Adventures of The ScubaJedi

The Platonic Friends Kiss of Death

2011-12-29T05:19:00.000-08:00

Every time I meet a guy I find myself attracted to, he is never interested in me. It is confusing and strange in that we'll usually go out, they will pick up the dinner tab, drive, all the ingredients to a "date" then by the end of the "date" I get the old Platonic Friends Kiss of Death (hereinafter referred to as the PFKOD) but without an actual kiss. Somewhere in the course of our being together they decide they are not interested and give me the line that they don't want to date right now because of Fill In The Blank. They just want to be friends. Then the next thing I know they are hitting on my friends and/or dating someone else. Oh, so it wasn't that they aren't interested in dating because of some tragic circumstance in their life, they just aren't interested in dating me.

The line about just wanting to be friends is also a crock. My friends contact me out of the blue to see how I'm doing, they invite me to go places and see things with them, they come over, they invite me over, they lend me money, I lend them money, provide moral support in times of tragedy, and you know, act like friends. These guys, if I don't contact them somehow, I will never, ever hear from them again after the PFKOD. So why do they even bother to offer friendship? These guys aren't friends. They certainly don't act like it. I know why they lie like that, because they don't want to hurt our feelings, but let me tell you something, gentle readers, it hurts more to be strung along. So, my new rule (actually it was put into effect last year but failed recently), is that I require reciprocity, especially from men. If I find myself always doing the work, i.e. contacting them and they never contact me first, they are off my mailing list.

It's that simple. It's totally apparent that they have no interest in me in any way. It is baffling though. Especially in this age of the Information Superhighway, I can't even find the on-ramp. I have experienced the weirdest behavior and I think it is condoned because of the anonymous nature of the Internet. I have had situations where a guy has responded to my online profile (back when I was even trying), we e-mail back and forth all day long as if we're having a conversation (I worked in front of a computer all day, and I have a smart phone so I am always on e-mail) and close the conversation by saying talk to you tomorrow. Then I never, ever hear from them again. Ever. WTF is that? Is the rule that guys are mostly Flaksters? I will give them a chance the next day and lop an e-mail saying hello. Then, if I don't hear back, and I almost never do, off the list they go and into the idumpster.

If they were called away to go fight evil in Afghanistan, or some other lamo excuse, the very least they could do would be to let me know. But they don't. They just evaporate. Great disappearing act, Mr Magician! We know what that means, loud and clear. So, what I am trying to say and affirm is that I will not waste my precious time on anyone who doesn't care about me.

You also know when you're in Just Friends city when the guy refers to you as "Buddy" or "Kiddo". Happy Birthday, Buddy! Hey there, Kiddo! Yeeaaach! Or if they "dude" you. That means they look at you as if you are another man.

I just want to be loved, is that so wrong?

Your Friendo Platonico,The ScubaJedi

Keet Seel 2011 Trip Report

2011-07-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

This year's trip into Keet Seel canyon was the most memorable yet. I have a better description of the general area and more details of the trail on another blog found here.

We left Friday with 8 of us on the trip. We did all the usual, Kate’s Café at Tuba City, camped at the Visitor’s Center, then hiked in. The difference in this year’s journey was that I was tipped off on where a reliable fresh water spring was by three Navajo boys we ran into on last year’s trip. It was located fairly close to the campground near the ruin, but I have been sworn to secrecy as to the actual location. So that meant that we only had to carry in whatever we needed to drink for the hike to the campground! In other years we had to pack in all our water and that made for a very laborous hike in. Without all that extra weight we arrived at the campground about two full hours sooner than usual. We could go at a more comfortable yet faster pace without the super heavy packs.

When we got to the campground, we got the skookums camp spots near the bigger picnic table. There was another group of four from Flagstaff who got there after us.

So, my game plan was to go to the spring and fill up with that we needed for the evening, go tour the ruins, come back for dinner and laughs. Then in the morning, make another run to the spring for water for the trip out. Good plan, right?

We took our empty containers and headed to the spring. We got there and the glorious water was gushing out so pure and inviting. It was cold, clean, and fresh. We filled up, I rinsed my hair out as did Ann Marie. We headed back and I got the bright idea to take the upper trail back. So we got to where we would descend back down to the river then back up the trail to the campground and we saw Ranger Steve heading away from us toward the ranger shack. We waited thinking we were hiding in the trees, we didn’t really want him to see us because technically we weren’t supposed to know where the spring was. When we thought he was far enough away we started down the hill. Then he turned around and was heading toward us in a very deliberate manner. When he got to us he was very serious and asked us if we had been to the spring. Busted!!! What could I say? We were all there without packs and just full water containers standing guilty as charged without having to say anything. I said yessir, we had been and he proceeded to hand us our butts. He told us he could kick us out and make us walk all the way back, that the spring was owned by a Navajo family who made it clear that no one was to go back there and use the spring except the rangers (I think the boys who gave me permission were part of that family). Ranger Steve told us we were putting the whole place in jeopardy by digressing from the trail we had permits for and going back there and getting water. I tried to explain that the boys told us we could use the spring but Ranger Steve would have none of that. We apologized and said that the location of the spring would remain a secret.

He asked if we were going to tour the ruins, that the other group was already up there and he could take two more if they wanted to come now. Steve (one of my group, not the Ranger) and Robert said they would go. The rest of us walked in shame back to camp. We tried to figure out how he knew what we were up to and still haven’t figured it out. I said there must be a webcam back there or something. There was some concern as a couple of the guys didn’t get enough water for the next day as they thought we would be making another spring run in the morning. Eric said we should make a midnight run like a bunch of Ninjas.

But, as fate would have it, I had discovered yet another spring coming out of the rocks right on the trail a little further down about a mile. It was a smaller spring and we would have to use a filter to siphon the water up as you couldn’t put a bottle or platypus in to collect the water, the hole is too small. I actually scouted four additional springs along the way where fresh water could be filtered and collected. The spring by the campground is the only secret one as it is the easiest to get the water out of and you don’t need to use a filter. It is now known as “Forbidden Spring”. The real reason they don’t want its location known is because people have gone back there and trashed it in the past, leaving shampoo bottles and other debris scattered around. The rest of the springs feeding the nasty creek along the way are fair game. So I am still never going to carry a heavy pack in there again. Water is available. Most people hiking out there would never notice the feeder springs, but I made it a point to memorize where they are.

Anyway, after about 45 minutes, the others headed toward the ruin to wait for the first group to finish and then they would get their tour. I opted out as I hate the 70 foot ladder of extreme peril and I have been up there enough. I stayed behind and explored the campground area outside the fence and around the other gullies etc. I wasn’t as tired as usual because I didn’t have to schlep a heavy pack.

Robert and Navy Steve came back and we sat and chewed the fat for a while. They said that Ranger Steve was ultimately cool about our water pilferage. It really is because they want to keep the area natural and people do tend to trash it, sadly enough.

After a while, Diane came back looking a bit excited. She said when they were on their tour, Ranger Steve started getting some radio transmissions about a couple of lost hikers! She said Ranger Steve had to cut the tour short because he had to go look for the hikers. They were part of another Meet Up group and had not come back with the rest of the group. It was an older couple and their descriptions were given over the radio. So the gang were walking back in the stream and they saw an older woman wandering toward them, looking a little confused. They stopped to talk to her and she asked where Keet Seel was. They said right here. She said how did I get back here? I was trying to get back to my car. Turned out she was one of the missing hikers. So Ann Marie, Eric, Michael, and Darrell headed back to tell Ranger Steve they found one of the hikers, and Diane stayed with the woman. When Ranger Steve got to her, Diane and Ann Marie came back to camp, Darrell, Eric, and Michael said they would help out looking for her companion who was, according to her, in pretty bad shape. Neither of them had any water, they were dehydrated and had no food. It was getting dark about then so Ranger Steve handed out flashlights and the guys fanned out down the canyon searching for the lost man. Darrell carried the woman’s pack for her even though he has a bad back and had been schlepping a pack all day. Eric found the man who was passed out atop the second waterfall. There’s the waterfall near the campground, then another one a little further down then the Big Waterfall which is the last place where you can get a vehicle. There was a truck waiting with EMT’s by the Big Waterfall, which is around 2 miles from the ruins.

Eric, who is Chinese and has a very thick accent gets in the man’s face and asks “Do you need water? Do you need medicine? Do you need food?” He said the man’s eyes were just glazed over and he was shaking badly. He was in very bad shape and the guys were pretty confident that if they hadn’t found him when they did he would have died being out there all night. He had no way of getting warm, no water, no food, and was exhausted.

The other guys got there with the woman and Michael and Darrell carried packs, while Ranger Steve and Eric held on to the man and helped him along until they got to where the truck was waiting. Of course we were all back at the camp wondering what was transpiring and then the guys came back around 10:30pm. Ranger Steve comes up to me and gives me a hug and said we were all exonerated for the water incident with the help the guys lended on finding the missing hiker. Turned out the couple had hiked all the way to the base of the cliff, but instead of heading up, they kept walking up Long Canyon, which is one of three canyons all connecting at the base of the cliff. They walked a fairly long way up the wrong canyon until they came to a herd of sheep, thought they were lost and turned around to go back. Again, instead of finding the trail up the cliff (marked with a huge white post) they headed back down Keet Seel canyon! They got as far as the second waterfall and the man could no longer go. He stopped there and she kept going and ended up back at the ruins. She was a bit confused and couldn’t figure out how they got so turned around. I don’t know how they endured all that hiking. I would have keeled over a lot sooner myself. The woman was actually in really good physical condition.

The next day we all packed up and headed out. Ann Marie, Darrell, and Robert all said they needed more water and I said that I would wait for them by the other spring I knew of and we would get some.

Then on the way back up the Cliff of Insanity, I of course, was way behind because I just can’t handle steep uphill climbs very well, I trip on one of the railroad ties in the first set of switchbacks and fall on my face banging my left shin really badly. It started swelling up like a softball and I was really shaken up. Falling like that with a full pack is no joke. Ann Marie and Darrell were up a few levels from me and I yelled to them that I had fallen. They said they’d wait and when I got there Ann Marie had a cold pack and a sticky ace bandage and she packed up my leg. It really helped.

So, that ended the most eventful Keet Seel trip yet! Even though I will not use Forbidden Spring again, I know where to get water on the trail, so still, no more heavy packs!

Next up - Adventures in Curaçao

The Scuba Jedi

The Online Dating Adventure

2010-07-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

The Scuba Jedi is tired of always having to do everything alone. Well, I do have a large circle of regulars that I hang out with and do things with, but I think you all get my meaning when I say being alone kinda sucks. So where do you go to meet a decent man? I'm asking you gentle readers, because I really don't know. I joined a singles activity club and have met some really great single women. It is actually a lot of fun and I have met some good friends and done some cool things like traveled to Bonaire and Peru with the group.

I've tried the speed dating thing (see The Dating Adventure ) and that was fun but unfruitful. Now I am trying the online dating thing. I have actually tried this on and off for several years, and as I am still single, it doesn't seem to be working either. Lately, however, I have been going on a lot of first dates. In the past I got nothing, not even an electronic wink, but maybe my pictures look better this time around. Also, something else I'm trying differently this time is I have dumbed down my description a lot. I don't mention that I am The Scuba Jedi, or that I am a Sierra Club Wilderness Guide, or that I have traveled to 11 different countries, play musical instruments by ear, speak French, make art, used to drive a motorcycle, can make my own clothes, make pottery, work for Microsoft, have a graduate degree in Forensic Psychology, am a voracious reader, and dress up for Renaissance Fair. Men don't give a crap about any of that, I have figured out. As a matter of fact, this all goes to work against me. All they think about is sex, and all they care about is if they think you're hot looking. So I have a couple of portrait pictures and a couple of paragraphs about how nice I am, would like to meet someone who can make me laugh (all guys think they're hilarious), and that I like to cook and wouldn't it be great to have someone to cook for...giggle giggle giggle. Excuse me, I have to go throw up right now, when I'm done I'll finish the blog.....

One might wonder why I even want a man if I think so little of them? Well, let me tell you. I have met and know some pretty terrific guys. They are mostly all married, and understandably so. So this gives me hope that there might be one out there for me. The dumbed down profile isn't a lie, it's just not disclosing all my information at once. I think this is what was killing me in the past. I put it all out there and it was overwhelming. So I just reeled it back in a smidgen and will dole out the rest of me in little pellets like from a Pez dispenser.

So I have had a lot of first dates. Here's the drill: They answer my online personal ad and we e-mail back and forth for a couple of days. Then they give me their phone number and I will usually text them so they have my phone number, because I won't call a man to start off with. Nor will I let them trick me into asking THEM out. I read "He's Just Not That Into You", I know the game. Then we'll either keep texting or he'll call me. We set up a time and place to meet and then we meet. We'll have a nice chat, a couple of drinks, or a coffee, and say so long. Then one of two things happens. I will either never hear from them again, or they will contact me a couple of days later about seeing each other again. And here's the thing, my amazing blog readers, it's always to GO OVER TO HIS HOUSE! Can you say "Booty Call"? Not only am I not interested in a booty call buddy, but that is just creepy and makes me uncomfortable. I am a fairly good judge of character and I know these guys are mostly harmless, but the one time I judge poorly I am going to regain consciousness and find myself in a hole in some guys basement hearing "It puts the lotion on its skin, or it gets the hose again". No thanks, Buffalo Bill, I am not coming over after only meeting you in person one time. When they find out I'm not coming over, they dump me. One time a guy actually took me out three times before abandonment. He wanted a bed buddy for an upcoming weekend in Sedona. When I told him I was doing a camp out that weekend and couldn't go, he disappeared.

All in all it should really be discouraging. But it has actually toughened me up and I am using this as educational material. The trick is to have no expectation. Then when you're treated like this, you aren't surprised or hurt. I am very grateful that these guys show their true colors right in the beginning and I don't get dragged into a mess that will lead to hurt later. I am truly blessed.

And so, I will persevere.

Until the next adventure, your Friendo Platonico,

The Scuba Jedi

Grand Cayman Adventure

2010-05-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Every year the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Diving Society hosts an event called Total Submersion. It's a week of boat and shore diving, parties, food, hanging with other divers and maybe even making new friends.

I managed to wangle some vacation time from May 1 to May 8, which when you work shifts punching a time clock, is no small feat. The weeks leading up to the event dragged on and on and the night before I left seemed to take a lifetime. I had to work until 9pm the night before and I had a 7 am flight the next day. Once again, I procrastinated packing, thinking I am such a pro I can do it in 15 minutes. But not only did I have to pack some clothing, but all that scuba gear. But I prefer packing the gear last so that I can make sure I don't forget anything. From time to time, I have dreams that I am going on a long, exciting, exotic diving vacation and as I am boarding Air France or British Airways and the cabin door is closing, I discover that I didn't pack my mask, or my fins, or my BC. Things you really can't dive without. Occasionally I will dream that I forgot my purse with all my money in it, and very occasionally I'll dream that I am boarding the plane completely topless.

But I digress.

I ended up not going to bed until 12 or 1. I had to leave the house at 4:30 in order to get checked in for an international flight. I couldn't get any of my so-called "friends" to take me to the airport. I mean, they could go back to bed, or get an early start on a Saturday. But it all turned out well, as I ended up waking up at 4:30 am. I didn't even have time to shower, I just threw some clothes on and bolted out of there. I just did make it in time. I only sat at the gate for a few minutes when they called my row and off I went. I didn't forget to pack anything and I was wearing a top.

The flight was uneventful except for the male flight attendant trying desperately to flirt with the busty blonde in the row across the aisle and in front of me. From Houston to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, the guy was chatting with her stooped over leaning on the arm of her seat which put his ass directly in my face for approximately two and a half hours. Nice. He did manage to serve a couple of drinks but it took a lot to distract him from the blonde to, you know, do his job. I am pretty confident he struck out anyway.

The humidity festival is ongoing in the Caribbean and in Georgetown, the airport is the small Banana Republic type. They wheel the stairs up to the jet and we de-plane to the open air so the moisture can hit you like a bus right away. There was something new this year, they have enclosed the rolling stairs in some sort of plastic covering that quite frankly, looked like a giant hamster tube. That made it even hotter.

The Cayman Islands are made up of three small rocky clods of dirt called Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. They are located south of Cuba and west of Jamaica. The Cayman Islands are famous as an offshore banking center in the Caribbean. The islands are actually the peaks of a massive underwater ridge, known as the Cayman Trench, standing 8,000 feet from the sea floor, which barely exceeds the surface. The islands are therefore at sea level and this leaves them vulnerable to the sea, and worse, hurricanes. Grand Cayman is the largest, with an area of 76 square miles. I have never been to either of the two "Sister Islands" of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, and I hear the diving is very good there. They are located about 80 miles east of Grand Cayman and have areas of 14 square miles and 10 square miles respectively. All three islands were formed by large coral heads covering submerged ice age peaks of western extensions of the Cuban Sierra Maestra range and are mostly flat. One notable exception to this is The Bluff on Cayman Brac's eastern part, which rises to 140 feet above sea level, the highest point on the island and where everyone rushes when a hurricane approaches.

