World of Ong

After the traffic jams and road rage, I was screaming through the U.S. / Canadian Border with a fully loaded car, racing down Highway 1, around the city of Vancouver, at 90 miles per hour taking curves at 80. Every bump I take shoots sparks out of the bottom of my carriage. I finally arrive at the Horseshoe Basin Ferry terminal. Cutting across 7 lanes I aim straight for the toll booth. The lady waves me down and yells, "You're the last one! Go! Go! Go!" The credit card flies back into the air and into my hand. I race towards the ferry bottoming out every time I hit one of those god damned speed bumps. Damn those speed bumps, they keep slowing me down. I hop the Ferry and take the very last spot. I made the 8:25.

Hello folks! Nice story above, eh? It was all true, well, except for the sparks flying out. Oh and actually, I gave the credit card first to the lady - she threw after she swiped. That was just the start of my Labor Day weekend.

But before I get to that, I got "Lots of essplainin' to do…" Why I haven't written as much as have in the past? First things first, as you already know, I am officially moved into my house. It took an extra month to get internet back up due to obvious family emergencies as mentioned a blog back. I have been very busy with the move. I started phase one of the renovations, and I am 80% done. I re-wired the whole darn place and replaced every outlet, switch and thermostat with new Decorum and went all digital. I even have timers now in the bathrooms. The painting is done in the main rooms and I have already chosen my molding and started to paint small amounts of it. So, that is where I am today. The molding hopefully gets done next week or 2 weeks. I can't decide. I am having too much fun.

So let's start with my diving story. After my eventful day of arriving at Porpoise Bay Charters, the next day, we wake up early and grab a quick breakfast. I scramble to load all my gear into the skiff. We head out to the Agamemnon Channel. Suit up. I get Bob the angry diver, as I call him, for my dive partner. He wants to go deep (130 ft or more) on the first plunge. I nod and say okay. By the time I get to the 119 ft, I start to 'narc' out. Nitrogen Narcosis. First time that's ever happened to me. Things get all dizzy and my lips start to go numb. Imagine drinking 8 martinis. Well, that's how I felt. I alert Bob and tell him I'm heading up a few more feet to get out of the craziness. He was well below me at this point. After my head comes to normalize at 60 feet we spent a good deal looking for stuff. I had this great shell but it was so brittle in broke in my hands.

The next dive we do is Stag wall. We drop to 80 feet and just hang out with the drift, nothing too spectacular on this dive.

The last dive of the day we head to Saginaw Rock. This was the place where I played with the baby seals last time. No seals this time. We drop and suddenly get caught in all the kelp. Forests of kelp. Visibility was horrible until we dropped down to 45 feet. After tinkering around the pinnacle, Bob waves his light at me; I turn, and see him doing the universal sign language of 'SHARK!' Yup, that's right. A blue shark came to visit us, he was roughly 4 feet swimming below me. I let him pass. He was a smaller shark that was roughly around 3 ½ feet long. I gulped a bunch of air. Totally cool! After that, we keep playing around and next thing Bob alerts me to, is this Giant Nudibranch. At first I thought just to be another anemone, but he picks it up and makes it float. It starts to toss and turn, righting itself up. It was a really interesting animal.

We finally return back to shore for a 2 hour nap and a good prime rib dinner with beers. Let me tell you about my dive group. Every time I hang out with these guys, I am always the little man on the totem pole. They all consist of dive directors and instructors. So here I am getting badgered left and right. I was even their 'ice boy' for their drinks a night or so. They were there to do technical diving, getting down to 200ft depth. It was insane the equipment that they had to carry - 4 Tanks of all different types of gasses. One day I will match up with them….. one day.

2nd day we wake up to some great Eggs Benedict, then off to our last two dives. I now partner up with a couple. First dive, we head out to Stag Wall again and drop down to 107 ft. pretty much, I was searching for some sea urchin shells this time around. I found 3, but they ended up getting crushed in my pocket. I was kind of bummed about that.

Second dive, we headed out to the HMCS Chaudiere. We sit back to let the deep divers take there break, then all of a sudden hordes of seals come swimming by. There were at least 8 groups of 5 swimming around us. It was a really cool site to see. This is a 400 ft Canadian Navy Destroyer escort. I have been here before, so I take lead and head down to 100 feet, playing around the gun turrets. This is the first time I got to explore this ship wreck. I had a chance to look into the main deck and explore all around the outside of the ship. Attached to the side of the ship was this giant Lions Mane Jellyfish. This thing had tentacles of at least 20 feet long and had roughly a 3 foot wide body. It was kind of spooky; it reminded me of those sentinels from The Matrix. I felt really comfortable with this dive.

After heading back, we then pack up and say our goodbyes. We head out to the ferry and I make it back to my home, only to do a pit stop and drink with an old friend of mine. I arrive at 2 in the morning to my brand new spanking bed and dream away all the dreams. It was a good Labor Day weekend.

This was a long one… I know. But hey, I haven't written in a while.

Enjoy as usual folks!

# posted by Juanito the Bandito @ 7:51 PM