all, I never quite lost a dogged optimism that I had the power to make my life better.

By the late 90's, my life improved markedly.  I met and married the love of my life, I made a career move that would see me making a good salary, my wife and I purchased a house, and we had two beautiful, healthy children together.  I achieved things that only a few years early seemed unattainable. 

I did have a serious personal crisis for a few months about six years ago where I feared I would lose everything I cherished.  Some people in my place, in a time of extreme personal distress, might have returned to the refuge of religion, and when the crisis inevitably passed, would have seen it as proof that it was all due to them crawling back on their hands and knees to God and seeking divine aid.  I, on the other hand, did none of that.  From the moment I became an atheist, never at any time where I felt any personal despair did I consider turning to religion for aid and solace.  I realized that the only thing I had any control over was how I behaved and things would turn out either well or badly regardless of whether I prayed to a god or not.  I passed through my great crisis, never wavering in my atheism, and I emerged wiser and stronger than before.

Looking at my life now, I have to say that I think I have it pretty good and consider myself to be rather fortunate.  Of course, my life isn't perfect, and there are some things that I wish could be different or that there are some personal changes I could make.  Then again, don't most people feel that way about themselves?   Besides, while I may be 42, I still have many years left to look forward to and experiences to have.  In the last few years, I have taken up scuba diving and have taken part in a shark feeding dive, and even crazier still, I did a tandem sky dive.

I'm sure there are some theists, Christians in particular, who would say to me "Tommy, sure you may think you have a good life now, but you are missing out on so much by not seeking a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and you are turning your back on the chance for eternal life."

But when you live the life of a satisfied atheist, that's the only thing left up their sleeve, isn't it?  "You better believe or before you know it you'll be dead and then it will be too late!"

One of my favorite atheist bloggers, The Jolly Nihilist, in his most recent post, wrote:

"Even a staunch atheist such as me—one who, as an evidentialist, has tried to look at the evidence objectively and, in so doing, has had his non-belief repeatedly reaffirmed—is not immune to occasional frightful thoughts of being consigned to an eternity of agonizing punishment in hellfire."

Maybe it is because I have been an atheist for twice as long as Jolly, I never even consider the possibility that I will suffer for an eternity in the afterlife if I die without believing that the creator of a universe filled with billions of galaxies impregnated a virgin teenage girl in the Galilee a couple of thousand years ago.  To be honest, I don't know if everything contained in this universe is the product of some divine intelligence.  But if it is, then I have the feeling such a being won't be disappointed or upset that I did not believe in its existence or cringe in fear of it.  Any being powerful and intelligent to create so much is surely secure enough with itself that it won't be troubled by such trivial things.

God's Got a Lot of Buffers

Fans of the movie The Godfather Part II will no doubt recall the scene that inspired the title above.

One of the things about really devout Catholics is that they don't just pray to God.  They are constantly calling on the Virgin Mary (also frequently referred to as Our Lady), or Saint This, That or The Other One to intercede with God on their behalf.  There are a lot of saints in Catholicism.  Heck, there's even a Patron Saint of Artillery.

One of my wife's cousins, who can hardly seem to write about anything on Facebook except religious nonsense (and who I suspect is not exactly playing with a full deck), is really into Padre Pio and promoted Pio as someone to whom directing intercessory prayers could really get some results.

So how does this intercessory prayer thing work?  According to the New Advent web site, "The Catholic doctrine of intercession and invocation is set forth by the Council of Trent."

Here is what the Council had to say about intercessory prayer:

"the saints who reign together with Christ offer up their own prayers to God for men. It is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, aid, and help for obtaining benefits from God, through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Who alone is our Redeemer and Saviour.

Prayer is offered to a person in two ways: one as though to be granted by himself, another as to be obtained through him. In the first way we pray to God alone, because all our prayers ought to be directed to obtaining grace and glory which God alone gives, according to those words of the Psalm (lxxxiii, 12): 'The Lord will give grace and glory.' But in the second way we pray to the holy angels and to men not that God may learn our petition through them, but that by their prayers and merits our prayers may be efficacious."

So, God is more likely to answer the prayers of Timmy's family to cure his cancer if the family pleads to scores of saints, who in turn will give the almighty their hearty recommendation?  That sounds exactly like some autocratic monarch who only answers the appeals of his subjects if some influential minister at court has the monarch's ear.

I also came across a lot of this intercessory prayer stuff while reading the Spiritual Diaries of Ignatius of Loyola, or Iggy for short. Take this entry from February 15, 1544:

"Next on preparing  to leave for mass, as I began to pray, I could feel, and was shown, our Lady, also how great had been my fault the previous day: I felt moved within and wept, for I seemed to be putting Our Lady to shame in having her intercede for me so often, because of my many failing.  So much so that Our Lady hid from me and I found no devotion in her or higher than her.  A little later, when I sought to go higher, as I could not find Our Lady (maybe she was hiding out in the Lady's Room?) a mighty impulse to weep and sob gripped me (Oh fuck!  There he goes again with the weeping!) and I seemed to see or feel that the Heavenly Father showed Himself propitious and kind - to the point of making clear to me that he would be pleased if Our Lady, whom I could not see, would intercede."

On February 18, it got even more convoluted:

"A little later I wondered where I should begin and it occurred to me that it might be with all the Saints, putting my cause in their hands, so that they might pray to Our Lady and Her Son to be intercessors on my half before the Blessed Trinity."

In other words, Iggy wanted the saints to convince the Virgin Mary and Jesus to plead his cause to the Trinity.  Talk about sending it up the chain of command.  But the part that gets me is that Jesus is supposed to be one third of the Trinity, so isn't that like asking Jesus to plead to himself?  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.  I can see why some people would find Protestantism more appealing, because it cut out the middleman, in this case, the Catholic Church and its legions of saints hanging around that Versailles in the sky.