Grand Cayman was obliterated by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Hurricane Ivan was a category 5 storm (the strongest rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale) and was the size of Texas. Think about it, Grand Cayman is 76 square miles. The state of Texas is 268,820 square miles. It swirled over the island for two days and basically ate it. There really wasn't anywhere to go, not even The Bluff on Cayman Brac.

Fortunately, Total Submersion takes place before hurricane season. The weather is usually pretty clear when we're there. The first day of diving was Sunday and after an orientation session we were off to the boats. At Total Sub, everyone is divided up into teams with a color designation. The first year I went I was on the Red Team. Since then I've been on the White team consistantly. There are repeat guests who go every year and some people who attend every other year or couple of years. I have been going back every year since 2007. I like the event, have made friends, and the diving is always a sure thing, unlike places like San Diego where the conditions can be unpredictable. However, the first day of diving was a little unusual as the seas were what could be considered rough for the Cayman Islands. The boat was rocking and bouncing and this, gentle readers, makes The ScubaJedi nervous. It's the same feeling as when I'm on skis (read Adventures in Skiing) or on an out of control water sled (read Whale Riding in Rocky Point). I guess I feel a bit helpless as I know that no matter what, the water is always the boss and can knock you around any way it wants. Once I splash though, everything is much better. For the second dive we moved the boat to calmer waters to a dive site called Eden Rock. The first one was Little Tunnels because it's full of little tunnels. Eden Rock is a popular site for not only divers, but for snorkelers as well. They come off the cruise ships that dock not too far away. I've heard of snorklers near divers will sometimes swoop down and grab a puff of air from a diver's spare air hose. That, to me, is an invitation to having my fin shoved up a snorkeler's ass.

The first two days, I am usually very tired after the morning boat dives, but on the second day, which was Monday, I managed to get in around 4 dives before becoming unconcious. There are optional dives you can pay for like a night boat dive. I got a rough start with night diving but now find it very comfortable and like it as you get to see all the creatures of the night that venture out to look for food. I signed up for the night boat dive and was looking forward to it to the point that I forgot my regulator. I left it in the room. A lot of people leave their gear laying around as it's pretty safe but my regulator was expensive enough that I didn't want to leave it laying around with the rest of my gear. It has a wireless transmitter that talks to my wrist dive computer and lets me know how much air I have and neat stuff like that. So I usually tote the wrist computer and the reguator assembly with me. So we're under way out to sea and I commence to setting up my gear and lo and behold, no regulator! For those non-divers reading this, the regulator is the thingamajig that screws on to the air cylinder and a hose comes out of it and to your mouth, which allows you to breathe. It's kind of important. So I began to whine and bitch that I was going to miss the night dive. I was pissed. But there was a spare reg on board and Scotty, one of the boat captains, helped me set it up. But then the low pressure coupling didn't fit my spare air assembly so I began to kvetch again. Another diver on board happened to have about 5 spare low pressure hoses with him as it happened, and one of them fit. I was still a bit twitchy about using different life support systems, but I splahed anyway and saw many wonderous things.

I completed my 100th dive on this trip, and the last dive of my journey was the most spectacular of all. A site called Big Tunnels, which has, big tunnels to swim through. But it was like diving in the Grand Canyon only you don't have to stop at the ledge and look down, you can cruise over the deep chasms and even dive down in them. I saw the biggest Super Male Parrot fish. Super Male Parrot Fishes are Parrot Fishes that were once female then decide to switch. The process is more than likley much cheaper and easier than when humans decide to do this. The life cycle of the Stoplight Parrotfish, which is most commonly found in this area is complex. But the SuperMales are really friggin big fish. They school, so you have to wonder what is after them, as there is always a bigger fish.

After Big Tunnels we went to a site called The Aquarium where, after I descended to a depth of about 30 feet discovered that my transmitter was no longer speaking to my wrist computer. The two obviously had a quarrel and were no longer communicating. Bummer. I went up and boarded the boat, switched off the air, switched it back on and everything was fine. But I didn't trust it and decided to stay up top. Big Tunnels had been so spectacular I wanted to remember the trip with that last dive. I stayed aboard with Scotty and Trevor and took pictures of my feet.

The next day consisted of shopping so I swooped into Georgetown and spent money like a drunken sailor. I regretted it when I looked at the receipts and saw that I was going to have to live on peanut butter for a couple of weeks.

But, I can't wait until next year when I can do it all again.

Until the next adventure,
The ScubaJedi

Adventures in Skiing

2010-01-20T10:44:00.001-08:00

I had never been downhill skiing. The opportunity arose where I could go with my social group up to Flagstaff, Arizona for a day trip with a ski lesson for $57. I decided that sounded like a fun idea so I signed up.

I did have an ulterior motive in that there was a certain guy I was interested in whom I had met at another gathering. He is from Brazil and I happened to speak a little Portuguese so we kind of hit it off. We had a lot of common interests like scuba and backpacking so I thought it would be fine to get to know him a little better. We'll call him Paulo (not his real name).

We all met at a Starbucks to carpool up to Flagstaff. I was hoping to beg a ride from someone as I don't know how to drive in snow and I wasn't sure of the conditions. I was hoping that Paulo would drive and I could ride up with him. When I got there, he said he didn't know whether he was going to stay up there for the night or come back, so I said that was okay as I would pile in with someone else on the way back as I knew there were pleanty of people returning that same day. I was signed up for a 9 mile hike the next day and wanted to come back.

I rode up with Paulo and another guy I'll call Edward. We had a great time yukking it up and chatting and listening to Edward's enormous collection of 80's music. When we left the Verde Valley to climb the mountain into Flagstaff, Paulo announced the the gas gauge "Empty" came on and we needed to stop for gas. I said, um, there won't be a gas station for quite some time. there is literally nothing between Camp Verde and Flagstaff except Munds Park and that was some way up the road. I was concerned. Paulo had never been up to Flagstaff before as he has only been living here a couple of months. Edward re-iterated my concern saying that we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Paulo said that there was about 30 miles of gas left when it was on empty so no worries. I said that was great except we need to go about 50 miles.

We just did roll into Munds Park on fumes and stopped at the first Shell station. I was never so happy to see that obnixious yellow shell.

On to the mountain, we made it and met with the rest of the group. One woman there had come up the night before and she was all in her ski outfit as she had her own stuff. She swooped in on Paulo and started taking over his day. She enthusiastically asked him if he were going to stay the night, what he was doing for lunch etc etc. He replied that he would stay the night and she whipped out her cell phone like it was the Bat Phone or something and started calling her hotel to see if there were rooms so she could book his room for him. Then she grabbed his ski pass and started helping him attach it to his coat and I was getting a little annoyed. What was she, his mother? I had told this woman prior that I was interested in Paulo and I guess there are really no rules in love and war, and this was a little of both. But, I have a personal rule that stems from self-worth and integrity and that is I don't fight over men. I was having fun and was going to learn how to ski and that's what I would concentrate on.

The line was long to get the rental equipment and we missed the 10 am lesson and the next lesson was at 1. We got our skis and boots and were left to our own devices. Paulo said he wanted to just get out there and do it, and I admired his fearlessness. I am relatively fearless myself, but there is something about sliding down a mountain on a pair of sticks that does unnerve me slightly. I really wanted to wait for the lesson, but that was not for another three hours. So I went along with the crowd and donned my $75 ski pants and had someone show me how to strap into the skis.

Ski boots were invented by someone who loves pain. They keep your ankles extremely rigid, which I supposed is to your advantage, but I was pretty confident that my legs were both going to snap at the shins. Then you have to get your skis and carry them outside. They weigh slightly less than that boots, which is to say it's like trying to carry a couple of lead telephone poles. I slung mine over my should to try and look like I knew what I was doing but at the same time trying not to render those around me unconcious by hitting them with the skis. Then there was the walking around in ski boots. Everyone was clomping around like Herman Munster with a gate like Jar Jar Binks. Sort of a drunken bobbing.

So I hit what was called the "bunny" slope for beginners. Me and a couple of other women sort of stuck together. Paulo took off with his mamma, the woman who was intent on taking care of him. I wondered if at dinner she was going to cut his meat for him. Anyway, I was busy trying not to die, I couldn't worry about them. I ended up aimed downhill and started sliding. I got up to speed close to say, mach 2, and discovered I had no idea how to stop. I had these visions of Sonny Bono and that one Kennedy smashing into a tree. I, however, would not be as lucky as them and die on the spot. I would probably be left quadrapalegic and live another 60 years until I could talk somone into feeding me strychnine. So I purposely fell. I sat down, rapped the back of my head on the ice and skidded on my back a few more feet before coming to a halt and laying there dazed. That's how I stopped from then on, just flop down. I was sure there had to be a different technique to stopping on skis. Paulo yelled for me to get up off the snow before I froze but he was too late. I was already frozen. I took the skis off, got up and went to find a place to sit and cry. I am usually pretty good at anything I try but this was going to be a challenge. I saw snomobiles go by dragging a litter to pick up bodies with and thought I would pay real money to get a ride on one of those. Instead I cambered back up the hill and decided to chill out until the lesson. I met some of the others for lunch, then it was time for the lesson.

I learned how to stop which was nice, but still, if I got going too fast, I still had to fall down. I was hating skiing more and more. I looked around at the others who made it all look so easy. When we made our way ( me skidding on my butt mostly) down to the ski lift I decided I had enough. It just wasn't fun. I told Ryan the Ski Instructor that he was a wonderful teacher, but I was just not going to be a skier. I went and turned in my things, changed into some dry clothes and hung around until everyone was back and ready to go to dinner.

We all went to the famous Beaver Street Brewery, then Edward, Paulo, and I headed back to Phoenix. Paulo is magic. He transformed from a affible, nice, funny, interesting person into an arrogant, preachy, nonstop talking know it all in the space of an hour. He started getting really philosophical, and would not let anyone else finish a sentence before he would interrupt and tell you you were wrong and we might as well be talking about flowers. He all but called me stupid. I am hard enough on myself and really don't need anyone preaching to me and telling me that I am not equipped intellectually to converse with them. I almost asked him how to say "You SUCK!" in Portuguese. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the guy. Hate is not the opposite of like or love, indifference is. I hate him and that means I care somewhat. He's nice, funny, animated, and interesting as long as you stay in the shallow end of the pool with him. Don't go deep into anything. I am not in the least bit worried about him reading this either. Inasmuch as him reading this would indicate some interest and curiosity in something other than himself, and that just won't happen.

I was really happy to return and get into my own car where I am the Captain. That was the end of my ski adventure. I'm not sorry I went, I did have a good time. I also learned a lot and have been feeling a lot better about things.

I also heard that Paulo got in a fight with another guy at a group event the following Monday.

The ScubaJedi

Keet Seel Backpacking

2009-05-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

I first visited the ruins at Keet Seel in 2001. I had read up on how fascinating the ruins were, after all they are the largest most well preserved Anasazi ruins in Arizona and I really wanted to see them. I was grossly overweight at the time and while hiking the trail I swore if I got out of there alive I would never go back. In the next four years or so I managed to drop a lot of weight and since 2001, including this last time, I have hiked this trail 4 times. Each time vowing I will never do it again. But I found myself drawn to go out there yet again, with a group of Sierra Club hikers. I organized the trip and made it perfectly clear how tough it was. I do it in a two day backpacking trip, Memorial Day Weekend usually works out well, where we spend the first night camped at the Navajo National Monument visitor's center campground. The next day bright and early we start in on the hike to make it out to the campground near the ruin by at least 3:30 so we can grab the last tour of the day. As people tend to be destructive, they only allow a guided tour of this ruin and you go up with a ranger. I posted the event in the Sierra calendar earlier in the year to secure participants and to make sure I got permits for 10. The permits are free and there is a 20 person limit per day with a 10 person limit per group. I defined this explicitly in the description and the trip rapidly filled up and there was a waiting list. I tried to keep everyone well informed about the trip and made sure they knew the rules. Also to re-iterate the participant limit and the fact there was a waiting list, so to please let me know if they were going to cancel. I still ended up with three people calling in sick at the last moment, and one complete no-show. I hate that. Not the calling in sick, because you can't help it if you get Ebola or anthrax and can't hike, it's the no-call-no-show cavalier blowing it off that torques me.

This is not a backpacking trip for the beginning backpacker. When you call for permits, Navajo National Monument will send you a packet with information about the trail. Keet Seel is one of the best preserved ancestral pueblo villages in the Southwest. It is located 8.5 miles from the Visitor Center. The hike is rugged and strenuous despite it being mostly flat. You have to wade through livestock-fouled waters with some pockets of quicksand which you don't know are there until you step in one. But, what I find encouraging is that the trail is marked by mile posts spaced about every 1 to ½ miles. From Tsegi Point, the trail drops sharply by 700 feet according to the ranger at the visitor's center, but when you get to the trailhead you are informed that now it is 1000 feet from the canyon rim to the canyon floor on rocky switchbacks and sand dunes. How it got 300 feet higher inside of a few hours remained a question for thought among us hikers. Once in the canyon, the route then follows shallow streams and gradually rises 400 feet over the last 5.5 miles of the trail. Walking through water is unavoidable so I always encourage water proof hiking boots, otherwise plan on getting your feet wet. You have a choice on the final two miles to either take the upper trail where you walk mainly in sand and cross several deep sandy gullies, or stick to the creek where you go through the chasm of quicksand. In rainy weather you have to take the upper trail as there is no escaping flash floods on the lower trail at that point. They say to allow at least 4-6 hours hiking time each way, an hour to rest and have lunch, and about one hour to tour Keet Seel. The site tours normally start around 9:30am and are conducted throughout the day as people arrive. Quicksand, climbing up waterfalls, walking in smelly livestock fouled waters you can't drink so you have to pack about 20lbs of water with you? Dangerous cliffs, flash floods, hypothermia, overheating, rock falls, collapsing dirt banks, mountain lions, and cantankerous cattle? What are we doing? Why do this, one may ask?

Well, it's an adventure and it's fun! It is also jam-packed with awesome views of the most breathtaking scenery you have ever seen. I had been contemplating leaving Arizona in the next year or so, but the landscape in the Navajo Nation made me fall in love with Arizona all over again. I think I just hate Phoenix. I started prepping for the trip during the week, as being a Lady of Leisure (i.e. unemployed) and went to REI to shop for hiker chow. Hiker chow comes in packets where you simply add boiling water, seal the pouch for about 6-9 minutes and viola, a gourmet meal awaits you after a long day of hiking. It's usually high calorie as it's meant to replenish your energy after all that hiking. There are several brands, Mountain House usually my favorite. I usually get the beef stroganoff and for breakfast the blueberry granola as all you have to do there is add cold water. But this time a pouch labeled "Biscuits and Gravy" caught my eye. Hmmm.....I love biscuits and gravy for breakfast. So I took that one. I bought the single serving of beef stroganoff and a packet of powdered milk so I could have milk in my coffee as well. When I got to the cash register I was delighted to find out that I had REI dividend credits available so the food cost me nothing! REI operates as kind of a co-op and every time you buy something you get credits toward a dividend you can use to purchase other things. As my finances are limited, this was a blessing. What serendipity, as the whole weekend turned out to have! I got my pack ready with all 30lbs of water and my other gear. I had borrowed a Big Agnus backpack tent from a friend as I was thinking about buying it from him. I would still like to buy it from him, but as it is, right now I ain't got no money. So he let me use it for the weekend and I really liked it. Saturday morning I headed over to Bernie's place to leave my car and pile in with Mike, Kirby and Bernie to carpool to the meeting location with everyone else. Everyone else turned out to be Ron (The Professor) and Diane (Gilligan). Just kidding. Ron is indeed a professor and Diane did get stuck in quicksand as Gilligan often did, but I am getting ahead of my story. When I got there, the boys were tying things to the roof of the SUV. After much re-arranging we got under way. Diane drove her SUV and Ron rode with her and Mike, Kirby, Bernie, and I rode together. We re-grouped at a vegetarian restaurant in Flagstaff called Macy's. When they mentioned Macy's I thought, the department store? Odd. But Macy's is a popular vegetarian hangout in Flagstaff, very bohemian, and you can get some good coffee and pretty decent vegetarian cuisine. It's like dining at the automat though, as you go up and order at a counter and if your order is for a hot dish, they hand it to you to go zap in the microwave. I ordered broccoli and cheddar quiche and it took about three tries in the microwave to get it heated up. But it was delicious as most anything there is. I am not vegetarian but can go that way sometimes, whereas Ron is vegetarian but will make exceptions sometimes, especially if it's Haggis. We ate/drank up and headed for Tuba City to eat yet again.