Way back when I was a believing Catholic more than two decades ago, I don't recall ever praying to saints or even the Virgin Mary. Though I knew about some of the different saints, I never really gave it much consideration. When I prayed, which was often, I prayed to God only.  Maybe that's why my prayers were never answered!

The Repeal of DADT

On September 20, 2011, the United States military officially ended its policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell, aka DADT.  Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta hailed the change, declaring "Thanks to this change, we move closer to achieving the goal that is at the foundation of American values -- equality and dignity for all.”

Needless to say, not everyone in the United States shared Pannetta's positive viewpoint.

The "Family" Research Council  (yes, the quotes are deliberate on my part) decried the policy change, concluding that President Obama "is more interested in appeasing sexual revolutionaries than in fighting America's enemies." Yes, the same President Obama who ordered the raid on the compound in Pakistan that ended the life of Osama bin Laden and who has overseen a policy of increased drone strikes in the mountains of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that has killed so many Taliban is really not interested in fighting America's enemies.  Right.

Hopeless Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in a recent Republican candidates debate that saw several audience members boo a gay soldier serving in Iraq, stated in response to the soldier's question that he would reinstate DADT if elected.  Santorum affirmed his belief that "Any type of sexual activity has no place in the military."

I wonder if Ricky boy ever read Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, which is about the raid carried out in Mogadishu, Somalia that saw two Black Hawk helicopters shot down and the US Army Rangers and members of Delta Force who found themselves surrounded and under fire for the better part of a day.  Bowden describes what life was like for the servicemen stationed in Somalia prior to the raid. 

"The worst thing about hangar life, of course, was the lack of women...There was plenty of porn around, of course, and many of the Rangers were humorously casual about masturbation.  Most were discreet about it, but some had adopted a sort of crude defiance, standing up next to their cot to announce 'I'm going to the port-o-pot to fuckin' jack off!'  Specialist John Collett, a SAW gunner with absolutely no shame about such matters...claimed to have gotten a 'harness jack,' that is, to have masturbated hanging from a parachute harness."

Given the Catholic Church's position on masturbation, and Ricky being a good Catholic boy and all, I'm sure he would be mortified to know that some of our elite soldiers engaged in a form of sexual activity in a combat area.  Maybe the mission in Somalia went awry because God was punishing our soldiers for jacking off.

My favorite over-the-top wailing about the repeal of DADT comes from Washington state's resident Christian wingnut Ron Boehme, who I've mentioned before in this blog here and here.

Boehme rants:

"December 18, 2010 was a sad day for the cause of liberty. The United States Senate voted 65-31 to rescind the seventeen-year "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy in the American forces. On the heels of a 250-175 vote in the House of Representatives, largely along party lines, homosexuality is now "free" to openly flourish in the barracks or foxhole.

By this infamous vote, The United States government now openly condones and encourages homosexual behavior among our fighting men and women. The last bastion of discipline and moral order in the United States has been breached, not by an invading army, but by a destructive Lame Duck Congress."

He adds, with typical hyperbole, "This is a sad day for real liberty--which is freedom from sin." (Italics in the original).

The reason why I used the picture of Corporal Klinger from M*A*S*H at the top of this post is because when it comes to gays serving in the military, I think that is exactly what the homophobe opponents of DADT repeal picture when they claim that homosexuality will "flourish in the barracks."  It seems beyond their realm of comprehension that a gay man can serve in the military without walking around with a boner and grabbing the asses of the manly heterosexual and devout Christian men in his barracks. 

Boehme, Santorum and their ilk are full of shit because it was not what gay soldiers were doing in the barracks or in combat or other service that caused them to be discharged from the military but because of what they did or were thought to do in their private life.

And it is disingenous of Boehme to invoke "freedom from sin" in opposing the repeal of DADT, because the last time I checked, one of the tenets of Christianity is that everyone is a sinner.  That includes every heterosexual man or woman serving in the military.  Yes, for some reason, sexual orientation, not behavior, mind you, but orientation, is the one sin that should disqualify a person from serving in the United States armed forces, regardless of that person's talents or abilities.

While the supposedly Gawd fearin' people like Santorum and Boehme are all hot and bothered about the sin of gayness being inserted into the military, there is some actual sinning going on being perpetrated by heterosexuals in the military.

While searching the Department of Defense web site for the press release I linked to above about the repeal of DADT, I came across this interesting press release about addressing domestic violence in the military. 

The restricted reporting option has been in place since 2006, and is intended to offer domestic violence victims a chance to seek help despite fears they might feel based on their situation, Robertson said.

“A lot of times, victims don’t want to come forward -- they’re afraid to come forward,” she added.

Often in such cases, Robertson said, abuse has escalated over time, and victims –- especially military spouses -- may fear loss of finances, housing and family security. Restricted reporting offers them a safe avenue to help, she added.

This article from the July/August 2005 issue of Mother Jones shines a spotlight on the military's domestic violence problem up to that time.

The article begins with the story of John Corcoran, who "arrived at his wife’s house and went after 30-year-old Michele with a gun, firing at her as she fled to a neighbor’s. (She was wounded but survived.) He shot and wounded another Fort Bragg soldier who was in the house and then shot and killed himself—all while his seven-month-old daughter lay in another room."

"He joins a band of brothers. Corcoran’s is the 10th fatality in a slew of domestic violence homicides involving Fort Bragg soldiers since 2002; in one six-week spree four Army wives were murdered by their husbands or ex-husbands. Including nonfatal incidents, there were 832 victims of domestic violence between 2002 and 2004 at Fort Bragg alone, according to Army figures."

Maybe Boehme doesn't consider domestic violence to be a sin, because the wife is supposed to submit to the husband, right?  How does he feel about sexual assault then?  From the CBS article in the foregoing link:

"Wendy’s experience is not unusual. Since 2002, the Miles Foundation, a private non-profit that tracks sexual assault within the armed forces, has received nearly 1,200 confidential reports of sexual assaults in the Central Command Area of Responsibility, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan. Those reports have increased as much as 30 percent a year.

Part of the problem for the increase, critics say, is the quality of today's recruit.

The military is increasingly issuing something called "moral waivers," so they can enlist military personnel with felony convictions for crimes like rape and sexual assault.

“We don’t enlist convicted rapists in the armed forces of the United States,” said Michael Dominguez, the principal under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. “If there’s a consensus 'that kid needs a second chance, I think he’s got it in him to be a solider,’ then they’ll let him into the armed forces.”

In fact, CBS News has learned that both the Army and Marine Corps did issue a number of "moral waivers" to enlistees with felony convictions for rape and sexual assault - something not acknowledged in a follow-up letter from Dominguez."

The Religious Right likes to bellow about the immorality of allowing gays to serve in the military, while being eerily quiet about the problems of domestic violence, sexual harrassment of female service members and the issuing of "moral waivers" to enlistees and recruits.  It seems plainly apparent that for these Christian culture warriors, some sins are more equal than others.

Ignatius the Weeper

For about six months now I have been reading many written works from the 16th century, including Praise of Folly by Erasmus, Utopia by Thomas More, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, and The Discourses by Machiavelli. 

I have also made it a point to read explicitly religious works written during the period and at present I am reading the Penguin Classics edition of the Personal Writings of Ignatius of Loyola.  Ignatius founded The Society of Jesus, better known to us today as The Jesuits.  The Jesuits played an important role in the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century.

But back to Ignatius himself.  At present, I have only read about 84 pages in a book that is some 360 pages.  Even so, from what I have read so far, Ignatius cried a lot.  He cried more than Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner.  He may have cried more than any other person in history.  The tears of Ignatius could have filled buckets.

To get an idea of the frequency of Ignatius' weeping, one need only read his Spiritual Diary.  To provide some context, the Spiritual Diary was written during a period when Ignatius was agonizing over whether or not The Society of Jesus should have a fixed income for its churches.  The issue must have caused him a tremendous amount of grief and turmoil, because his eyes became a veritable Niagara Falls of tears.  Let the crying begin:

February 5, 1544: "Great devotion before, during and after mass, with tears so abundant that my eyes ached."

Febrary 6: "Devotion, not without tears, before and during mass, and more inclined toward complete poverty."

February 7: "Very great devotion and tears before mass."

February 8: "After experiencing remarkable devotion and tears while I prayed, from preparing for mass and during mass very great devotion, also tears; only at times could I retain the power of speech."

February 10: "On reconsidering the choices, and on making the offering of complete poverty, I felt great devotion, not without tears."  Apparently Ignatius didn't cry on February 9, because he makes no mention of it in his entry for that day.  Or maybe he had just exhausted his supply of tears.

February 11: Lots of crying on this day, of which I quote only a portion: "Then receiving greater devotion and losing all desire to consider the question any longer, with tears and sobs I made, on my knees, the offering of complete poverty to the Father; and so many were the tears running down my face, and such the sobs that I could hardly get up, so great was the devotion and grace that I was receiving.  Finally I did rise though even then the devotion and the sobs continued."

February 13: "Then I experienced very great devotion, and many most intense tears, not only during prayer but while I vested; I sobbed and as I could feel the Mother and Son to be interceding for me, I felt a complete security that the Eternal Father would restore me to my former state.  Later, before, during and after mass, greatly increased devotion and a great abundance of tears."

February 14: "When I prepared to leave the room, not without tears and interior impulses.  Then before, during and after mass, very copious tears, devotion, great sobs - so great that I often could not keep the power of speech for long before losing it again."

And on it goes, day after day after day.  I can only imagine some of the people in the pews during his masses rolling their eyes and muttering "Oh for fuck's sake, there he goes again!"

There's a great line from the television series House, "Isn't it interesting that religious behavior is so close to being crazy we can't tell it apart?"  Outside of the context of intense religious devotion, profuse crying on an almost daily basis would be considered crazy or bizarre by most people.  So, why should intense religious devotion get a pass?

From the Reminisces, I offer this last excerpt:

"He used to have great devotion to the Most Holy Trinity, and so used to pray each day to the three persons separately.  And as he was also praying to the Most Holy Trinity as such, a thought used to occur to him: how was he making four prayers to the Trinity?  But this thought troubled him little or not at all, as something of little importance.  And, one day, while praying the office of Our Lady on the steps of the above-mentioned monastery, his understanding began to be raised up, in that he was seeing the Most Holy Trinity in the form of three keys on a keyboard, and this with so many tears and so many sobs that he could not control himself.  And on walking that morning in a procession which was leaving from there, at no point could he restrain his tears until the mealtime, nor after the meal could he stop talking, only about the Most Holty Trinity, and this with many comparisons, a great variety of them, as well as much relish and consolation, in such a way that the impression remained with him for the whole of his life, and he feels great devotion when praying to the Most Holy Trinity."

The Bahamas Trip - Day 4 - July 27, 2011 - An Atheist In Shark Infested Waters

Wednesday started off on a rather frustrating note.  We were diving at a site called Shroud Wall located off of Shroud Cay at the northern end of the Exumas Land and Sea Park.  As usual, I buddied up with Craig.

After making our entry, we proceeded along the port side of the Aqua Cat to make for the mooring line.  I was ahead of Craig, keeping a look out for the mooring line.  The visibility at this site was very poor, so I ascended close to the surface so that I would have a better chance of spotting the mooring line.  At one point, I looked behind me and saw Craig about 20 feet below and behind me.  Moments later I could see the mooring line and headed towards it to guide my way down to the mooring block.  When I reached the line, I looked behind and below me but did not see Craig, who was usually easy to spot with his yellow shirt.

As I began my descent, I looked down in the direction of where the mooring block was and in the cloudy water could make out several divers nearing the block, though I could not determine who they were.  I thought one of them might be Craig and figured he would wait for me.  But as I descended towards the block, there were no divers there. 