Tuba City is on the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona. The Navajo name for Tuba City, Tó Naneesdizí translates as “tangled waters” which probably refers to the many springs below the surface of the ground which are the source of several reservoirs. Tuba City is located within the Painted Desert. Most of Tuba City's residents are Navajo with some Hopi. The written history of the town goes back more than 200 years. When Father Francisco Garcés visited the area in 1776, he recorded that the Indians were cultivating crops. The name of the town actually honors Tuuvi, a Hopi Headman from Oraibi. Chief Tuuvi converted to Mormonism around 1870, and invited the Mormons to settle near Moenkopi. The present-day town of Tuba City was founded by the Mormons around 1870. In 1956 Tuba City became a uranium boomtown as the regional office for the Rare Metals Corporation and the Atomic Energy Commission. Five miles to the west of Tuba City is an attraction involving dinosaur tracks. Kirby very much wanted to stop and look but we were kind of on a time constraint to get to Navajo in time for the trail orientation. You must attend an orientation to gain your permit to hike to Keet Seel. But we did stop for lunch at Kate's Cafe, renown for it's hamburgers and sometimes hair in the food, but this time our plates were hair-free. I ordered the amusing secret recipe soup which involved cabbage, potatoes, celery, onion, and what looked like baco-s. A cup of that and a piece of classic Indian Fry Bread and I was set. Ron made an exception to the vegetarian rule and had a bowl of the soup as well. It was graduation day in Tuba City and everyone seemed to converge on Kate's for after ceremony eats. Some oldsters dressed in their traditional Navajo attire, but most were dressed in modern clothing. There was one girl, a graduate I am sure, dressed in a traditional costume and she looked beautiful. I wish I could have taken her photo but it might have been a little insulting. I thought of a fair trade where she could take my photo dressed in traditional Biligana (white man) attire of jeans, Keen sandals and a PADI Total Submersion T-shirt. But who wants a picture of a stranger in a t shirt and jeans in their photo collection? But, teens will be teens as we noticed and there was a large table with a row of young boys all busy text messaging during their lunch.

The Mowry Gang

We set off from there for the roughly hour's drive to Navajo National Monument. When we arrived we went immediately to the visitor's center for orientation and to claim our permits. The sky was pretty threatening and I began thinking of contingency plans as the trail to Keet Seel is treacherous enough on a good day much less with flash flood possibilities. I was hoping for the weather to clear up. As we were waiting for our orientation, another hiking group showed up headed up by Mike's arch rival, the Evil Don Mowry. Mike and Don apparently have a little competitive blood between them with regards to hiking. As in, who can go the fastest. I personally don't understand the reasoning behind power hiking unless it's for exercise. I am content to lumber along at my own pace. Every time Mike would mention something about competing with Don, Kirby would start whistling the theme to "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" which was fairly hilarious.

We camped out at the Sunset View campground where there are no ground fires allowed, so we all turned in fairly early after feasting on shared dished I urged everyone to bring. I didn't sleep very well, as I never do on camp-outs, and I was stressing on what the weather was going to be like and whether or not we would be forced into taking the dreaded upper trail which I heard was far more strenuous than the river. But the next morning was sunny and looked promising. The Mowry Gang was packed up and ready to head out long before us and that did not bode well for the Mike/Mowry rivalry. Things were a bit of a kerfufel that morning with regards to finding battery packs, lost car keys, malfunctioning hiking poles, and various and sundry delays. Kirby is an avid photobug and couldn't find his extra batteries for his camera. Then Diane couldn't get her tent poles to lengthen and stay that way, and Mike saw Bernie's car keys laying on the ground and he picked them up and put them in his pocket. Diane gave up on the hiking poles as not even the engineering genius Professor Ron could even fix them. Bernie urged us to move forward and they would catch up as soon as Kirby found his batteries. I was confident they would as I know Bernie can hike at a pretty good clip, and I don't.

We started down the road which is about a half mile approach trail to the actual trail head. The trailhead is for Keet Seel and Betatakin Ruins. Betatakin is located roughly across from the visitor's center in another canyon. It is an expansive ruin and I must return some day to explore it. It is a ranger led only tour as well but a day hike so you can camp out and hike and come back and camp some more, or take a room at the nearby Anasazi Inn in the hamlet of Tsegi.

When you start down the trail, you get a spectacular view of Dowozhiebiko (pronounced Dowozhiebiko) Canyon. This canyon leads out to the hamlet of Tsegi where the local ranchers can access the canyons via horse, truck or ATV and check on their cattle and horses. The cattle and horses are the reason no one can filter the water in Laguna Creek. There are also traces of heavy metals as in uranium, and no filter can get that out. I have had hikers on previous trips argue with me about this and the fact they think it would be perfectly okay to filter the water. I decided that if I had anyone on this trip like that I would say, go ahead and drink it. They signed the waiver and by the time they get giardiasis we'll have access to medical resources. It is a drag to haul all that water, but a necessary evil.

We descended the cliff to the canyon floor and when we got to the junction of Betatkin trail and the continuation of the Keet Seel trail Bernie was sprinting toward us asking if we knew where her keys were. Mike of course had them and she had not locked the car because she didn't know where they were. We decided that it would be best to lock the car as valuables such as my purse were in there, so Mike dropped his pack, headed back up and locked the car. I was confident he would catch up as he is a machine and is continuously honing his hiking speed to gain advantage on Mowry.

We reached the first of about 500 water crossings and began the trek down Dowozhiebiko Canyon to the junction of Keet Seel Canyon. It is marked by three white posts, the first of which is just beyond the first water crossing. You follow the white posts and they will guide you into the correct canyon. We slogged in and out of the creek trying to avoid the quicksand but sometimes we would find ourselves getting sucked in. It isn't like quicksand you see on Gilligan's Island where it looked like oatmeal, nor like in Tarzan movies where all you would see was the pith helmet of the explorer unfortunate enough to fall into it. This looks like solid damp sand and when you jab your hiking pole into it a few times it gets to looking like chocolate pudding. If you step in it you start sinking and it grips pretty hard. I've heard of people leaving shoes behind they could no longer find after getting stuck in quicksand. The quicksand has never been much of an issue in the previous times I've hiked this trail, but this was the rainiest I've seen it and the quicksand develops after it rains. Peachy.

We regrouped at the Big Waterfall, which about 35ft high and you have to climb up around it. From the top it's about 2 miles to the campground. The decision had to be made of the upper trail or the lower trail. I had never hiked on the upper trail as I am lazy and this one has always been reported to be more difficult. By this time on the trail I am usually fairly knackered and the thought of trundling up deep sandy hills doesn't appeal to me in the very least. It wasn't raining, nor did it look like rain in any direction so it was decided that the probability of a flash flood was slim. In places like Arizona and anywhere in the desert southwest, it doesn't have to be raining right there on you for danger of a flash flood to be imminent. It can be raining 30 miles away and flood waters can drain into the gullies and washes leading right to your feet and sweep you away never to be heard from again. It's happened time and again to the hapless traveler in cars crossing washes, and hikers and campers unlucky enough to be caught in such a place.

We decided to risk it. There are some interesting rock falls and a couple more beautiful waterfalls on the lower trail. I didn't consider that the quicksand would be waiting in quiet repose for us after all the rain in the previous days. We passed the turnoff for the upper trail and headed in to the narrows, also known now as the Chasm of Quicksand. We would sink a bit here and there approaching the next to largest waterfall and when I tried to lead the way up the waterfall that I was familiar with I sank past the tops pf my boots in quicksand. For a couple of lively moments I stepped in and out of it trying to escape but there seemed to be nowhere to go to get away from it. I would get sucked in everywhere I went! My legs charley-horsed and it was painful struggling to get out, especially with a heavy pack on. I finally freed myself as the others cheered on, and I got up the waterfall. I was able to wash my boots off in the rushing water and was looking forward to getting settled in to camp and taking those nasty boots off at this point. We continued and Diane chose poorly a route in the creek between two large boulders. The next thing I know she's mumbling some expletives and is almost up to her mid-thighs in the suck. The rest of us dropped our packs and attempted a rescue. She was able to free herself a bit, we took her pack and camera so she could free herself easier from the muck. This was getting to be like a trip down the Amazon on The African Queen. Of course without a boat.

We made it to the campsite without incident and it was decided then and there we would be exiting the next morning on the upper trail.

The Mowry Gang was already there and had taken the large picnic table though there were only four of them and six of us. They were gracious though and offered up space at their table but Mike refused saying we were content with our four man table. No way were we breaking bread with The Mowry Gang! We set up tents and took some rest before the tour of the ruin. The last time I went out here I opted out of the ruin tour as I had been two times before. But there was a special ranger there this time and Ron had indicated he knew where the spring was that the rangers used to get water and if the ranger wasn't looking he would show me. They used to let hikers replenish water there but after finding discarded shampoo bottles and various other pieces of garbage, they made it off limits. After reaching the ruins we decided against breaking the rules and sneaking downstream. I am not really in a financial capacity to pay tribal fines for violating permits to see a spring, even if there are petroglyphs to see.

The ranger that was there was named Steve Hayden. He was busy with The Mowry Gang and we waited at a scenic overlook for them to return. When they approached one of them said, "Oh, you all finally made it" to which Ron replied, "We've been here for hours, even had a nap". Mike looked at Don and said "Hello, Mowry" and darned if Mowry didn't just snub him. This meant war, obviously, and Mike had the eagle eye on him the rest of the time.

Ranger Steve's grandfather , Irwin was in charge of the excavation along with his son who took pictures. Ranger Steve is now working on a book about the endeavor. It was a treat to have such a tour guide. He was able to explain all the politics involved and the things his grandfather and father experienced while working at the site. I tried to con him into letting us go to the Turkey Alcove and Turkey Cave just upstream as they are unexcavated and I have always wanted to see a pristine ruin. These sites are probably not completely pristine as the likes of the Wetherhills and others have been rummaging around these parts for nearly 200 years. Steve informed us that the site could be closed at any time as the safety is precarious at best. You have to climb a 70 foot ladder held to the cliff facing with bailing wire at best. As soon as you ascend the 70 foot wall of hell, you are on insidious ground as erosion and unstable ruin walls make it a delicate tour at best.

Once we completed the tour it was back down the ladder of death to the base of the ruin. We marched it back to camp despite my extreme desire to break the rules and sneak over to the Turkay Alcove, but why risk a tribal fine? We dines on our various pouches of hiker chow and believe me, that freeze dred stuff can be pretty tasty after a grueling, laborous hike though mud and quicksand.

Biscuits and Gravy

The next morning brought on the biscuit and gravy project. As mentioned earlier, hiker chow is meant to be simple. Then when I read the method of preparation for the biscuits and gravy I was ready to have beef jerky for breakfast and call it even. There were not one but two pouches involved, lowering heat to a simmer was involved and dropping the dough into the gravy was involved. It was more like dumplings and gravy instead of biscuits and gravy. I managed to cook some of them and shared with Ron but gave the remainder a Christian burial out in the woods. I need to interject here the difficulty in lowering a camp stove to a "simmer" as well. The things are meant to boil water and that is about all. Emeril would not be using a camp stove, there just aren't enough heat settings. Boil n eat. That's about all backpacking food should involve.

We stayed on the upper trail on the way out and it proved to be a much better choice. When I go back next year (did I just admit to that?) I am using the upper trail both in and out. Mike took off ahead of everyone and I was confident he was going to catch up the the Mowry Gang, but Ron and I caught up to him and Diane along the way. Ron and I hiked together for a long time having philosophical discussions about such deep topics as cosmology and dating websites. We crossed the sand dune near the swampy area dn there was something on the ground ahead of us that looked bloody and was drawing flies. We stared at the bio-mass for a good long while, and I mentioned it looked like a job for CSI as I couldn't make heads or tails, literally, of what it may have been. Ron snapped a couple of pictures and we were off. Later that evening over dinner in Flagstaff we decided it must have been some sort of afterbirth.

At the base of the cliff, we offloaded what would have been extra water and we all started up. I fell behind almost immediately as I was very tired. I hiked up alone for the most part left to daydream and ponder things and I couldn't decide what ate my lunch more. The sand dunes that went straight up the hill or the steep stair switchbacks. I eventually made it to the top, thinking, never again, but I have a feeling that wasn't my last trek to Keet Seel ruins.

For a full pictorial, click here.

Until the next adventure,
The ScubaJedi

Hiking and Diving in One Weekend

2009-04-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite things to do in this life are SCUBA and hiking/camping/backpacking. Okay that's four things, but I can combine hiking with camping via backpacking. This past weekend I was able to go hiking and go scuba diving. Talk about a great weekend. There's scant little that could have made it better, but I'll keep that to myself. Today I feel like I've been hit by a bus.

I lead a group hike out to Parson's Spring in the Verde Valley. The trail goes along a year round spring with a number of good swimming areas. It was a little nippy out there to be swimming, at least for adults. At one point when we stopped for lunch at an overhang to a deep water hole there were some kids jumping in and screaming when they hit the water.

The day started out kind of chilly and remained that way until later afternoon. Of course we were going to the higher elevations and therefore it was even colder. The last time I did this trail it was later in the spring and way too hot. It is difficult to determine when a great time would be to hike in this area as it does get really hot, and the water is inviting and beautiful but the hike would kill you with heat. Then when you go when we went this past weekend of April 4, it was cool enough to enjoy the hike but you really can't get in the water with anything less that a dry suit unless you're a teenager.

I had at one time a full hike as Sierra Club only allows 20 people on a hike, and that is for good reason. Impact on the environment, and as a leader, wrangling more that that becomes too much of a challenge. As usual, I ended up with 8 people showing up. Some were courteous enough to call and bail, others just blew it off. So, next time you want to sign up for one of my hikes and you don't give a shit about commitment and responsibility, save your strength flakester. Go with Meet Up or some other slap dash irresponsible disorganized group if you can't even be polite enough to notify the organizer that you're too boozed up and partied out from Friday night to go on the hike. I don't care. I just don't like being stood up by rude, irresponsible amateurs. Neither do the other outings leaders, makes us not want to bother organizing these outing.

Anyway, enough of the soapbox pet peeve rant. The people that did show up were of the finest quality. They were good sports about precarious river crossings and hanging on the edge of a small cliff. There was an alternate way of going through one part of the trail but I like the narrow ledge because it's more fun. I was subject to a stoning from the other hikers, but they survived as I knew they would.

The trail goes on for about 4 miles then gets really hard to follow. I usually stop at a certain point when the hikers become whiny and ask how much further. Further to what? I ask....you can keep going forever. We turned around and headed back to the cars. Afterwards we went to Jerome to eat the The Haunted Hamburger, a popular restaurant that was once a guest house in the mining days. Jerome was mining camp established on the side of Cleopatra Hill in 1883. It was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, a New York investor who owned the mineral rights and financed mining there. Eugene Jerome never visited his namesake town. Jerome was incorporated as a town on the 8th of March, 1889. Local merchant and rancher William Munds was the first mayor. The town housed the workers in the nearby United Verde Mine, which was to produce over 1 billion dollars in copper, gold and silver over the next 70 years. Jerome became a notorious "wild west" town, a hotbed for prostitution, gambling and vice. There has never been a more wretched hive of scum and villany.

The town eventually deteriorated and today it's a quaint retreat with B&B's and art and craft shop, and oh yes, The Haunted Hamburger. Many of the towns buildings are reputed to be haunted.

It was late getting back and I barely had time for 40 winks before I had to get up and go hit the lake for a morning of scuba diving. Lake Pleasant is an articial resevior first created by the Waddell Dam, which was finished in 1928. The lake originally had a surface area of 3,700 acres and served as a private irrigation project. At 76 feet high and 2,160 feet long, the original Waddell Dam was, at its completion, the largest agricultural dam project in the world. The lake was filled by the Agua Fria River, capturing a large watershed throughout Yavapai County.

A new dam was completed in 1993 which tripled the surface area of the lake. Lake Pleasant is used as a major water sports recreation center for the Phoenix metro area, as well as serving as an important storage reservoir for the rapidly growing region. A number of boat docks make the lake a popular destination for water skiing, jet skiing, sailing and other water sports, and the lake is stocked with a number of fish for angling purposes. The lake is also popular for scuba divers in the Phoenix area, as it is the only lake with marginal visibility. As it is an articial lake, there is a lot of silt and frankly, it's is kind of neat in a creepy way to see a flooded canyon. It's like going on a hike under water. Many desert plants are still there and if you go too shallow you end up picking burrs off your wetsuit. Palo Verde trees and Ocotillo plants are still down there and it makes for an interesting dive. There are also some fish as evidenced by the fishing people who boat around the lake and have no clue what a diver down flag means. At one point when a fishing boat was going over the top of our bubbles, Karen who was on surface support, mentioned to them that there were divers right below. They smiled affably and said, "Oh, is that what those bubbles are" and continued their motoring with the fishing lines dangling in. Stoooopid!

The lake was very choppy when we started out on the pontoon craft. There are a couple of operators who the local dive shops use to take students getting their open water certifications and today I was with The Scubateers. They are really nice people and provide tanks and weights and a boat. Shore diving on Lake Pleasant, at least in my experience, really sucks. So it's worth it to get ona boat. I was thinking about buying a couple of tanks, but I can't even look after my regulator properly so imagine how badly I'd treat a cylinder.