"No problem," I thought to myself.  "I'll just wait here for a couple of minutes and I'm sure he'll show up."  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited, wondering what I should do next.

Since the reef wall was just a few feet further away, I thought maybe Craig had gone ahead to the wall.  So I decided to make my way over to the reef wall and take a peek.  When I got there, I could make out a couple of divers headed away from me along the wall.  While I couldn't tell who they were, I knew Craig wouldn't have just gone off without me, so I decided to head back to the mooring block.  But when I got there, there was still no sign of him.  For a moment, I considered aborting the dive and surfacing to see if anything might have happened to him.  I decided against it and thought I would head back to the wall and do some sightseeing.

Because I was alone, I didn't venture far along the wall.  I tried to make a careful note of useful landmarks so that I could find my way back to the mooring block.  Before I got there, to my surprise and relief I encountered Craig, along with another diver, Tagi.  Tagi seemed to be making gestures towards me that I interpreted as "What the hell happened to you?"  I didn't reply, but if I could talk, I would have said "You know how long I waited at the mooring block by myself!"  I signalled to Craig and Tagi that I was returning to the boat.  I was still puzzled at that point what had happened to Craig, but was glad that at least he was not alone. 

They headed for the reef wall while I continued on to look for the mooring block.  Seconds turned into minutes, and to my growing concern, I could not find it, hampered as I was by the poor visibility.  Still, I took comfort in knowing that I could not be far away from it and decided to make a slow ascent to the surface.  If I couldn't find the line, I figured I would break the water not far from the Aqua Cat.  Then, to my relief, I saw the mooring line at about 30' and headed straight towards it.

After Craig came back on board, he explained to me that he must have missed both me and the mooring line and that he had ended up surfacing at one point before finally finding the line and meeting up with Tagi.  With the water as cloudy as it was, I could completely understand.

Rather than participating in the next dive, I decided to take my kids on a beach excursion.  We landed near a quiet lagoon and I decided that it was a perfect place for them to try out their snorkel gear.  The sand sloped gently into the water, enabling them to sit and put their gear on and then slowly ease into it by leaning forward and sticking their masked faces into the water.  Andrew had some trouble at first getting water into his mask and snorkel, but I helped him adjust and then the next thing I know, he was off swimming around on his own.  My daughter Kellyanne, on the other hand, was scared to go in and thought she saw urchins, so she stayed at the edge for the most part.  I told her not to worry and to take her time getting used to breathing with her snorkel in the water.  She started to gain some confidence and swam along the shallow edge when it was time to return to the Aqua Cat.

The next site, further south in the Exumas, was Amberjack Reef.  Andy, the dive master for this dive, told us that this was the site where they used to do their shark feeding dives.  And sure enough, as I was putting on my dive gear, I spotted a reef shark break the water alongside the boat.  I teamed up with Craig again and as before, the plan was to head for the mooring block and do some exploring.

When we began our ascent, I saw that there was plenty of life to observe right under the boat.  There were several reef sharks as well as a few Nassau Groupers lurking around.  The water, in contrast to the Shroud Wall, was very clear.

After Craig and I reached the mooring block, we started making our way through the grooves between the coral formations, heading generally away from the bow of the Aqua Cat.  As usual, I took point and would bang my tank or make hand gestures if I saw something that I thought Craig would want to take a picture of with his camera.  With each formation, I tried to make note of some landmark that would help distinguish it from the others.  For instance, the coral patch where the mooring block was had a barrel sponge on top of it.

In our previous dives, there would come a point where I felt Craig and I would go no further and I would gradually lead us back to our starting point.  After one dive, Craig proclaimed that I was "an awesome navigator!"  With this dive, after making a few twists and turns, crossing over an area of mostly sand and then hitting another coral formation, I got that feeling again that we should begin to head back to the mooring line.  I looked at my gauge, which read around 1700 psi.

Things seemed to be progressing rather smoothly.  We passed one formation that moments earlier I had dubbed "The Cactus" because it reminded me a little of a cactus.  Duh!  We crossed the sandy field again and started hitting the higher coral patches cut by grooves.  Then I saw a coral formation with a mooring line rising from it.  Then I saw Tagi, who was by himself avidly taking pictures with his camera.  What a relief, I thought. 

That feeling soon dissipated as I looked at the mooring line and saw that it came to an end about 15 or 20 feet above us.  Also, I did not see the barrel sponge on top of the coral formation that I had remembered earlier.  Something was wrong.  I gestured to Craig to indicate my confusion.  I remembered that Andy told us during his dive briefing that there was an old mooring block at the site.  I took my best guess as to which direction I thought the boat was and motioned for Craig to follow me.

I kept a nervous eye on my gauge, which was now nearing 1,000 psi.  We continued on for a few minutes and when the gauge was below 1,000 psi, I started to become very concerned.  I motioned to Craig that I was going to surface and take a look for the Aqua Cat.  When I surfaced, I saw it quite a distance away from us and wondered if my air supply would be sufficient to make it back.  I descended again and motioned to Craig the direction of the boat and then I started kicking my legs as hard as I could.  When my gauge got down to about 750 psi, I surfaced again.  While we were a bit closer to the Aqua Cat, we had been heading in a direction that would have put us well behind it. 

Again, I motioned to Craig, who was a few feet below the surface.  This time, I didn't descend but decided upon a surface swim so that I could maintain eye contact with the Aqua Cat.   Slowly, inexorably, I got closer to the boat, but the going was made difficult by the current.  I decided that our best bet was to head for the Magick and grab on to the yellow rope that tied it to the back of the Aqua Cat.  

I knew Craig was still behind me, but after a point, survival mode took over me, and I was more focused on myself.  My air supply was continuing to deplete rapidly as I struggled against the current.  My air had dropped to about 500 psi when I could finally see the yellow rope in the water.  I kicked furiously, grunting loudly with each kick as I inched my way towards the rope.  It started to feel like, in spite of my exertions, that I was stationary.  Then when it was just several feet from my grasp, I looked down and to my right and saw a Caribbean Reef Shark slowly heading in my direction.  While the picture at the top of this post was from a different dive, the angle of approach was about the same, only I was at the surface and the shark was about maybe at a depth of ten to twelve feet.

I didn't panic from the sight of the shark, because it appeared rather indifferent to my presence, but I remembered thinking, "It would really suck if he attacked me now, when I'm so close to the safety of the rope."  My real concern was my air supply, which was approaching the 400 psi point.  With a final effort, I reached out with my hands and grabbed the rope, which had seemed to tantalizingly beyond my grasp.

It was at that point that I thought about Craig again.  He was a few years older than me and I knew if I was struggling, then he must be too.  "What do I do know?" I asked myself.  Part of me wanted to let go of the rope and swim back to him to guide him to the rope.  Then I considered my own situation, exhausted and low on air.  One of things that is taught in the Rescue Diver course is that when considering whether to assist another diver, make sure that you don't end up needing to be rescued yourself.   Again, my desire for self-preservation kicked in, and I decided to get back to the Aqua Cat, where I could direct the crew to where Craig was.  So, like my first dive at Closemon Reef, hand over hand I pulled myself along the rope until I got to the ladder and climbed up to the dive platform.  I gasped to the crew member, can't remember which one it was, that we had gone to the wrong mooring line.  I looked back in the direction where Craig was and saw that two crew members were already in a dinghy and on there way to pick him up.  I felt doubly relieved, for Craig and for myself.

When I ascended the steps to the dive deck, I was greeted by my son Andrew, who told me excitedly, "Dad, I was snorkelling with the sharks!"  While I was off on the dive, Andrew had asked if he could go snorkelling and Stacey, the only female crewmember on the boat, went in with him.  I was very proud as well as very surprised at what my son had done.  Generally, he tends to be timid and afraid to try new things.  But for some reason he took to snorkelling in a big way.  Stacey told me that when a shark swam near him, Andrew even extended his arm out in the direction of the shark, only to retract it as the shark drew closer.

However, even the news of my son's snorkelling feat failed to lift my spirits for long.  After greeting Craig upon his safe return to the boat, I went back to my dive station and sat down with my head in my hands.  I felt upset with myself for putting another diver, in addition to myself, in danger due to my failure to navigate properly back to the mooring line.  Perhaps my earlier successes had me feeling a little cocky and I had overestimated my abilities.  I sat there sulking for a few minutes and then went up to the sun deck, where Craig and his wife Sherri had gone to grab some refreshments.  I told him that I was sorry that I had gotten us lost and had put us in a potentially dangerous situation, but he brushed it off and told me not to worry about it.

Following the surface interval, the next dive was going to be at the same site.  Craig asked me if I would go back in with him again, and I decided that it would be best if I did.  We agreed this time that we would stay within site of the boat and in we went.   We spent the dive exploring the coral formations underneath the Aqua Cat.  As we swam beneath the stern of the boat, I looked up to the surface and saw that Andrew was snorkelling with Stacey again.   Then we came upon Nick and Bailey, the two teenagers on the boat, along with Bailey's dad, standing on the sand and taking turns doing backflips in their scuba gear.  I had never tried a backflip while scuba diving before and decided to give it a shot.  It was both easy and fun and I repeated it several times.  A short while earlier, I had experienced one of the worst dives of my life, and now I had learned from a couple of teenagers how to cut loose and have a good time underwater.  It was exactly the kind of dive I needed to have.

The Bahamas Trip - Day 3 - July 26, 2011 - Underwater Photography

Though I brought an underwater camera with me on this trip, I only took it with me on three dives.  The pictures below are from the third dive.  If memory serves, they were taken at a dive site called Fire Coral Reef.  Below are among the better shots I managed to get of the marine life in the area.

First up is a Yellowtail Snapper.  There were a lot of these guys swimming around.

Next up is a French Angelfish.  These fish were a pain in the ass to photograph.  Every time I would focus on it, it would turn into the coral facing away from me.  Finally, after numerous attempts, this was the best side view I could get.  French Angelfish are very beautiful, and this photograph hardly does it justice.

I was the only one in our group to spot this small Nurse Shark.  It was swimming over a bed of coral a few feet away from me, so I had to swim really fast to get above it to get this shot.

The Bahamas contains a diverse population of angelfishes.  This next one is a Queen Angelfish.  It was much more cooperative than the French Angelfish. 

And yet another species of angelfish, the Gray Angelfish.

Here is a pair of Spotfin Butterflyfish.  My bad for not getting closer before I took the picture.

Next up is the dreaded Lionfish.  This is an invasive species that is indigenous to the Pacific.  When I dove in Belize in 2009, the only Lionfish I remember seeing was one caught by John, one of the crewmembers of the Sundancer II.  However, in the Bahamas, there were a lot of them.  You have to be careful with these guys, because they have poisonous spines.  It was really annoying for me, because some of the dive sites had very narrow grooves between the corals, and in some cases, small coral caves, that I liked to venture into and explore.  There were several occasions where I started to go into a narrow passage and then up ahead I would see a Lionfish just hovering there. 

I'm not quite sure what this last one is.  My copy of the National Audobon Society Field Guide to Tropical Marine Fishes does not show this specific fish.  However, the guide does contain about a half dozen fish with the same shape but different colors.  I am guessing this is some kind of Trunkfish or Cowfish.

Clearly, there's much room for improvement in my underwater photography skills, though it will probably have to wait until next summer when I go to the Caymans.

Back From Vacation

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend.  Just back from visiting my wife's family in the Philippines and spending several nights in Taipei, Taiwan.  Hope to have some posts and pictures up after I've finished with the Bahamas trip.  And of course, I need to put in a few atheism related posts so that nobody thinks this site has morphed into a travel blog!