I set up my gear and lo and behold, my reg was all jacked up. The spare air was free flowing so we ended up taking the low pressure hose off and putting an octo on. I have a regulator with two hoses, one for the second stage and one for the low pressure hose that attaches to my BC providing my spare air. So I was going to have to inflate my BC manually. (A BC is the vest where all your scuba crap attaches and it inflates to compensate for buoyancy). Then I get geared up and ready to splash and my second stage won't allow me to exhale. Fuck. So I stepped back and began troubleshooting. I guess I had not really rinsed my reg out well enough after my last ocean dive and there was some salty buildup. I soaked the thing, as you do, but not well enough. We got it cleaned out and I was able to hook my low pressure hose back up and even though the second stage was still hissing (leaking) I was able to complete two dives. So, Mr Regulator will be back in the shop today for service to make sure it's all working properly for my real dive trip to Grand Cayman next month.

The lake is good for testing gear like that. Better to find out then if your gear is wonky then out in the ocean on a dive boat on a trip where you can't do anything about it but rent gear from a local shop. My new fins worked out really well though and I think I will be able to ditch the additional ankle weights that helped keep my legs from floating upwards. It's a double edged sword in the idea that I won't have to bring the additional weight on an airplane where they charge you for wearing shoes these days, but the new fins are heavier and so I end up with as much weight as if I brought the ankle weights. But, I don't have to mess with wearing extra gear.

The water was cold and murky as usual, but I had a great time, as usual. I'll probably go out for one more dive on the lake before going to the Caymans.

Until the next adventure,

The ScubaJedi

For a full pictorial of this adventure, click HERE

On the Road in San Diego

2009-03-25T11:44:00.000-07:00

How Do You Kill a Saturday Morning?

I had never spent too much time in San Diego other than to go to the zoo. So the opportunity arose where I could attend (and speak) at a conference for Financial Professionals in San Diego and I took it. Being purely mercenary, of course, I thought, I can go a day early and get in a morning of diving. I booked three dives aboard The Marissa for Sunday morning, March 22 and bought some extra gear for cold water. I needed a 7mm suit and I got some new fins that are slightly negatively buoyant because in all the neoprene you're going to bob like a cork unless you're really leaded down.

So after carefully planning my trip and my diving etc, buying a thick wetsuit and the fins (close to $500.) I get a call Friday afternoon saying the dive trip was canceled due to weather. I was disappointed to say the least. On the bright side, they called before I schlepped all that gear only to find out that we weren't going. So now I had to figure out how to entertain myself in lieu of scuba diving. A friend mentioned that he heard there was a pretty respectable aquarium in the area so I thought I would check that out as a consolation prize.

The flight is pretty short to San Diego and we were on US Airways. I have never experienced an airline that can nickel and dime you to death than US Airways. I went ahead and paid for a first class upgrade on the way out and therefore was spared the cost of checking a bag. Yes, the COST of checking a bag. Pure rip-off plain and simple. I am going to whine for a little bit here. For years and years it was no extra cost to check a bag. Now all of a sudden they charge you for it no matter what it is, even a small gym bag. So as a result people are bringing the kitchen sink on board the aircraft, yet they discourage carry ons. So what are we supposed to do? Go naked and bring nothing with us and just buy everything we need, including clothing when we arrive at our destination? With all the terrorist hoaxes and scares they have restricted what you can bring to the point where I can't bring Listerine. So I have to go shopping the minute I get anywhere to buy simple things I could have brought from home but can't because if I check it it will cost and extra fee and I can't take it on board. WTF?? So anyway, air travel just isn't any fun any more. I think I am going to learn to fly a Gyro copter and fly myself around. How hard can that be?

We got there at 9am and had until 2pm to goof off until we could get into the conference center and set up our booth. My co-workers, Frank and Charlene, wanted to go see Shamu. I thought that would be fun as I hadn't been to Sea World in a very long time. We checked in to our respective rooms and decided to meet down in the lobby. By the time we got there we decided it was probably too late to go see Shamu, so we went for a stroll through a shopping/dining area and then down to the USS Midway. We stopped in every candy and ice cream shop along the way.

The USS Midway(CVB/CVA/CV-41) was an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, the lead ship of her class, and the first to be commissioned after the end of World War II. Active in the Vietnam War and in Desert Storm, as of 2008 she is a museum ship in San Diego, California. She is the only remaining US aircraft carrier of the World War II era that is not an Essex-class ship.

Midway was laid down 27 October 1943 by Newport News Shipbuilding Co., Newport News, Virginia. Her revolutionary hull design was based on what would have been the Montana class battleships and gave her superior maneuverability over all previous carriers. She was launched 20 March 1945; sponsored by Mrs. Bradford William Ripley, Jr.; and commissioned 10 September 1945, Captain Joseph F. Bolger in command (Wikipedia, 2009).

We paid our $17 and hopped aboard.

Charlene got a military discount because of her stint in the Walking Army, as we Navy folk call them. There are many stairs on a carrier and it is not friendly to the physically challenged, so we had to listen to Frank kvetch every time we went up and down stairs. The start of the tour, which is self guided, is on the hangar deck. There were a couple of planes in there and I wondered how they got them up to the top deck where they could take off. There was a small yellow plane as you came in where they would take your photo then sell it to you later. Of course we bought our photos, we were such a striking looking trio.

I visited The Midway in the 1970s when I was a kid and it was docked at Mayport, FL. I remember running through the corridors like you do when you're a kid loose on an aircraft carrier, and tripping on the bottoms of the the water tight doors. Each doorway is closed with a water tight hatch and therefore you have to step up to go through the doorways. We walked through the "racks" where sailors sleep it off after shore leave and I think those were the original mattresses from 1945. We went down to the bowels of the ship to have a look at the engine room where my dad spent most of his time as he was a Chief Warrant Officer positioned in the engine room of the ships he was on in the Navy. The only aircraft carrier my father was on was the USS Lexington, which was sunk during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. Fortunately for him (and me and my brother) he was reassigned to the USS Lamberton before the sinking.

There was a simulator area and two choices for pretending to fly an actual aircraft. One was a "ride" and the other was an actual intro class where you were briefed for about 30 minutes before flying your F-16. I really wanted to do it, especially if Captain Handsome who was running the show would have joined me. I am sure he was retired Navy as active Navy fliers are too busy with all the war going on. But macho, handsome, and hunky nonetheless, very Top Gun. I like 'em arrogant and cocky. Especially in a flight suit.

After the Midway we decided it was nap time. Then it was booth set up time, then it was dinner time. What a life.

The next day the conference officially started, but not until noon. So I spent the morning at the aquarium in La Jolla. I took the rental car and drove up the I-5 to La Jolla, which also boasts of good diving areas. I was pleased to see the Pacific storm rolling in as promised so I wouldn't feel too sore at not being able to dive that day.

Birch Aquarium at Scripps (sometimes referred to as Scripps Aquarium or Birch Aquarium) is the public exploration center for the world-renowned Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Birch Aquarium at Scripps has an annual attendance of about 400,000, including more than 77,000 school children, most of them there that day it seemed, and features more than 5,000 animals representing 380 species. The hilltop site provides spectacular views of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography campus and the Pacific Ocean, where I could see the fog, wind, and rolling waves.

Birch Aquarium can't compare to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, but it had to suffice in lieu of me actually diving in with the kelp.

Afterward, I headed back to the Hyatt and into my conference wear. A staggeringly ugly green golf shirt and some black pants. I got to hang out and talk about CRM software to passers by for the rest of the afternoon. After the aquarium, this trip got dull fast as all we did was hang out at the conference and eat. I did a talk for a workshop on Monday and I won't bore you with the gory details from that.

Maybe next time, I'll have an actual adventure to write about.

The ScubaJedi

The Dating Adventure

2009-02-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

11 First Dates

So a workmate and I decided we would go to a speed dating event. It was to take place on a weekday night and the venue was not far from where we work. The premise of speed dating is you sit with a person for a very short amount of time and talk and get to know each other as much as possible in 5-8 minutes. This particular one gave you 6 minutes to talk with the other person. Six minutes can be either very long or very short. At the end of the evening you turn in a list of who you think you want to see again and they compare it with the others lists and see if there are any matches. The only way they will notify you is if there is a mutual match. That is to say, if you pick the guy and he does not pick you, there is no match. So if none of your men picked you then you get a consolation prize and sent on your merry. They never tell you who was interested in you if you weren't interested in them.

We arrived in enough time to obtain and adult beverage (or two) and find our way back to the private dining area. The tables were set up so that women would sit on the inside and the men would rotate around the outside. They were those half-booths where one side is a bench and the other a chair. I was situated between my workmate, we'll call her Hannah for confidentiality purposes, and another lady. My first date was with a guy who wore a suit and tie. He was the only one in a suit and tie. Before we began, I notice that the majority of women were 5'8" or greater and the majority of men were 5'7" or lesser. No offense to the vertically challenged males, but most women do not like to feel like a giant gazorp towering over their man. So this was going to be interesting.

As I said, my first date was a bookish looking fellow wearing a suit and tie. He was cordial and friendly, but Hannah thought he was a dork. She would talk to them after I did as they rotated left. The next guy made my jaw drop. I knew him already. This town is entirely too small, I have decided. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I was dating a guy I met at a party, and this guy was with him. They were friends, and still are. Without going into too much gory detail, we were together for around 7 months before he went koo-koo and dumped me to return to his estranged, crazy wife whom he promised me he was going to divorce. Since then a strict "unless there has been a final divorce, they are still married and therefore un-dateable" rule has been in effect in my life. We live and learn, right?

Anyway, this guy, the friend, didn't recognize me. When he finally did his eyes flew open in recognition and surprise. We talked a bit, he said my ex was still with the crazy wife yet still talks about me realizing what a mistake he made. No duh. I said, well, you get what you settle for. He really needed someone very very dependent and needy and the psycho biatch fit the bill way better than me. I can be needy, but am overall very independent and stubborn and proud to a fault. But now he's stuck with her and according to the friend his life has been hell. I said on the contrary, since he dumped me my life has been like Astronaut Fantasy Camp. I learned to scuba dive and have been traveling all over to exotic locations like South America and the Caribbean. My career was going very very well, I have a fantastic circle of loyal, fun, interesting friends, and to top it off I look fabulous (according to him, I'm not that conceited). I am sure he's going to go back and report this to he who dumped me. Yes, gentle readers, living well is the best revenge, though not a type of revenge found too often in opera plots.

So the bell rang and he moved on. After which a series of forgettable dates who would have to be slightly more interesting to merely bore me. If I were to hear "I like to work out, stay fit" one more time I was going to blow my martini right in their face. Puh-leeze. We took a break then came back and my next date was nowhere to be found and we thought the guy bailed. I sat there dateless for a couple of minutes then my troll came scampering in the room with a drink. I looked at his name tag and commented that that was an interesting name and he commenced to explaining to me all about how he came to be named. For five of his six minutes he went on about it. Then the blessed bell rang but the bloke just kept on. I had stopped listening at about 3 minutes and was thinking about when my new scuba gear would arrive and hoped it would be before the 8th of March as that's when I am going to hit the lake and test it out. One of the organizers had to tap him on the shoulder and tell him to move on. I swear he looked like some sort of Harry Potter character. So now Hannah got to talk to him.

At the end of the evening I wrote down my choices. I wasn't really interested in any of them as I didn't find that I had anything in common with them and they weren't very interesting overall, I am sorry to say. I would do it again for the fun of it, and I certainly don't take it personally that none of the guys there was very interested in me either. Or at least none that I know of as they don't tell you.

Next time, a real adventure.
The ScubaJedi

On the Road in California

2009-01-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

The City by the Bay

I was born in the Bay Area of California. I haven't revisited the area for a very long time as we moved from there at the end of 1970. I returned a couple of times on business trips, but like all business trips you really don't get to see much except the inside of an airplane, the inside of a taxi, the inside of a hotel room, and the inside of a meeting room. So when the opportunity arose to tour the Bay Area and Southern California on a week long series of seminars, I gladly accepted. There were some shenanigans to be worked in between gigs and it promised to be worth the go. I could see more than the inside of meeting rooms.

I was among a group from work to present our latest release of software, and was billed first every day. I spoke from 9 to 10 every morning, then got to sit around until noon when the event concluded and was then mobbed with questions from the audience. There were three other speakers, partners of my company who make add-on solutions to the core product. After day one I made my hour more interactive. I discovered people were mostly there to get a free breakfast and get one or two questions answered, and rather than listen as I spoke, they daydreamed until the Q&A section. Then they would ask about something I went over ad nauseum during the demo. Fortunately, everyone was clear and understandable when they asked their questions. It used to be I would present to very technical people, there were always some non-Engrish speaking fellows in the crowd who would always have a bunch of questions. I would have to ask them to repeat the question several times and I would still not make out what they were asking. I got some sage advice from a colleague who worked for IBM that helped out tremendously. When you can't understand the question, you say, "What a great question, but you know, it's a little beyond the scope of today's presentation, so let's take that off line and talk about it after." Then after you're done, you pack up your shit as fast as you can and make tracks before they can hunt you down.

The first day was in Milpitas, California which is in Silicone Valley near San Jose. We would be making our way down to the other Silicon Valley, Southern California ( where the silicone is implanted in the robot-women that live down there), in a day or so, but we had the Bay Area to tackle first. The routine was get up, do our gig, then 7 of us would pile into a huge SUV, the kind that are detectable by satelites in orbit, driven by our fearless leader, the orchestrator of the whole boondogle, Alex. Alex is a big amiable guy with a quick wit and boyish good looks. He may be the whitest guy you would ever want to meet. Which is why it surprised me greatly when he insisted on listening to vile, loud, booming, bass enhanced hip hop music in the SUV. I took a position in the very back of the bus hoping to escape the "music" but, the auto manufacturer saw fit to include speakers in the back as well.

We took the 101 up north to San Francisco. I was born in Oakland (East Bay) and lived in San Mateo, which is between San Jose and San Francisco. I have put a lot of miles in up and down the 101. They have done some work on it, but many parts still resound with the thunka-thunka on the tires that I remember. As stated earlier, it had been a very long time since I had been this way, and my memories are mostly from when I was a 10 year old girl. But when we passed Moffett Field, a Naval Air Base, I was thrilled to see Hangar One still standing proudly.

Moffett Field's Hangar One was built during the depression for the USS Macon, an airship built and operated by the U.S Navy. The row of WWII blimp hangars are still some of the largest unsupported structures in the country. Hangar One's floor covers eight acres and can accommodate 10 football fields. The building has aerodynamic architecture, and its walls curve upward and inward, to form an elongated dome 198 feet high. The clam-shell doors were designed to reduce turbulence when the Macon moved in and out on windy days. The interior is so large that fog sometimes forms near the ceiling! Anyone unaccustomed to its vastness is susceptible to optical disorientation. Looking across its deck, planes and tractors look like toys. Along its length maintenance shops, inspection laboratories and offices help keep the hangar busy. Looking up, a network of catwalks for access to all parts of the structure can be seen. Two elevators meet near the top, allowing maintenance personnel to get to the top quickly and easily. Of course I never saw any of this, I only got to see it driving by on the way to or from wherever my parents were taking me. I am sure they had tours of the thing by the 1960's, but my folks couldn't be bothered. There is an aviation museum there I would very much like to visit, and now on my list of things to do in this life is to return to the Bay Area as strictly a tourist.

As a child though, not to villianize my parents too much, we did at one point get to tour the USS Midway. But that was an aircraft carrier and my father approved of that type of thing as he was a Navy veteran and former sailor.

San Francisco is just as exciting as I remember it, except with more urine. Being a liberal, groovy kind of place, home to legions of flower children in the Summer of Love, 1969, the homeless are in abundance, tolerated and therefore very aggressive. The streets are steep and narrow and the people living there really do walk, resulting in great glutes. After arriving, we checked in to the Donatello, a posh hotel on the corner of Macon and Post. We got a screamin rate and Alex boasted that the SF Giants stay here. I wondered why a local sports team would need to stay in a hotel. Don't they live there? But, what do I know about sports? The gang started talking sports at many times in the trip and my eyes would glaze over and I would think about how cold it would be to dive in San Francisco Bay, or what was for dinner that evening. At one point they were talking about some athlete and how he was practically built for his sport (swimming, I think) and I asked who it was they were talking about. Vic, one of our partners who had come down from Canada for the trip, was incredulous and thought I must live under a rock. I just don't pay any attention to sports of any kind with the exception of diving, and I mean of the SCUBA type. There aren't any real celebrity SCUBA divers, with the exception of the Cousteaus, and there's just so much you can get excited about there. Wow, that Jacques really hung in there. Did you know his boat was called The Calypso? People just don't get jazzed en masse about the bottom of the ocean. There's no SCUBA Super Bowl, and you don't see guys sitting around on the weekend drinking beer, eating chicken wings and watching PBS specials about the ocean wearing the wetsuit of their favorite diver.

So I was odd man out there, until they started talking about fancy cars. Then I was even more glazed over.

We decided on sushi for lunch. I would have been equally thrilled if they said we were going out for dog food for lunch. But, the majority rules so off I went for Bay Area Sushi. Chris, another partner who had come from Denver, was my only ally on the anti-sushi front. We were outnumbered. We were told of a place up Post Street, and when I say up, I mean up. We hoofed it on a steep incline for a couple of blocks, and I have no idea how Rachel, the only other female in the group, managed with the high heels.

The sushi place was small and very San Francisco like. We sat at the bar and I needed instructions on how to go about ordering. I decided to try the sushi, as I had never eaten it thinking that raw seafood is really just fishbait. I think Chris stayed on the safe side and ordered teriyaki and I went wild and ordered a combo plate of three pieces of sushi and some deep fried veggies and shrimp. As long as it's breaded and deep fried, I'm okay with it. The food looked wonderful, the presentation very nice, but I ended up letting my fishies swim to other people's plates at the end of the day.

The others made their way back to the hotel to get ready for our tour of Giants Stadium and I took off looking for a Walgreens to buy a few personal items I neglected to pack. I had asked the bellman at the hotel where the nearest Walgreens was and he pointed out the door and said just up ther street. When he said that I assumed (!) Mason Street, aka, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I can't believe cars without four wheel drive can even get up these streets. I mean, San Francisco was built before the days of the Silver Spade excavator and the leveling of hills. So the streets are verticle. I hoofed it up to the top of Mason and was completely out of breath. I am in pretty good shape too. I hiked rim to river back to rim at the Grand Canyon in one day. I cried, but I did it. This was grueling. All for some Secret anti-persperant. Crap. The drugstore wasn't there after all. I came back down Mason and turned back on to Post and went that way. Still no store. I ended up ducking into a local general store and bought some Secret that had probably been on the shelf for 15 years. But at this point I was desperate. I was working up quite the sweat and things were at critical mass so I caved and took what I could get.

Ira, one of our partners, knows a lot of people. One of his connections is a PR guy for the San Francisco Giants. He managed to get us a private behind the scenes tour of Giants Stadium. I have already mentioned how excited I am about sports, but I went along because it was a go and what else did I have to do? I could have wandered down to the Castro and looked at the gay people. But I've seen gay people and have never been in a men's locker room. Fine line, I know, so I chose Giants Stadium.

What can I tell you. It was a stadium. We got to go behind the scenes then out on the field. The best part was when it was over and we got to go to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. Of course it was a seafood restaurant, so screwed again and not in that fun spanky way. I almost didn't order anything, but I gave in and got a pasta dish that was quite good.

After dinner I was beat and ready to hang out in my posh room at the Donatello. Some of the others opted to continue partying and the reports the next morning consisted of some lively moments in an Irish pub involving male cross dressers and an altercation with a homeless man.

After the meeting, and I'll spare the gory details of a software workshop, we were treated to dimsum, which I like considerably better than sushi. We walked quite a distance to what was once a main post office in San Fran and is now some sort of inner city food court. I thought it was a heck of a schlep to go to the food court, but there was a real restaurant in there that did a dim sum brunch. After that we headed to the San Jose Airport where we were in high hopes of getting on an earlier flight. Greg, one of our team, managed to get to the counter fast and hopped the next flight. Southwest Airlines is a lot like riding a bus in the air. An Air Bus. Hmmm, must be the thought behind the hardware. Anyway, these were garden variety 727 aircraft and me, Alex, Ira, and Chris had to wait until 8:55pm for our flight as our 7:00 was cancelled because of some mechanical failure, and I suspect, low passenger count. Adam, the Southern California sales rep was going to meet us in Orange County the next day and Rachel, the Northern California sales rep departed back to Phoenix.

We arrived at SNA and got our next gigantic SUV and headed to the Hilton. When we got there we were pretty punchy and the desk clerk told me they were upgrading my room to a suite with a hide-a-bed. I started laughing and looked at the clerk and said that sounds like a punishment. Why don't I take the dually out back and use the little tin shack with the crescent moon on it for the toilet? I mean honestly, a hide-a-bed? I took the room and it was luxurious, with the exception of grammas hide-a-bed. There was a formal dining table for 8 people, full kitchen, huge flat screen TV. I would have traded it for a comfy bed.

We did our gig at the Hilton, took lots of pictures and were off to Beverly Hills. Hollywood wasn't far and I organized a little safari later that evening up Sunset Boulevard. I thought Adam would get a kick out the the Guitar Center flagship store and the "Rock Walk". Then we could hoof it down to the Whisky -a-go-go where many legendary bands, such as The Doors, got their start. We hired a car to take us there and no shit, it must have taken him a half hour to drive us four blocks. The traffic was bad, but the driver was worse. I don't think he really knew you could press the gas pedal and let go the brake. He dropped us off, took our $40 and told us to call him when we were ready to come back. We looked at all the famous rock star hand prints in cement then went in the store. I made for the acoustic section as I prefer to play the acoustic guitar and thus sought out my favorite brand, The Ovation. All they had was the cheap made in Korea models and I was disappointed. So I played a couple of them then the boys came back and we looked at the classic electric models ranging in price from $2k to $90k. I got them to stand in from the the guitar wall as if they were rock stars with attitude rather than the gaggle of nerds they really are. We left and I said the Whisky was just up the street, let's go. We walked. And walked. And walked walked walked. Finally Greg asked, "Where in the hell is this place?" I pulled the address out of my pocket and told him. He looked at the address where we were and he said it was 14 more blocks. I sheepishly looked at him and shrugged. You're talking to a hiker. We then flagged a cab and were dropped off in front of the infamous Whisky a go-go. I was grinning ear to ear but the guys were trying to get away from there as fast as they could. I was ready to go in and Greg said he'd like to get something to eat before drinking any alcohol. We walked up the street a little and and found Frankie and Johnnys Famous Pizza. While having pizza and listening to a no less than hilarious story of an internet date gone awry by one of the guys, I was informed of their reluctance to go into the Whisky. I said I knew we didn't really fit in but I didn't care and I was told that it's "different" for woman. The indication was that as men, they would be seen as not belonging there by the multi-pierced/tattoed crowd that was there and would therefore end up legs up in the dumpters out back.

My Name is Hollywood

So instead of the boys risking an ass-whooping at the Whisky A G0-G0, we sauntered across the street to pay a visit to the Hustler Superstore. It's an adult store based on Hustler Magazine and so you can guess what the inventory consists of.

At one point we wandered into the area where you must be over 18 to go in to. There was a plethora of DVD's, some of which I would pick up and ask the guys, "Gee, what's this one about?" Then there was the Wall of Toys. BOB's in every size, shape, and color you can imagine. For those of you wondering, BOB stands for Battery Operated Boyfriend. Unlike most men, they are very reliable, however they don't converse well and they'll never get the dinner check (but then again, the same can be said for many men as well). But in a way it is liberating to know that they will never call or e-mail you either. That frees you up to do other things besides staring at your Blackberry. I picked out a hot pink one and told the guys that I was going to buy it and use it as my laser pointer tomorrow for the presentation. The smart ass remarks continued and we were in a heap on the floor. Laughing to the point of tears, and the sad part was we were acting like teenagers yukking it up and there were people around seriously shopping. I wanted the guys to stand in front of the Wall of Toys so I could get a photo as I did at Guitar Center with them in front of the classic guitars. They bolted from the area before I could get any incriminating shots. Actually, I respected the fact we were all working mates and only took one photo, and that was out front of Jenna Jameson's handprints. There was a porno walk much like the Rock Walk and the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Blvd. Adam pointed to Jameson's handprints and said, "Those are some nasty hands."

After the Hustler store we headed to another hang out called The Red Rock (or something like that). Adam and Ira had one drink and decided to head back to the hotel. Chris, Greg and I decided to stay and get shit-faced. Some very pretty Hollywood type girls came in and Chris zeroed in on them and even coaxed one into dancing with him. I don't remember a whole lot after that, except that I was told later that none of us knew where we were staying when we had to tell the cabbie where to take us. I think Greg text messaged Adam to ask what hotel we were at.

The next thing I know my phone is ringing and it's time to head to the conference center. I am of course still in my jammies, have no recollection of how I got into them and don't care to think about it. But, I was in my own room, alone, all my ID and things were there and I was really really disastrously late. I felt like my head was in a vice grip. I am notorious for never suffering hangovers, but this was the exception. I was a hammerhead. I didn't have time to shower, barely time to brush my teeth, I just pulled on the first professional looking outfit available, threw the rest in my bags and headed out the door. I knew I looked as bad as I felt. I rushed to the SUV which was loaded and ready to go, they were waiting for me. Hells bells. This was gonna be good. Ira asked, "So, how ya feeling today, Hollywood". Smart ass. Then Alex took to pounding the rap music at full volume and I offered him $1000 to shut the radio off. He told me he couldn't hear me because the radio was too loud.

We got to the venue, I was all business, got it set up and was on at 9 am. I put my game face on and was bubbly, cheerful, informative and receptive to questions. I was "on".Once I was through, I packed up my stuff, went in back where no one could see me and passed out. Much to my chagrin, it wasn't over. We were to go straight to the taping of the Tonight Show starring Jay Leno right after we finished up the seminar. My head was about to explode and to top it off I was getting a sore throat. We parked at a restaurant across the street as NBC studios doesn't provide for visitor parking. We had gotten VIP tickets from one of our partners who does some acting on the side. He's played in many television shows and movies in bit parts and supporting roles. We stopped in at the restaurant and had a bite to eat. I was still feeling pretty rotten and desperately wanted a shower and a bottle of Advil. Chris told me a Bloody Mary would help, so I had one. I didn't drink it all. It helped a little, but not as much as someone shooting me to put me out of my misery would have. As of this writing I have yet to touch another drink of alcohol.

The Tonight Show was fun. I could tell they've done this before. Jay Leno came out ahead of time and told everyone what to expect, to please laugh, especially during the monologue, and just have a good time.

After the show we finally went to our hotel. Our partner, Daniel, invited us over to his house that evening rather than going out to dinner somewhere and we were happy to go. We went to the hotel first and I can say I have rarely enjoyed a grooming experience so much, even after a three day camping trip. I changed my clothes, got lots of fluids in me, lots of Advil in me and went to meet the guys again. Daniel had a beautiful home in North Hollywood with a huge flat screen television and a nice dog.

The next day went without incident and we were once again at the airport awaiting a flight. Flying out of John Wayne airport in Orange County is always a treat. The main runway, at 5,701 feet is one of the shortest of any major airport in the United States, resulting in most passenger aircraft operating from the airport to be no larger than the Boeing 757. Because of the rich people living here, the area that lies directly South of John Wayne Airport is considered a noise sensitive area. The short primary runway, coupled with the local noise restrictions, can require a takeoff at or near full power (95-97% power). Some aircraft operating from the airport may cycle to full power while holding at the runway then release the brakes when engines are fully spooled up. So basically, the pilot just peels out making for an exciting takeoff. On operations from this runway a steep climb may also be required to allow for a power reduction at about 500-700 feet above ground level for quieter overflight over the city of Newport Beach. I know someone who lives in Newport Beach and I am glad he isn't being disturbed by the noisy commercial aircraft from SNA.

And that was my trip to California. Next stop, I believe, is gong to be a foray deep in the heart of Texas!

Until next time, that's all from The ScubaJedi.

For a full pictorial journal, click here.

The Moving Adventure

2008-12-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

Due the the overwhelming crazy high rent I was paying for my posh North Scottsdale apartment, I decided to economize and find a cheaper place. I was originally going to find a house to share with a pal, but I bailed on that idea, ticking off the pal. But, as I am a self-absorbed twit, I needed to live alone, with the cats.
As it turned out, the apartment complex across the street was cheaper, nicer, bigger, and they had a unit available in a choice location in the 'plex. I was granted the privilege of -0- move in with the exception of cat rent. I pay an extra few bucks a month for cat rent. I mean, do people with out of control bratty kids pay extra for the destructive screaming zonkers? No. But my cat, who mostly sleeps all day is a damage risk I have to pay a premium for. It just isn't fair. I mean, honestly, kids are far more destructive than a cat.
Anyway, I decided to move everything over that would fit in my car and leave the big stuff for the movers. My friend Bruce came over the day I got keys to the new place and commented that the apartments were so close that I could just get a couple of dudes to hand stuff over the fence. He may be right as far as the little stuff goes, but I have a leather sofa the size and weight of a Volkswagen I'm sure no one would be too happy about handing over a fence.
My new downstairs neighbor, Barbara, came out and met me. I apologized ahead of time for the thunderous noise the cat makes when all three pounds of her races across the floor. She said no worries, anything would be an improvement over the prior tenants. Apparently there were three young Scottsdale women living there. Barbara said she wasn't really sure who exactly lived there as there were people non-stop in and out of there. She was pretty sure they were running a brothel out of the apartment. They flooded the place at one point in some freakish bathroom accident and damaged both units. As a result, I scored brand new carpet.
This past Saturday (Dec 6) I moved in as far as sleeping there. I moved my kitchen stuff over and Nunya came by on Saturday and helped me move my clothes and shoes. Shoes. More shoes. Shoes. I deleted Zappos.com from my favorites in my browser and have sworn off buying new shoes ever, ever again. Yeah, right, but it's worth a try. I did find shoes I forgot I had and so far this week have worn two different pair I haven't seen in two years.
Saturday night I went to take my first shower in the new place and lo and behold, no hot water! What a shock. I mean it. I took a bird bath and went to the office in the morning and gave them a bug list, the water heater topping it off. All day went by and no one came around to look at it. Finally, "Little Mike" came by to have a look. He was anything but little and is probably the cutest apartment maintenance man I've ever seen. He spent about an hour troubleshooting it before telling me the bad news that it needed a part. Bummer. He hgave me the keys to a suite unit that they rent out to temporary guests. It was very nice, but having to get up and go across the complex to shower, then come back is a huge drag.
The water heater was still broke on Monday and word from "Big Mike" was that the part was going to take two or three days to arrive. I had already moved the cats and have to be where the cats are so I used the guest apartment just to shower in until yesterday. On Tuesday, Cute Mike (I think he would like that better than "Little", what guy wants to be called "little"?) got it all fixed yesterday and I went out and bought him a present. I was at the old apartment last night to pack up the china cabinet, the DVD cabinet and another bookshelf so they would be ready for the movers. I got into the liquor cabinet and fixed me a lemon drop martini, quickly lost interest in packing and ended up watching The Breakfast Club on HBO. So now my Friday night is already planned, no booze and all packing. Living the dream!

The ScubaJedi

San Carlos Diving Adventure of November

2008-11-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

The final diving trip of the year was once again San Carlos, Mexico. I was originally going to head down with my usual dive shop but they cancelled the trip due to some military-like skirmishes between drug cartels and the Mexican army between Nogales and Hermosillo. So I went with another group who provide transportation via a motor coach. It was very nice not to have to drive.

The checkpoints looked about the same with the exception of the small artillery units with Hum-V’s equipped with grenade launchers. I hadn’t noticed those before on other trips down. Also, because we were a group in a bus, we had to disembark every time so they could go through our stuff. It all went pretty fast though, and the gentlemen with the semi-automatics were friendly and cheerful.

For our entertainment the operators provided violent guy flicks to watch, so I saw Ironman, Indiana Jones, Get Smart, and Deep Blue Sea. I was saturated with explosions, fighting, car chases, loud gunfire, and scantily clad women. I would have paid extra to watch something mellow.

We got to the Best Western Tetakawi (Matt, our 14 year old advanced student, thought it was Teriyaki almost the whole trip) and I found that I had a room all to myself! I not only got to ride down in comfort, but had a room all to myself. I couldn’t have been happier if I were twins. I got settled and headed down to a restaurant called Bananas where some of the group was having dinner and libation that evening. I sat with Matt and his father Todd, and then was joined by Suzanne, John, Steve, Steve, and Brian. Bananas boasts of the best hamburgers in San Carlos, so I decided to try one. I never sampled the burgers anywhere else in San Carlos, so I had nothing to compare it with, but it was good as long as taste and quality were not an issue.

The next day I was on the early shift and we left dock at 7 am sharp and headed out to the island of San Pedro for our hammerhead shark sighting dive! How exciting, I have always wanted to see a hammerhead shark in the wild. Now was my big chance. I buddied up with Suzanne, and we were going as a group out to the point where we would hopefully see some sharks. The water was somewhat chilly, but that was nothing compared to the quality of visibility, of which there was none. We descended and hit about 78’ at the most heading out to the point where the sharks were supposed to be schooling by en masse. Well, no sharks made it that day. They must have been taking the day off.