Bahamas Trip - Day 3 - July 26, 2011: Underwater Marriage Proposal

Among the other passengers on the Aqua Cat were a young French-Canadian couple, Justin and Genevieve.  On the dive deck, their area was too my right.

Justin caught the attention of my children during breakfast on Sunday morning, because he walked into the dining area wearing a Speedo swimming brief, which, as you can see from the example in the preceding link, doesn't leave much to the imagination.   When my kids saw him, they couldn't stop laughing because they had never seen a man wear one before, and I finally had to tell them to get a grip on themselves.

At any rate, after one of the dives on Tuesday, I can't remember which one, after I had put all my gear in place for the next dive and taken a shower, I went back to my dive station and noticed Justin's dive slate on the bench by his dive station.  I saw that it was written in French, and at the time it read "Je t'aime," which is French for "I love you."  Aw, that's romantic, I thought.  Then I glanced at the sentence written below it ending in a question mark.  I said to myself, "I know I'm not exactly fluent in French, but that looks like a marriage proposal."  And sure enough, when I went up to the sun deck, I had found out that Justin had indeed propose to Genevieve during the dive.

Mikey, the crew member who was also serving as the ship's videographer, filmed the proposal at Justin's request.  Everyone got to see it when they played the video for us on Friday night, our last evening on the boat. 

On Tuesday evening, rather than doing another night dive, we had a shore excursion to Norman's Cay Beach Club, and I celebrated Justin and Genevieve's engagement by buying them a round of drinks.

The Aqua Cat at dusk as photographed by me from the Magick.

My kids in the Magick.

The Magick at shore, with First Mate John a silhouette in the twilight.

Captain Mark with a cold one at Norman's Cay Beach Club after a hard day's work.

The captain and I pose for a photo.

Sherri and Nina enjoying their liquid refreshments.  Sherri is from Texas.  I accompanied her husband Craig during dives when she wanted to stay on the Aqua Cat and relax.  Nina, the taller lady in the brown top, was part of our group that flew down from New York.

One of the local residents of Norman's Cay Beach Club.

The other resident of Norman's Cay Beach Club.

All in all, it was a nice little change of pace for us.   The next day would see some interesting diving.

The Bahamas Trip - Day 2 - July 25, 2011: There Be Sharks Here

The next day, I felt much better.  No more headaches and no more queasiness.

We found out the night before that we were doing the shark feeding dive on Monday.  I was surprised that it was scheduled so early in the trip, our second day of diving.  I figured it would have been held on Thursday as a build up to a climax.  Nevertheless, I was excited by the prospect of taking part in something that I had been wanting to do for quite some time.

The Aqua Cat conducts its shark feeding dives at a site called Split Coral Head off of Eleuthera.  Before we did the shark feeding dive, we did a regular dive at the site.  The Reef sharks were already there and I looked forward to trying out my new underwater camera to to snap some shots.  For those who are interested, the camera I used was a Sealife DC1200.

The photograph I took above was my first one.  Several Reef sharks were swimming around me as I began my descent, and I was able to get the shot above with a shark in the foreground and several of the divers in the background.

I was able to get this close up of a Reef shark, though owing to my novice underwater photography skills, I wasn't quite able to get the entire shark in the frame.

It was a good dive and the first one I ever did with sharks in close proximity to me.  I wasn't sure how I would react to find myself in the water with them, but surprisingly I didn't feel the least bit of trepidation.  It was more a sense of fascination and wonder at being able to observe them in their natural environment.   For those who are shark-phobes, these sharks seemed generally indifferent to our presence.

After the dive was over, we returned to the Aqua Cat for a surface interval and then attended Ian's dive briefing.  We would form a semi-circle on the sand, about 60 feet below sea level, while the fish would be lowered down the mooring line to about 15 or 20 feet from the bottom.   A few minutes after the feeding had begun, the crew would in turns take us one at a time to have ourselves photographed and briefly videotaped, and then guided over to the other side.   Ian stressed that we should under no condition try to touch the sharks, even on the tail, as they could bend their bodies so that their heads could reach back and bite you.  No argument with that here!

I replaced the memory card in my underwater camera, as I wanted to keep photographs separate from video.  I ended up shooting several segments of video.  The first one is at the beginning and lasts about two and a half minutes.  It is followed by a longer sequence that is more than 8 minutes.  Then there is another shorter segment of the aftermath.  Close to the feeding site was a small patch of coral and as I approached it, Ian pointed out to me one of the denizens of the coral, a spotted moray.  At one point in the video you will here me make a sound, which was my reaction to seeing the moray, as I wasn't sure at first what Ian was trying to show me.

At some points, the video points downward at the sand for seemingly no particular reason.  If memory serves, at various times I needed to clear the flooding in my mask, and at those points the camera would have been floating while tied to my wrist with a lanyard strap.   The camera was also sensitive to light, and I notice that sometimes when it pointed upwards towards the surface, everything took on a reddish hue.  What can I say, I'm not a professional at this.  But I think I did a decent job overall.  Enjoy.

Of course, I couldn't help but try to get a little bit of myself in the video by briefly pointing the camera towards me and giving a little wave.

At the end of the video when I pointed the camera at Tara, who had ended up to my left, she gave me the underwater signal for "shark."



You may notice at several points in this video some of the divers looking like they are crawling on the sea floor.  During the dive briefing, Ian explained how shark teeth are very loose and that at the end of the feeding, it would be possible to find some teeth on the sea floor underneath where they had been eating.  I was able to find two of them.

Besides Reef sharks, there were also a lot of Yellowtail snapper and Nassau groupers in the area that I also captured on film.  All in all, it was a good day of diving.