For the next dive we moved to the other side of the island where all the sea lions were. They were really excited about us being there, they love to play with scuba divers. There were a couple of big bulls there but they didn’t seem to mind us. The water was much clearer heading off the bow but was murky back in the cove, so we headed off the bow. There was one sea lion who was very interested in us. She was black with a tan snout, very unusual. We named her Mathilda. She followed up everywhere and hovered around so we could get some good shots. I thought she wanted me to pet her. We were down there a good hour before coming back to the boat.

I was really tired after that and went back to the hotel, got cleaned up and went across the street to Charly’s Rock restaurant with Suzanne and Yrena (don’t really know the spelling, but that’s how the name sounded). Yrena ordered something called seafood soup, and that is exactly what it was. They must have chopped up everything they could scoop out of the ocean that morning and put it in the soup. There were eyeballs and tentacles with suckers and all sorts of things I would deem cat food in there. She said it was good and I will take her word for it. Those two were going on the night dive and I bade them farewell after lunch and I proceeded to go back to my room and pass out.

I signed up for an extra dive so I was back at it the next morning. The seas in port were deceivingly calm but once we got out to open water the ocean started rolling. The Sea of Cortez is like a huge bathtub and if there is some weather at the end of it on the Pacific, it can wreak havoc. The waves were like swells, big rollers. The boat captain floored it and was hitting the swells head on and causing a very rough ride. I think it was the same boat driver as I had in Rocky Point on my whale ride (See blog Whale Riding in Rocky Point). I was every bit as nervous as I was for that ride. I moved to the front of the boat and held on to a pole with a grip of steel. At one point I started to cry. I looked around and everyone else was laughing and hanging around casually like nothing was wrong, yet this ride was seriously damaging my calm. Some of the staff was asking me if I were okay, if I was getting sick. Even as I write this I feel like I am rocking on the boat. The skipper turned the boat into a cove and anchored at Deer Island, much to the disappointment of Matt, who wanted very much to see the sea lions. I was just happy to get out of the maelstrom. I began to think they changed course because I was in such a state, and that made me feel bad because of Matt wanting to see the sea lions, and the outer island of San Pedro is better diving. We had to go back out to the rolling ocean to give Matt his deep dive for his advanced certification, and then we came back in. The dives nearer San Carlos are never as good as at San Pedro, but we did see some interesting things, such as a starfish with only four arms, a starfish with a jillion arms and a very weird sea urchin.

I went out on the afternoon dive as well. We stayed local and I was glad as I was getting pretty chilled at that point. On my Christmas list is a “Boat Coat”. I would like it in black, please, extra large so it will fit over me and all my gear. On the last dive it was getting dark ergo we brought flashlights. It was a quasi night dive. There were zillions of stinging feather hydroids all over the place and at one point I broke my “don‘t touch nothing” rule and went to pick up a beautiful shell, and grazed one of the hated ‘droids and it stung like an SOB. My thumb still itches. Therefore the “Don’t touch nothing” rule is back in effect. You never know what is going to sting the crap out of you down there.

We left the next morning bright and early, and got through the US border pretty easily. It was like going through the airport as we had to get off the bus, run our bags through a metal detector and x-ray machine, then we were free to enter the US and A.

For a full pictorial catalog of this adventure, check out this link.

Till we meet again,

The ScubaJedi

Annual ScubaJedi Reavis Ranch Campout

2008-10-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

Every year I do a backpacking weekend to Reavis Ranch in the Eastern Superstition Mountains. Every year as I am trundling up the 5 Hills of Hell on the Insidious Mile I wonder why I do this. But that is on the way out. I call it the Insidious Mile because it is a deceivingly difficult stretch of trail and unfortunately the last thing you remember about the trail as it is the last mile. When you are hiking in on it, you don't really notice just how much elevation you are losing. It starts at Trail 109, The Reavis Ranch Trail from the Roger's Trough Trailhead in the Eastern Superstitions. From here you cross the junction with the Roger's Canyon Trail number 110 and continue up another wall of hell called Graves Canyon, where there are switchbacks up a granite mountain to Reavis Saddle. Then it is smooth sailing into Reavis Valley across a grassy meadow past a Juniper of Unusual Size, through a swampy area and to the Ranch.

There were four of us, more had signed up but true to human nature, there are those who simply blow off commitments and choose to stand you up at the trail head by sleeping in. I have been leading hikes with Sierra Singles for a number of years and I am sick and tired of unreliable people. Any of you who sign up for a hike and decide to blow it off without notifying the outings coordinator (and you KNOW who you are), don't bother signing up for any of MY outings as I will oust you from the list and dis-approve of you participating. Tough darts, flakester, go be unreliable somewhere else. The ScubaJedi has a very good sophisticated contact database and I track everything.

So my three GOOD friends and I headed off after stopping at my request at Denny's to pig out on eggs and bac. We took two cars as the road leading to Roger's Trough is rough and requires 4 wheel drive, or at the least, high clearance. Two cars are better than one in case one car doesn't make it. Both vehicles were SUV's and we made it fine. We geared up and headed in to begin the Insidious Mile to the junction of 110/109. We continued up the switchbacks stopping to pay our respects to Reavis at his grave. He was apparently found dead on the trail while hauling his fruits and veggies to market one fine day in 1896.

Reavis was known as the Old Hermit of the Superstitions. According to Tom Kollenborn (2000) Reavis was a well-educated man from back east who came out west to seek his fortune in the gold mines of California. He eventually ended up in Arizona and settled in what is now called Reavis Valley, an veritable oasis in the Supers where there is a year round artesian spring. This helps us backpackers of today in that we don't have to schlep as much water to the site. How Reavis met his maker is a subject of discussion. Some say he died of natural causes, pushing 70 and hauling up and down those mountains all the time, some say a covetous neighbor who wanted the land caused him a mischief. Whatever the reason, his remains were found and he was buried on the spot where hikers today can stop and gawk.

I opted out of going up to the grave as I was just too tired. Besides, I've seen the grave many times and it never changes that much. There used to be clay letters spelling out Elisha Reavis but they have fallen by the wayside. You would have to go digging through he rocks piled on the grave to find them and that's too ghoulish even for me.

We scaled the hill to the saddle, then cruised on down through the Very Grassy Meadow past the Juniper of Unusual Size to the Swamp. Once past the swamp you cross the creek and up to the valley. I was hoping for the Grand Skookums Campsite right there by the creek so no water schlepping would be needed but it was taken by a bunch of losers. Then we tried for Skookums Campsite number 2 and some young bozos had gotten there minutes before us and though started setting up camp in another location snagged the Skookums Site Number 2 before us. If some shithead hadn't wanted to stop and waste time on breakfast at Denny's, we'd have been there sooner and gotten at least the second good site. Needless to say we had to start hunting for a good site. I knew of one more quasi-skookums site where I've camped twice and cringed at the thought of having to schlep water from the creek. There is one really reliable spot to get water and that's where Skookums Site 1 is located.

Luck was with us as no one had been the Quasi-Skookums for a while, it was a little overgrown but otherwise on good condition. The best news was not only was there a massive supply of firewood handy, but the creek was in high volume and right there by the site for filtering. No schlepping. I made a deal with my fellow campers if they would gather the wood, I would prepare the hearth. I friggin hate gathering firewood. I would rather schlep water.

We set up, got a cheerful fire going and hunkered down for the evening. I ate my usual hiker chow out of a bag, as did Willy and Will. What are the odds of two guys being on the trek and both being named Will? But there you have it. Nunya on the other hand brought steak and shrimp to sautee and savor as her evening meal. I just don't have the wherewithal to cart that kind of weight in my pack. I am fine with meal in a bag from Mountain House. After dinner it wasn't long before I was ready to snuff out for the night. I don't know if it was the heat or that I am getting old or what, but I was very very tired. By 8:30 I was snug in my sleeping bag. It was cold at night and I zipped up all the way in.

I woke up to Will making a new cheerful fire at the hearth. We we back on the trail out by 10:30 after a leisurely breakfast and mellow breakdown of camp. We went back out the way we came in and it takes about the same amount of time to hike out as it does to hike in. We saw three tarantulas on the way out, including one on the road driving out.

No apples in the orchard this year, so maybe next year. I plan on a spring trip in April and hopefully anyone signing up will at least notify me that they are not going to show up!!Dirtbags.

Until next adventure,
The ScubaJedi

It's Time for Roller Derby!

2008-10-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

Arizona Roller Derby has a new fan in The ScubaJedi. The amateur league is called Arizona Derby Dames and the championships were held at the Castle Sports Club in Phoenix on Saturday night, October 11. It was a flat track bout for who would become the reigning Roller Derby champs, the defenders, The Brutal Beauties, or the challengers, The Runaway Brides.

We arrived to wait in line outside the popular event. There was no shortage on multi-pierced, tattooed, spiked hair fans, and I have never seen so many ripped up fishnet stockings and striped socks in my life. I felt like an old square nerd in my University of Notre Dame sweatshirt. The deep blue sea is where the Scuba Jedi reigns supreme in slick black neoprene bodysuits with an air cylinder strapped on. But it was definitely the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd all about that evening.

Back in the olden days of the 1970's Roller Derby was popular as a professional full contact sport. The players would wear uniforms and roll on a sloped track with railings where they would get slung over and go flying into the audience at times. Saturday night was amateur flat track and Willy, Yapper and I decided we would sit on the floor right on the track. We were risking getting wiped out but that was the chance we took to be in on the action. The players sported their own expressions of uniforms, wearing the team colors but with costumes as unique as their names, such as Sharon Fists (pictured bleow), Vanessa Velocity, and Phyllis Killer.
It took me a while and reading the program to figure out how to play once again. Not having watched Roller Derby in 30 years, I had forgotten how the game was played. What happens is there is a pack. They start at a given starting line on one of the long parts of the track. Two players from opposing teams are at the front of the pack and they are called the Pivots. Then they are followed by the blockers within the pack. At the rear are the Jammers. The Jammers are the players allowed to score and they score by getting though the pack once, catching up and going through the pack a second time scoring a point by passing an opponent. Getting through the pack is problematic as the other players, various Blockers and Pivots from opposing teams are trying to knock the Jammer down. Therefore helmets, knee, elbow and sometimes mouthguards are worn. The Pivots wear a cover on their helmet with a stripe and the Jammers wear a cover with a star.

The Brutal Beauties were in the lead all evening, wearing their signature hot pink and black colors. They were bigger and more brutal than the Brides, but the Brides came up in the second half leveraging their smaller statures for speed and strategy to overcome and win triumphant over the Beauties.

There was only one real fight causing a couple of spectators to be ejected form the venue, and I thought, how low do you get in life to be kicked out of the Roller Derby?

The evening ended with a raffle and we didn't stay. Peter, who didn't even know what a Roller Derby was being a simple farm boy from Cork, Ireland, stayed for the raffle as he had purchased a ticket. I know don't if he won.

The season is over and we must wait until January to see if the Runaway Brides will defend their title as Arizona Roller Derby Dame Champions.

For more information on this exciting sport, go to:
http://www.azderbydames.com/

Until next time
The ScubaJedi

Lake Pleasant

2008-10-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, another illustrious adventure in the local lakes. Betty and I set off on the Diver Down for a morning of two tank boat diving. We did our usual stop at Starbucks to get good and jacked up on caffeine before heading out. Betty drove and dropped me at the meeting point, then went to park the car elsewhere because we were under the impression that Lake Pleasant members only were allowed to park near the dock. I found out otherwise as I was chatting with the El Mar Scuba guys waiting for the boat. They had four student completing their open water certification, a couple of guys doing some free diving, and there was Betty and me just looking to log some dives. We weren't expecting Bonaire conditions, and it was, after all, diving.

I am not sure what the name of the dive site was, but it wasn't too bad. Okay, it was heinous. The visibility was pretty nasty and the water got cold at about 45ft. We ended up diving to about 30 ft on the first dive, and I was able to work on those underwater nav skills which are not too shabby if I must say so myself. I was desperately over weighted on that first dive and ended up taking it down to 8lbs for the second dive.

The second dive we went out to a farther buoy and had to cross a dark trench over the Mines of Moria. It got really dark and really cold, I looked at my console and saw that I was at about 59'. I looked around for Betty and she was motioning to go up a little further rather than stay at that depth. She was getting a little nervous at the low visibility and darkness. I personally wanted to keep descending and see how deep it got. But, I certainly am not the dive buddy from hell who makes their divebuddy do things out of their comfort zone and causes things like, um, death. So we went up a bit. I kept thinking I was going to hit a wall or something.

I don't know if Lake Pleasant is the shittiest diving on the planet, but I am sure it's pretty close.

Saguaro Lake Cleanup Dive

2008-09-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

September 20, was international Project Aware Day for beach and water cleanup. As a scuba diver, I chose water cleanup. I went with N-Depth Scuba out of Chandler, AZ and rode the bus out to Saguaro Lake. It is reputed to be little more than a mudhole, but I was being overly optimistic in thinking it might be okay.

I didn't have a dive buddy, I was out there pretty much on my own. I brought all my gear, wetsuit, fins, gloves (wasn't taking any chances in picking up garbage) etc. N-Depth also arranged for a cookout as well. It turned out to be really fun in spite of the lake conditions. We had to sign in, set up our gear and in my case, search out a dive buddy. I met a nice man named Jim who had come out there on his own as well and we decided to be dive buddies. We grabbed a bag and went in. There was a sentinel at the entry point taking note of who went in to make sure that the same amount came back out of The Black Lagoon. I had some trouble getting my fins on, then trouble with a foggy mask. It was suggested that since I was in the water that I use spit. I have heard that spit works really well to defog a mask, but it has to be your own brand. So I tried it and it really worked despite grossing me out.

At first things were mostly okay, we were cruising along and picking up cans, bottles, plastic cups etc. The bottom is so silty that whenever you picked something up it was like a pyroclastic blast from a volcano and it caused visibility to be even worse than it already was. We came across two other divers and got separated. I couldn't find Jim, so seeing as that I was only 15 feet down, I ascended and waited at the surface. Jim eventually came up and we re-grouped and went back down. I had taken a compass reading and was trying to head parallel to shore and go over to the pier. I guess I need an underwater nav class because we ended up out at the far buoy. We got down about 26 feet and it was cold and very dark. We came across a dead sunken tree and got all caught up in it. It was then that we decided it was time to go back. I tried to get turned around but it was really difficult to see anything at that point becasue we had kicked up all that silt. As we were only 26 feet down, we decided to go up and surface swim back.

We turned in our garbage, which included the seat from a boat, and got ready to eat lunch which was being prepared. There were about 60 divers and we collected quite a bit of trash. After lunch there were some drawings for some free stuff. I scored a new regulator bag. I was stoked as I really wanted a new one.

When I got home I felt the tremendous need to disinfect myself and all my gear. I brought my BC into the shower and was going to shampoo it, but I ended up just rinsing it.

That was not lake diving at it's finest. But we were there to provide a service and do our part in keeping our lakes fairly clean. That is until the drunken redneck jackass boaters who don't know what a dive flag means hit the lakes again to toss their garbage overboard. No, I'm not judgmental at all.....

The ScubaJedi

To see the complete picture album, click here!

San Carlos, Mexico

2008-09-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Once again driving all by my lonesome to San Carlos Mexico. I don't mind it so much as I like to listen to books on audio and I never expect any trouble at the border. This time I was pulled over to the side for inspection. The border agents with their guns were leering at me and speaking to me in Spanish. I was told that this is not the time to practice Spanish, so when they spoke to me I smiled a big stupid American smile and shook my head. They asked me to pop the trunk and I did, hoping they weren't going to go through all my SCUBA gear. I especially did not want them to confiscate my dive knife, which I would inform them was a dive tool. A knife would be a weapon, right?

They shut the trunk and waved me on. I was just one of a zillion Arizonans who head to San Carlos for SCUBA. Being a female traveling alone though, I thought, I got away pretty easy.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. Once you get past the border, it looks like Arizona with more stray dogs. Also, when you go through the "towns" there are speed bumps, and stationed at each speed bump are people selling things. The speed bumps slow you down just enough to buy $50 pesos worth of home made tortillas. Made with real lard, the good stuff. Of course you roll the dice and take your chances on the safety of the product, as we don't really know where or how they are made. The food and safety inspectors are few and far between in Mexico so it would seem.

We got to the hotel, checked in and my roommate was already there. She was a young lady getting her open water certification that trip. As is the tradition with Scuba Specialties, the greatest dive shop in Arizona, we all go to dinner together after getting settled in.

The next morning we took off for the Island. the seas were choppy and donning my various layers of neoprene was challenging. the water was going to be cold so I was going to wear all my wetsuits at once. It helps.

The water was cold and murky, but it was diving. I was properly layered and only one wimp (Steven) wore a dry suit. I had on a 3mm hooded vest, a 3mm core warmer, and a 5mm full suit and gloves. I bobbed like a cork. It took 26 pounds to sink then I was overweighted. In tropical waters I use 10 pounds. I decided to dive head first to get down.