The Bahamas Trip - Day 1 - July 24, 2011: I Chum The Waters

Early Sunday morning, the Aqua Cat departed from Paradise Island to make for the Northern Exumas.  My kids had awoken early, as I did, to the sound of the engines, and we watched out of our cabin window as the Aqua Cat made its way out of the harbor.  Once it had gotten clear, the ship kicked it into high gear and after an hour or so, Paradise Island began to dwindle in the horizon.  In the picture I took above, you can just make out the tall buildings of the Atlantis resort.  The small boat trailing behind the Aqua Cat is the Magick, which the ship's First Mate John used to bring the passengers on land based excursions.  It would also prove very valuable to me on two of my dives.

While the previous day had been dominated by my intense migraine, the first casualty of this day turned out to be my daughter, who began to suffer the effects of motion sickness.   After first feeling it, she fell asleep in the cabin and awoke a little later on feeling much better.  But not long after waking up again, she began to feel the effects even worse than before.  One of the crew members ended up taking her to the bridge to have a better view of the horizon, which was supposed to help her relax and not feel nauseous.

I decided to skip the first dive of the day, a site called Barracuda Shoals near Allens Cay, because I had not set up my gear the evening before owing to my headache.  So, after watching my friends enter the water, I set about getting my gear ready so that I could participate in the next dive.  I was looking forward to trying out my new Hot Shot travel fins by Aqua Lung.  Since my last dive trip to Belize two years earlier, I scaled down my gear so that I could fit it all into my carry-on luggage.  Besides the travel fins, I ditched my wet suit and replaced it with a lycra full body skin.  I also brought a rash guard shirt and shorts.  To top it off, I switched to a foldable snorkel which I was able to fit into the pocket of my BCD.  I also had a new mask, as the one I had worn in Belize, while good, had developed cracks and needed to be replaced.

The next dive site was called Closemon Reef.  I was going to join Tara, Jeff and some of the other divers and just follow them wherever I went.  I was happy with the fins.  They were easy to put on and did not require dive boots.  I donned my new mask, lightly inflated my bcd, and made my giant stride into the warm waters.   After giving the ok sign to the crewman on the dive deck, I started to descend and followed the rest of the divers in our group.  The first thing I noticed is that we were swimming against a rather strong current, stronger than any I ever encountered before.  Still, with effort, I kept up with the group as we made our way towards the mooring line at the bow of the boat.  Then, I noticed my vision was getting cloudy, and suddenly it struck me.  In my excitement, I had forgotten to defog my mask!  I swam alongside Tara and motioned to her that I was returning to the boat and she acknowledged the signal.

I made my way back to the dive deck on the port side and told the crewmember Andy what had happened.  I handed him my mask and he kindly put in some defog for me.  I swirled it around and rinse it out and then donned the mask again and began my second descent.  Barely a few seconds had passed when I hit that current again.  I came to the realization that it would be foolhardy of me to try to struggle against the current alone in order to catch up with the rest of the group and decided to abort the dive but remain in the water.  I made my way to the yellow rope that tied the Magick to the Aqua Cat and held on to it, while remaining at roughly a depth of ten or fifteen feet.

And then I made my big mistake.  The site was shallow, only about twenty to thirty feet, so I decided to descend to the bottom because I was getting bored holding on to the rope.  But even with my knees planted on the sand, I was still getting pushed back by the relentless current, so I felt it prudent to surface before I was pushed too far away from the Aqua Cat.  But even as I ascended, I had an incredibly difficult time trying to reach the Magick.  I kicked furiously and groaned with each kick as I reached out for the hull of the Magick for support.  Of course, being constantly submerged in the water, the surface of the hull was incredibly slipper and I could not keep a grip on it.  I surfaced and called out for help, thinking, "Oh great, just like my first dive in Belize, when I had to be rescued!"  However, rather than waiting around to be rescued, I decided to take my fate into my own hands again and resumed swimming with all my might back to the Magick.  Again, my hands made contact with the slipper surface of the hull, but I managed to push myself slowly forward until I was able to grab the yellow rope.  I then pulled myself relentlessly toward the Aqua Cat, hand over hand, until I made it to the ladder a couple of minutes later.

Andy asked me what had happened and I answered him wearily as I handed him my fins and struggled up the ladder to the deck.  I was absolutely wiped out.  When Tara returned, I explained to her what happened.  Like Belize, my first dive was a clusterfuck.  It could only get better from here on.

Because of weather related concerns, Captain Mark decided to leave the Exumas and make for Eleuthera.  The next dive was going to be at a site called Cobia Cage.  On this dive, I was going to accompany one of the passengers, a man from Texas named Craig.  His wife Sherri was with him on the trip but decided to take a pass on this dive after participating in the two previous dives that morning.  Mikey, the crew member who would be the dive master for the dive, described the cage to us, but when we entered the water, what he told us did not begin to prepare me for the enormity of the structure.

A Cobia cage basically looks like some extraterrestrial space craft submerged in the water.  I didn't take my underwater camera on this dive, so I did not get to take a picture of it, but the photo I found above shows you how massive and strange looking the structure is.  Craig and I passed over it and then headed towards some nearby coral formations.  I had a tank banger and would look around us or peer into the nooks and crannies of the corals and let out a bang when I saw something that Craig could photograph with his camera. 

It felt good being on a dive where I didn't have to fight a current.  But as the dive continued, I started to feel queasy, though it was still tolerable.  As we headed back towards the Cobia cage, I motioned to Craig that I was returning to the boat, which was visible from the cage.  Besides, there were a number of other divers circling around, so Craig wouldn't be alone.  I gradually made my way to the hang bar and grabbed on to it and prepared to begin my safety stop.  The nausea got noticeably worse, and then without warning, I puked into my regulator.  I had done it once before when I was doing one of my open water dives in Fort Lauderdale in 2008.  I remained calm, trusting that my regulator could handle it.  And then I heaved again.  And again.  And again.  I think I overloaded my regulator, as I sucked in some vomit when I started to inhale.  I decided I had had enough and shot up to the surface, letting out one last upchuck in view of the crew member manning the dive deck (can't remember which one). 