I hate to dive in head first, as my ears explode. I like to descend slowly feet first and clear my screetching ears properly. When I go head first I always forget as I am too intent on getting to the bottom my ears start hurting before I clear. Very bad.

I was the more experienced between my dive buddy and me and therefore elected to navigate. That was a challenge and it came to my attention that I really need more practice.

That first day we went to San Pedro Nolasco to the front (east) side of the island. There were no sea lions to be found, but the water wasn’t too cold. There were a number of large jellyfish floating around but I was assured they aren’t the stinging kind. I didn’t have to find out, I steered clear of them and they hang out at the surface anyway. You had to get really close to the bottom to see anything, and there was a lot to see. It wasn't hard to get close to the bottom with 24 pounds of lead in my pockets either. I saw my first nudibranchs.

The second day we went around to the west side and there were a lot of playful sea lions. When I saw the first one I thought it was a shark as I only caught a glimpse of a large grey figure cruising by. Oh heck, let's say it was a shark. Nice. There were more jellyfish and I avoided then as they are just plain icky.

There were a few Divemaster Candidates on board and they were doing skills in the water, as were the open water students. I think me and my dive buddy were the only fun divers there for no particular reason. We dove with divemaster Buck on the very last dive and he took us on a nice little tour. I was grateful that I didn't have to monitor my compass and could just follow. It is tough stuff diving with that much crap, meaning layered like I was. I think next time in cooler water I am just going to stick it out with one wetsuit. I could hardly get back up on the boat with all that weight, and the immobility on the layers.

After getting back to the mainland, it was party time. No more dives, so more tequila. Steven, the dive instructor on the trip took us on a tour of his sailboat he has docked down there. There are a number of gringos that have real estate and/or keep boats there.

The next day was the long drive home. It went fast up until I got to the border. They always instruct us to take the commercial route to avoid going through Nogales. But on this day, there were about 8 hours worth of semi tractor-trailers lined up to go through. I was in no way going to wait that long. I weaved around to try and get to the head of the line but reached a point where there was no getting around the trucks. Before I would be boxed in and stranded, I turned around and headed back the way I came and decided to go through town. It was actually not that bad, I got to see the circus that is central Nogales, and got through the border crossing much faster. The border agent was incredulous that I was on my own. Apparently everyone but me thinks it's dangerous to drive down there all alone.

until next time
The ScubaJedi
To view all the pictures from this adventure, click here!

2008-08-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

There was a time before I was The ScubaJedi. Here is such an adventure. I am an avid hiker and adventurer as well and here is a true tale of adventure and escape from certain death:

Deliverance

According to the write-up on the Coronado National Forest website:

“Box Camp Trail provides some of the most dramatic views of any trail in the Santa Catalinas. It is also steep and rocky, and, as you might expect, the most rugged sections also offer the best views. Extending between the Catalina Highway in the vicinity of Spencer Campground and the East Fork Trail in the Sabino Basin, during summer most people hike from the top down. During the winter, use increases on the lower (warmer) end of the trail.”

We started hiking from the top, on a typical sunny/cloudy day in August. There were 10 of us total and as the trail moved through large ponderosa pines before dropping into the Sabino Basin below, we got somewhat spread out with faster hikers out front and more casual hikers going at a slower pace. But I am getting a little ahead of my story, and I like a story told well from start to finish, so that’s actually where I will begin.

I had wanted to lead what is categorized as an “A” level hike with Sierra Club. The hikes are rated from hardest being “A” to easiest being “D”. Box Camp Trail is a solid “A” hike with over 4000’ in elevation change and being over 9 miles long. The distance is debatable as I get a different number depending on who wrote the description. On August 19, 2006, the trail seemed to be over 100 miles long.

I never hiked this particular trail and didn’t want to officially lead a group of people through a trail described as being difficult with brittle rock littered with rubble. In some places the trail was reported as being hard to find. That turned out to be an understatement, but again, I am getting ahead of myself. I decided to do a pre-hike where I would get a few friends to come with me and check out the trail before offering it officially on the Sierra Club Events Calendar. I was only going to plan for three, maybe four people and to do the hike in a two-car shuttle, as recommended, because of the distance and elevation change. I spread the word in the hiking community and at one time had 20 people interested in going. The usual phenomenon that takes place is a large number of people will be enthusiastic about going and then the number will dwindle more toward the day of the event, and in this case it dwindled to 10 brave souls. That turned out to be a very good thing. I did not know what to expect on this trail, only what I read about in several trail descriptions from several sources.

We spilt up into three carloads to carpool from the Phoenix area. I drove my trusty Nissan, Dave W. drove his trusty Nissan, and Deb drove her trusty Nissan. Their Nissans were Xterras and mine a humble passenger car, the Altima. We drove to Tucson and re-grouped at the Sabino Canyon visitor’s center where another Dave, from Tucson, met us up. We got to the visitor’s center sometime after nine in the morning and told the ranger where we were planning to hike. He was very discouraging as in the past couple of weeks the wilderness area where we were going to hike had been hit with some torrential flooding and landslides. The lower half of the trail had been completely destroyed, we were told, and therefore closed off.

Never one to let much stop me, I asked for alternatives and as it turned out, there was an alternative trail that went left instead of right at one point and we could complete the trail ending at another parking area called Prison Camp, which was the site of a WWII Japanese internment center. The ranger made it sound like the alternative was a good trail however couldn’t give us much more information than that. I asked if there were trail markers and intersection signs that would point us in the right direction and he was pretty brusque in his answer that he just didn’t know. We were all experienced hikers and route finding ability a strong suit with us, which turned out to work in our favor. That and an accurate GPS.

We piled back into our respective vehicles and headed for the Prison Camp parking area.

We left my little Nissan at the Prison Camp parking area, which was mostly destroyed by the recent flooding. We could only park a little ways in and the ranger at the center had told us the drive went well back into the site area where there was a circular drive and we should park towards the back. Dave W, our Dave from Phoenix, was kind enough to purchase a topo map of the area which indicated that our alternative route would lead us to a dirt road leading to this parking area.

From here, we drove in the two Exterras to the trailhead at the top of the mountain. Everyone was in high spirits as it was lovely and cool out at the top and it was promising to be a beautiful day. The trail climbed a bit from the parking area and Deb and a few others, Steve, Mike, Kathy, Willy, and Dave from Tucson took off ahead. Nunya, Dave W, Bruce and I sort of moseyed along behind. Nunya likes to chronicle the hike in pictures and usually stays in back.

The trail in this area was easy to find and beautiful. There were tall ponderosa pines, ferns, wildflowers, and a babbling brook to accompany the babbling hikers. We encountered a couple riding mules on the trail and two other hikers with dogs who said they had come up from the bottom. I was silly enough to believe they meant the very bottom and therefore the trail was going to be a cakewalk. Stupid me.

There was a trail intersection with Box Springs Trail and when we consulted the topo map discovered we had only hiked about an inch and a half. We had a very long way to go and it was about noon by then. We moved on laughing and having a great time in the cool pines and taking in the beauty surrounding us. We broke out from the trees to a sunny rocky outcropping where Deb and the others were stretched out on the rocks having their lunch. We met up with them and sat down to eat as well. After a brief resting period and some laughs and group pictures we were on our way again. As usual, Deb and her faster hikers went on ahead and Nunya, the two Dave’s, Bruce and I were trailing behind. The trail started getting steep and rocky at this point and it did become challenging to find the actual trail. Between the absence of a defined trail and overgrowth in places, it got to be like a game to find the trail. Bruce suggested we start playing a trail game, which involved someone coming up with the title of a movie and whatever letter that movie titled ended in the next person had to come up with another movie title and so on. We played that for a while until trail finding became a real challenge. Notice that I use the word challenging where I really want to say pain in the ass.

We hiked down to a rushing drainage where we came upon Deb, Willy, Mike, Kathy, and Steve. They were as confused as we were about where the trail actually was. There was a beautiful waterfall suitable for a picture moment and a consult of the mostly useless map. I was becoming more concerned as the day was wearing on and we really didn’t have a clue where the blazes we were. We followed cairns down to an area where we were able to strip off the boots and wade into a little waterhole. That was refreshing and particularly for Willy, added some vigor to his step. Willy isn’t used to hot rough hikes in the wilderness. He is from New York City and is making a progressive transition into being a wilderness man. This hike was rough, and getting rougher. Dave from Tucson was also showing some wear at this point. As for myself, I was just starting to go into high whining mode due to mental exhaustion and my tendency to freak out in situations where I feel out of control, and I was starting to feel more and more out of control on this fine day.

We thought we were at the point where we needed to find the eastern trail that would lead us back to the Prison Camp car park. We decided at this point it might be a good idea if we all stuck together as none of us had a clue where the trail was at this point. Deb was excellent at finding the cairns and we were just going from cairn to cairn. Daylight was going to become a problem soon, or lack thereof. Also, water supplies were dwindling for everyone. Nunya and Deb had headlamps and Dave from Tucson had a little flashlight. Willy, in his infinite wisdom, had brought along a GPS and had marked where the Prison Camp car park was and that literally saved our lives. He was feeling more than a little exhausted and so I took over the GPS monitoring. It made me feel a little better to have control of that as I could see that we were indeed heading in the right direction, but the mileage was at nearly 4 and a half and daylight was dwindling fast. We ended up bushwhacking down to the basin where a fast moving river was. In looking it up later, this was the river we were to cross just before we hung a left to the East Fork trail which led to the Sycamore Reservoir Trail, which led to Shangri-La, also known as the Prison Camp car park. There were no trail indicators or anything to reassure us where we were. The scramble down the escarpment was an insidious, steep, and in my humble opinion dangerous trip to the river. But we had seen a definite trail on the other side of the river, the GPS was pointing to it and cross-country was the fastest way to get to the river at this point without taking the time to hunt for more cairns. Ordinarily, I would have been having the time of my life, as it was truly a beautiful area. The rapid running creek, large trees on the shorelines surrounded by dramatic mountains made for a majestic place in which to be. But it was on this scramble to the river where I pretty much lost it and started to weep. I thought all was lost, we were all going to die and it was my entire fault for organizing this little safari. I guess mental exhaustion, physical fatigue and the feeling of powerlessness overcame me and I just needed to release. The others were wonderful and assured me it was not my fault.

Dave W flushed out a large angry rattlesnake as we approached the river, so we had to navigate around it. That was the first of two rattlers we saw that evening. The river was gushing, but there were plenty of dry rocks to step on to get across. I was thinking that the forest service, in their infinite wisdom, should just come out there and stock it with crocodiles to make it even more of an “adventure” than it already was. We crossed and found a real trail and began to follow it. Steve decided that he would run ahead and hopefully get out before dark so at least one of us would live to tell the tellin’. We once again got spread out. Willy and Dave from Tucson were suffering pretty badly by now and Nunya, Dave W, and I hung back to make sure we were all okay. Bruce sort of hung out in between groups, and would stay at more treacherous parts of the trail to help us out when we came to things like, oh, major landslides that took out the trail in parts. The trail was climbing as Mr. Ranger at the Sabino Canyon Visitor’s Center had promised it would. Oh, what’s a little uphill for a bunch of seasoned hikers like us? After the trip down the Cliffs of Insanity I had very little uphill or downhill steep going in me. I was highly motivated to make time and get out before dark, but I began to accept the fact that that was not going to happen. We were going to be stuck out there in the dark; there was no getting around that. We climbed and climbed and scrambled over rockslides and at one point I fell on a slide area and saw my life flash before my very eyes. Mostly I could just see myself going ass over applecart down the rockslide only to land broken and near death 1000 feet below. Bruce was there and gave me a hand up. I tried remaining jovial about it and remarked that my butt created a shelf for the others to use to get across. Bruce was ever so kind to brush the dirt off my ass, and I told him he got that feel-up for free because I was too tired to slap him.
Everyone made it across that landslide and we crested the saddle. There was, by crackie, an actual trail sign at the junction. Deb’s group placed an arrow made from sticks on the sign to indicate their direction. I knew we needed to head for Sycamore Reservoir and it looked like we were on our way. The trail was still obvious and I was optimistic that we just had to walk easily out of there. Silly, nutty, naïve me.

The water situation became grave. I was completely out, as was Willy and Dave from Tucson. Bruce had a bit of water stocked up but he had filled some containers with river water just in case. I thought, what’s a little giardiasis when you’re thirsting to death? So at the next stream crossing I filled up. The water did not taste bad at all and I was confident that it was clean. The runoff was fairly fresh and the water was running. Mom always told me that running water was okay to drink. She also gave me ex-lax when I complained of a headache once when I was little. But, you had to know my mom. By now everyone had river water in his or her various water containers. The trail remained obvious and even though it went in and out of the creek many times, we always managed to find it. Then it got dark. Like, really dark. There was a glade of large trees and then the river bent around after that. I was steaming on ahead and by now walking in the water fully shoed with my non-waterproof boots because I could care less how wet my feet got. I had other problems.

We eventually stopped to make an assessment of our predicament. We could see we weren’t far from the road as we could see cars driving by. But while it was still light out we could see that it was a steep climb to get to that point. But how did one get to the road? I took the headlamp and went looked around for the trail that must be on the banks of the creek somewhere. In the meantime, Nunya decided to pitch camp. She had a fully stocked backpack on her as she was training for a trip in the Sierras next weekend. What a woman! When I got back, the tent was up and we built a fire. We decided we would just have to remain there till daylight. Dave from Tucson indicated that he just couldn’t go on. None of us had cell signals, so there was no calling for help. It wasn’t so grave, though, as none of us were injured or damaged in any way, there was plenty of water (thank you creek) and we had each other. Bruce volunteered to go look for the trail once again, if no results he would make for the road. We had no idea what good that would do, as we did not know which direction we should really be heading. The GPS wasn’t pointing to the road, but we thought at least we might be able to get some help. We took down our GPS coordinates, wrote them down on a scrap of paper and gave them to Bruce and wished him Godspeed. After he took off, we decided to entertain ourselves and see how many people we could get into a backpacker tent. So Nunya got in, followed by Dave W, then me, then Willy. The four of us spooned and got very snuggly and as comfortable as you could get. Dave from Tucson was lying down in the sand outside taking some much-needed rest. The four of us in the tent were giggling and getting comfy when Bruce returned announcing that he found the trail! There was a sign about a quarter of a mile back indicating that the parking area was 1 mile away!

So we packed up the camp and headed for the trail. Naturally, it was all uphill. Dave from Tucson would fall behind and we would wait for him calling out to make sure he was okay. He did really well trundling along in the dark. Bruce was up front with the headlamp and flushed out another rattlesnake. It was a little one and didn’t even rattle. It slithered into the underbrush and didn’t bother us, and we didn’t bother it. I was so tired I was ready to extend my hiking staff and flick the serpent into the brush just to get it out of the way.

Across the ravine and towards the road we began to see signal lights and were sure it was Deb and company. I thought they were in the parking area as the only car there was mine and I had the keys. So it was seriously damaging my calm when we would continue to climb and seemingly go in the opposite direction of the signal lights. But according to the GPS, we were right on track. We crested a saddle and there was a wilderness sign. It told us jack squat, just like the rest of the signs we encountered. The original sign at the beginning of that trail we were on indicated a mile to the car park. That turned out to be wildly inaccurate. The GPS was spot-on as it turned out. From here we followed an old road down to the old Prison Camp area where there were a number of tents pitched. Apparently some trail crews were camped out to work on the dreadful trails out there. They have a lot of work ahead of them. They told us that Deb and her crew had been by and told them about us and had hitched a ride up to where Deb’s Xterra was parked. When we piled in my Altima, we drove out and there was Deb and company coming down the road. We all hooked up again and everyone had a different story.

Kathy had gotten separated from the others and ended up losing Deb after the switchbacks, down by the stream. She got off trail (not intentionally) and scrambled up a hill to get a better view to look for anyone. She then returned to the stream and couldn't see any of us coming over the hill. She figured we must have gotten ahead of her. So she just followed the water for a while, crisscrossing it a few times and following footprints. When she came to a waterfall and/or dam, she knew she was lost. She told us she had to scramble up the hill on all fours and that hiking method would become her primary means of crossing as the steep cliffs continued! There she caught a glimpse of car lights coming down the hill to the left.

For the next few hours Kathy headed that way. Because it was dark, she had no way of knowing the best way to traverse. Fatigue caused her to stop frequently, and this is a normally strong hiker. She ended up going up and down two big hills and on the last ascent she caught sight the car lights and flashlights. Kathy yelled and they responded, but there was still quite a ways to go and she had to keep stopping. Steve shone his light on her and then came out to meet her. He then directed her back and went on a search for us, though we never saw him. Who knows where we all were at that point? Kathy was quite surprised that it was only the three of them at the top. She had assumed that everyone was out by then. Mike met her near the top and got her safely back to the car at 10:30pm where she did nothing but sit and drink water and coke for the next hour. That was amazing. Had I been separated from the others with no lights nor knowledge of where the trail was I would have cowered into a space and cried like a little girl till morning.