Undeterred, I participated in the next dive, at Knuckleheads Reef.  While I still felt vaguely queasy, I did not get sick and I had my first good dive of the trip, though to my chagrin my mask was prone to flooding and I had to constantly clear it.  I was also pleased to see that my daugher was no longer suffering from motion sickness and was her old self again.  I dove with Craig again and managed the itinerary, finding him marine life to photograph.  This dive site was tricky, because there were lots of cuts and and turns and it is easy to get lost if one goes too far.  When my air supply got down to about 1700 PSI, I motioned to Craig that we would be making our way back.  After retracing our path, I felt a sense of relief when I could make out the bubbles of a number of other divers up ahead.   We made contact with the other divers and continued to explore the coral formations near the mooring line.  At one point, just as I was ready to begin my ascent, I spotted a Southern Stingray up ahead, but it was headed in a direction away from us and soon passed out of view.

The night dive was being held at the same site.  None of the group I went down with nor Craig and his wife were participating in this dive, so I just stuck with Ian the divemaster and three or four of the other passengers. 

When I did the night dives in Belize, the bottom of the Sun Dancer II was lit up like a stadium, making visibility near the boat very good, as well as providing a sense of comfort because it was easy to spot even if one went some distance away.  But with the Aqua Cat, there would be no such light, owing to the presence of sea wasps, which are attracted to the light and at night rise to about 10 feet below the surface.  I wore my full body skin again, having eschewed it for my previous two dives, as I found that the water was plenty warm enough to dive wearing only a t-shirt and shorts.

The dive itself was largely uneventful and I couldn't wait for it to end.  That urge became even stronger, as I found myself becoming increasingly nauseous again.  I signaled to Ian and when he looked at me, I made the hand sign for "not well" and pointed at my abdomen.  He must not have understood me, or if he did, he may have thought it was not terribly important, as he continued to go about poking about the coral and shining his light on it.  I tried to suck it up and tag along hoping the dive would soon end.  Then I felt myself nearing the point of no return.  I signaled to Ian again and this time, to make it unambiguous, I gave the thumbs up sign, which means "surface."  This time he understood, and as we made our ascent, I vomited several times again. 

I was so glad when I finally made it back to the Aqua Cat.  The dive deck was dark as I ascended the ladder, owing to the aforementioned sea wasps.  It ended up being a good thing, because as I found myself looking skyward, I stopped and looked in utter amazement at the night sky.  Never in my life had I seen so many stars.  There were so many that I barely recognized familiar constellations.  The real treat though was that for the first time in my life that I can recall, I saw the band of the Milky Way.

Later on, after the dive was over, I went up to the sun deck and they turned off the lights so that we could all admire the majesty of the night sky.  I spotted a couple of meteor streaks, and in the distance, the lightning from a far off thunder storm flashed in a fantastic display.

Back From The Deep

I can't believe it's been nearly two weeks since I returned from my scuba diving trip to the Bahamas.  While returning to work from a vacation is hard enough, I had the added burden of moving to another law firm, which is one of the reasons why it took me this long to return to blogging.   The change of work place happened rather suddenly, with the partner I worked under at my previous firm telling me the week before my vacation that she was moving to another firm several blocks away and that some of the clients were following her, including the client for whom I the majority of my work.  She told me that the new firm said she could bring a paralegal with her and asked if I would be interested.   It only made sense to do so, since a good chunk of my workload was leaving with her.  Plus, the new firm said they would match my salary, so I decided to make the move.

Anyway, back to the vacation.  It was on a liveaboard in the Bahamas called the Aqua Cat.  Above is a picture of the Aqua Cat at dock as seen from a nearby outdoor bar called The Green Parrot.  I had my two kids in tow so that my wife could have a week of peace and quiet to herself rather than having to stay home with them while I cavorted in the azure waters of the Bahamas.

The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start.  We all met at the house of Martha, one of the people going on the trip, at 4:30 in the morning to catch our ride to Newark Airport, where our flight to Nassau was scheduled to depart at 7:30.  I thought it might be cutting things a little too close, but figured we would make it in time.  But when we finally got to the group checkin area at Continental Airlines terminal at 6:30, the lady behind the counter told us that the computer would not allow her to check us in and that we would not make the 7:30 flight.  Sue, the wife of Larry, who used to own the dive shop where I took my lessons, pleaded with the lady to no avail and then demanded to speak with a supervisor. 

A few minutes later, a supervisor, a more pleasant Latina, had us move to a different counter where Sue continued to plead our cause.  Finally, when all hope seemed lost, the supervisor said she could take all but four of us.  So Sue, Martha, Tara, Nina, Bruce, Ira and Jeff checked in their bags, received their boarding passes and proceeded to the departure gate.  That left Larry, myself, and my two kids.  After a few minutes, the supervisor returned and after spealing with Larry, told him that she would put us on standby for the next flight for Nassau scheduled to leave at 8:55.  We checked in our bags, got our boarding passes, and then did the security screening shuffle and headed for the departure gate.   Fortunately for us, the agent at the gate told us that we would be able to board the plane.

Several hours later, we found ourselves in Nassau and the Aqua Cat arranged for us to be picked up.  We were dropped off at the Green Parrot, where the rest of the gang was already relaxing.   The Aqua Cat doesn't let passengers board until 6 p.m., which meant that we had to wait another four or five hours.  Normally, that wouldn't be so bad, but I developed a rip-roaring migraine that refused to go away.  I tried napping it off to no avail, and finally around 5 p.m. I asked for permission to go to my cabin on the Aqua Cat so that I could sleep on the bed in my cabin.  When I awoke a couple of hours later, everyone else had boarded and it would soon be time for dinner.  I still hadn't completely shaken the headache, so Martha's son Greg, who came down on a different flight, gave me a couple of Tylenol PM.

After the dinner, prepared by the Aqua Cat's Chef Kirk, we were treated to the orientation lectures by the ship's captain Mark and the lead dive master Ian.  I retired early that night, looking forward to waking up the next day feeling refreshed and ready to hit the waters.