Deb and Mike had bushwhacked up to the road and flagged down a Good Samaritan and got a ride up to the trailhead. They had called 911 for us but then called it off as we were delivered.

Nunya, the Daves, Bruce and I stopped for food and coffee at the Village Inn, and then headed for home. I got to bed by 5:30 in the morning.

From Nunya (Nunya’s) Experience:

The Hike of Insanity.... you hear about them, you wonder if it will ever happen to you... wonder no more. The Catalina Mountains - Sabino Canyon, Tucson - we were told at the Ranger Station that the trail we had planned had been rendered impassible by the prior weeks flash flooding, rock slides and avalanches, but that there was an alternate route we could take. They were wrong.

To say the routes in the area were impassible is not totally accurate, but to say the area/trails/routes were obliterated - yes. What the 10 of us hiked into was beyond comprehension, and it made my prior weekend Class 3 & 4 rock scramble seem like a walk in the park. The intensity and duration after one point became so bad, that photo taking was abandoned for survival.

I was also conditioning for an upcoming backpacking trip, and had a loaded backpack of basic camping essentials (35+lbs which later felt like 70) - both a curse and a blessing because 6 of us made use of the contents, and having it certainly zeroed out my stress in considering our options. Handling that backpack down and up the treacherously precarious embankments of loose rock and terrain in Marine Boot Camp/Navy Seal fashion (and without being sore the next day), removed all shadow of doubt that was I conditioned 'just fine' for anything!!

Exhaustion and fatigue were the first issues to deal with within the group, followed closely by running out of water. Since my water pump still needed REI repair, we had to put our fears aside and drink the rapidly flowing creek water untreated - hopefully without side affects. The options were death now or diarrhea later - we drank the water.

With the aid of a GPS, we bushwhacked following no visual trail, but some precariously set carins - eyeing a trail in the distance that we knew would lead back to the vehicles. Once reaching that oasis trail point, we quickly found our danger had in no way been alleviated. Multiple creek crossings with the extensive flood damage and avalanches had successfully destroyed normal means of locating what was left of the trail. Four of the stronger hikers had went ahead to bring back fresh water, only to face the same fate as the 6 of us left behind - being in the canyon in the dark, with no trail to follow and steep treacherous terrain to scale. Everyone felt emphasis on the danger and drama as calmly and quietly as could be done considering the circumstances. Dangers of rattlesnakes, mountain lion type animals, bears and other biting things paled in comparison to the terrain we faced.

It is my understanding that one hiker (Kathy B) also became separated from the leading 4, and managed to find the trail in the dark and essentially alone, and exit the canyon around 10:30pm. This can only be attributed to an act of God assisting her. Even with the 6 of us eventually locating the trail with the aid of my headlight and a GPS - knowing how to follow it in the dark with all the damage and no GPS was a miracle she should be highly commended upon. The other lead 3 it is my understanding, went through the creek canyon floor and scaled the cliff in the dark (with one headlamp) to the road - an option we 6 had to abandon for safety reasons.

Teamwork between the remaining 6 was amazing, everyone doing some little part to make it as easy as possible. The camaraderie, the courage, and no one gave up - it was truly an experience we hope to never be faced with again, but will laugh over sushi later this week on how we fit 4 exhausted hikers in a 2 person tent.

From Steve’s Experience:

Since we all had the same basic experiences until we arrived at the creek, I will start my version from this point and bring it forward.

As Willy, David, and I traversed the final descent, which led up to the creek, I heard the Siren’s Song beckoning me into her arms. She proclaimed that she lacked all modesty, and was naked and waiting impatiently for me. God, I am such a sap. I sprinted down the final terrain only to find a fully dressed, back pack carrying, mortal laughing at me and swearing that she HAD been naked (beneath her clothes). Arriving at the creek at approximately 1700 hours, I removed my footwear and submerged my fat little body into the water in order to cool off. When the group resumed hiking, I decided to move ahead to the front of the parade. Therefore, I sped up my pace to a more comfortable rate, and met up with Deb and Mike (henceforth known as DaM). After we met up with Kathy, I decided to forge ahead at an even more comfortable pace, since I was confident that I could make it out safely before sunset, and therefore be able to contact someone and let them know that there was a group of hikers still in the area. After leaving DaM and Kathy, I had a couple of interesting experiences, including taking a ride in a landslide area. This occurred when I attempted to run across an area that had suffered severe erosion, and whatever I landed on took off down hill with me on it. I turned to face the direction of travel, saw what appeared to be a safe area to exit the ride, and hopped off when I reached it. After this, I arrived at the intersection of Bear Trail [?], Sycamore [?] Reservoir, and East Fork Trails. Since I wasn’t sure which way to go, I ran down Bear Trail for a ways, turned around and ran down Sycamore Reservoir, then came back and ran up the highest summit in the area, which was back down Bear Trail. I did this in order to try to get telephone reception, hoping to contact a fellow Sierra Clubber in order to get directions and let someone know about the situation. At this time my phone completely locked up, and I couldn’t even turn it off. Since I didn’t want others to follow the markers that I had left behind, and hoping to get directions from the next group that came along, I ran back to the trail marker just as DaM arrived. After consulting with them, I followed Deb’s wise advice, and followed Sycamore Reservoir trail out. She pointed out that, just as I had observed when we pulled into the Prisoner Camp parking area, this trail seemed to lead to a riparian area.

As I reached the riverbed flats, I decided that the only reasonable route to take was to the right, since we had parked at a low area, which was most decidedly a riparian area, and then immediately started an uphill climb in the vehicle as we headed up to the trailhead. Since the area where the road traffic had appeared similar to the uphill area from Prison Camp, and the area on the other side of the hill appeared to most likely be the riparian area, I stayed in the creek bed until I arrived at what appeared to have been a dam. From here I backtracked far enough to get away from the swiftly flowing feed waters, and then crossed over the creek. From here I followed a very old footpath until I encountered a VERY old iron sign that proclaimed that the parking lot was only one mile away. With a high degree of elation, I headed in the direction that the sign had pointed me. After about a mile I arrived at an area, which probably served as a parking lot when I was still wearing diapers. The only sign here was one announcing the area as part of the Arizona Trail. So I ran. At one point I encountered a hissing speed bump of the reptilian sort who was coiled up in the middle of a single-track footpath. Landing my right foot within inches of his (or her) smiling face, I performed a pirouette in the path and called the bastard every name in the book but a white snake. Eventually I arrived in another creek bed where I found horse prints, and I followed this. And I ran some more. Several miles later I entered Prisoner’s Camp, which had been severely damaged from the floods. At 1900 hours I encountered a wonderful group of friends who perform trail maintenance. Having just run out of water, they re-hydrated me, listened to my (our) woes, then loaned me a whistle. I ran to the top of the nearest mountain, and then blew (suck is just an expression) for several minutes. I continued until right at sundown, and then went back to their camp. Seems that the universe was working in our favor, since they were not scheduled to camp there, but their van had broken down right before they got to the Prisoner’s Camp parking area. After further re-hydrating me, they then proceeded to feed me a wonderful dinner of rice and chicken with peanut butter sauce. As the group leader said, “Hard work is the best seasoning for food” (Edward Abbey). After a couple of beers and a slice of chocolate cheesecake (not really), we did dishes using a system wherein there are four dishpans; one for pre-clean, one for soap, one for rinsing, and one for sterilizing. Four people line up and start washing dishes, then the next in line says move (or something like that), and everyone moves down a place and lets someone else enter the line. By 2030 hours we had finished doing dishes, someone gave me a rain poncho, which replaced the one I gave away on Mt. Humphreys’ last Sunday, and I was just getting ready to thumb my way up the mountain to get Deb’s Xterra, when headlights appeared in the parking lot. When I heard DaM’s voice, I was thrilled. Two of my newfound friends went out to greet them, and upon my arrival, we left with the good Dr. and his wife (the kind couple that picked up DaM from the side of the road. (Deb, road walking is okay, but DON’T start street walking, okay). We got the Xterra, stopped at some crazy lady’s cabin, tried to use a broken phone, saw the lights of hundreds of stranded hikers, then finally arrived at mile marker 8, which was where DaM, had entered the road. We were really excited at this point since we had seen a single headlamp down in this area, and had heard a verbal response when we called out. Moving down to a slightly lower area, which held promise for an easier egress route, I headed into the valley with the aid of a 4D Maglite, which the good Doctor had loaned us. It was especially fortuitous that this area provided us with a slightly flowing, gently sloping creek bed in which to travel. After going down into the valley, I heard a single voice, and since it wasn’t a voice that I normally hear in my head, I felt fairly confident that it was one of our party. I told her (Kathy) to not move, and just call me in. When we finally connected, she was visibly shaken and exhausted, but she still refused to give up. I located the creek bed, sent her up it, and then proceeded down into the valley to locate the individual that was wearing the headlamp, since Kathy reassured me that she was not in possession of any type of lighting. How she made it that far without lighting is beyond me. What an awesome individual, and an inspiration to me. Leaving Kathy, who I knew was capable of taking care of herself, I delved deeper into, and eventually crossed, the valley while holding the Maglite over my head in order to illuminate the trail well enough to run. Coming back, I stopped about halfway up, and shined my light down into the valley. It was at this time that I saw a set of eyes down by the lowest part of the stream. I yelled out to not move, and I headed back into the valley. As I approached, I lost contact with the eyes. But when I arrived at the approximate location where they had been, I found some really big cat prints. At this point I headed back up to the car, since I figured if there were any hikers down here now, their bones would eventually be located. On the way up, I did panic for about ten seconds when I could not tell which mountain was which. Talking myself down, I left the creek bed that I had decided was my best route out, and I gained a little elevation. When I saw that the scar in the mountain, which was a result of the two-lane road, which had been built into it, was where I had thought it should be, I resumed my ascent out of the area. After deciding that the headlamp we had seen was either a phantasm, or more likely one of our group, we headed back down to Prisoner’s Camp, where I ran out onto a high area in order to try to guide the group in with a flashlight. Finally, we gave up, and called 911. We had decided that the light was possibly part, or all, of our group and they had decided to use GPS, which gives distances usable to crows, to lead them to their destination. As we were leaving the area and heading down to leave a note on the vehicle parked at Prisoner’s Camp, we noticed the same vehicle leaving the parking area.

The end.

And they lived happily ever after.

Oh yeah. Then there was the guy at Circle K that gave me a large cup of coffee. What a great day. Life is good. Friends are better. Adventures rock. Deb, take those rocks out of your backpack, you sicko, rockaholic.

Lessons learned:

Learn the trail names that you are going to be using.

Only travel as the crow flies if you have wings.

Look at the maps, but read the landscape.

Rock cairns are technology also, and therefore are no substitute for experience.

A Week in Bonaire, or, How Charles Survived.

2008-07-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

I am notorious for taking random trips to places like San Carlos, Mexico, Grand Cayman and Bonaire. These are the benefits of making good money and having absolutely no responsibilities. What can I say. It's all fun and games till the money runs out, believe me. I manage to pay for these trips with extra earned money from contract work or what are called "Adventure Bucks" earned from hosting events with my former singles club in Phoenix, a club that boasts of adventure and was founded in the year 2000. Recent changes have occurred within the club and yours truly, The ScubaJedi, was unceremoniously voted off the island by the current manager, who is a complete tool. Hereinafter referred to as The Tool. The Tool told me that he wanted longer term members out of the club, so he was terminating memberships of those long term loyal members as they were dragging the club down with their negativity regarding the club. Makes sense, huh? People rejoining the club and paying the high membership fees because they're not having any fun and they hate it. Turned out it was me and one other woman singled out and booted out compliments of The Tool. He's basically a liar and a bad person. Those are outstanding traits for the head of a social club, right? Oh well, maybe he'll come down with amoebic dysentery or something really appropriate like that . Moving right along....

Anyway we had a trip to Bonaire for, as you may have guessed, SCUBA. We were going in conjunction with a sister singles group, Tucson Fun and Adventures. There were 8 of us from the Phoenix going and several (lost count) from Tucson. Three of us from Phoenix were fairly experienced divers and three were beginners. Two of them were first time divers save their certification trips. One guy, Charles, who will be mentioned many times in this blog entry, got his scuba certification just for this trip. He signed up for it not knowing it was a scuba trip. When he found out it was primarily for divers, he said, "Well, I guess I'll go get some scuba lessons." I thought he was an exceptional sport about it, and he turned out to be a very good sport about a lot of things.

The plane arrived at 5am on Sunday morning. Too early to do anything except sit and whine about how muggy it was and slap various insects away from our bodies. I think most people lost about a quart of blood on this trip, and Charles even more than that. Eventually we checked in and anxiously awaited the breakfast cafe to open for some much anticipated coffee. The cafe at Buddy Dive is like everything else in Bonaire pretty much, open air with a nice view of the Leeward side of the island and Klein Bonaire. Betty, Sally, Lori and I decided to have some food and wait until we could get our keys to the room (apartment) we were to share with the two guys from our group, Charles and Kirk. It was a three bedroom condo, one small dungeon-like bedroom downstairs and two palatial grand en suite bedrooms upstairs. I foolishly envisioned the boys taking the downstairs room leaving us princesses to our girls privacy upstairs, ah, but that was not to be. Curse my metal body, I just wasn't fast enough. I left the cafe to go see if the room was ready and get a key. Just as I was making my way back to the office, Kirk and Charles were headed to the condo, keys in hand. They rushed in and claimed the master suite with the private bathroom and balcony for themselves. I was pissed. In retrospect, I should have camped at the desk, snagged the key first and bolted like Flash Gordon to the condo and laid claim to one of the good rooms. So I, being shy and conservative as many will tell you, did not want to be with the boys upstairs so I threw myself on the sword and took the dungeon. Whomever wanted to share with me could, and as fate would have it, it was Lori, who considered herself screwed (and not in that fun spanky way) to be stuck downstairs as well.

I tried not to let it damage my calm, but I was already fit to be tied in having to share with strange (and I mean strange) men in the first place. The Tucson organizer of the trip was fairly presumptuous in thinking we'd be cool about sharing co-ed, I thought. I can't speak for the others but I was not happy about it at all. But, I tried my hardest not to let it harsh my mellow. After all, I was in a world class diving destination. But, it did spoil my mood. I wanted it to be perfect with all the trouble I've been going through with work lately. But that's another blog.
We got settled in and then went to get signed in at the dive shop and obtain our diving permits. The entire island of Bonaire is a marine park and they require diving permits. It costs $25 and they give you a little plastic disc to attach to your diving gear so they know they got your $25. There really aren't any scuba police down there in the depths watching and writing tickets.
We had to attend an orientation regarding the care and awareness of the marine park, then we got a tour of the facilities and were sent on our way to do whatever we wanted, which in our case, was diving.

We checked our weights and went for a dive, and I ended up going to 114 feet to the bottom of the trench off the reef. It's easy enough to do as wall type diving lends itself to just going deeper and deeper. I gaged 114ft and decided that was deep enough for the moment and headed back up. It's pretty easy diving in Bonaire, the entire island is a protected reef and there is a lot of shore diving. When you come up the wall and get to the top of the reef you're pretty much at your safety stop and can linger there for 3 minutes and look at the octopus. We found an octo living in a little bit of coral near the Buddy pier. When I first saw it it was surrounded by all these divers and I thought for sure they were going to get inked. At least I was hoping tosee a bunch of curious divers in a lively moment of confusion in a cloud of octopus ink. That would have been picture worthy.

And so the trip went. We dove, drank, ate, bitched, laughed, slept a little. Charles, was itching to go somewhere else besides Bonaire. He wanted to go to Venezuela really bad. He wanted to charter an airplane to take him and anyone else who wanted to to South America. Fortunately, he spoke to the dive shop manager, Augusto, who was from Venezuela and wouldn't even go back there himself. He told Charles that he would most probably be dead before he left the airport. That changed his mind and so he began concentrating on Curacao or Aruba. He wanted to hit all the ABC islands.

Charles was the one who had to get the diving certificate before he came on the trip. He turned out to be a really good diver, and I hope he continues to dive.

On the first boat dive, I lost my tank. I am a slow motion diver and my dive buddy, along with everyone else, flew down the reef at a pretty good clip. I was pacing the dive master, Lala. Lala was from Brazil and was a tech diving instructor. I looked over at him and he was motioning for me to come to him. I though, crap, what's the matter? I felt around behind me and my tank was gone. I was breathing just fine but the tank was floating up somewhere above my head. Lala corrected it for me and I told him I was half way down on air and would head back, but did not know where my dive buddy was. All of this was communicated in DiverSignSpeak. Don't ask. I wanted to tell him not to touch the tank,as that is how I roll, but found the topic too complex for dive hand signs.

I got back on deck, Kirk and Charles were already there, and then the others were making it back. Lala came back on deck and gave everyone a lecture about the virtues of looking at your gauges once in a while when diving, it helps. I look at my gauges constantly. Or rather, my diving computer, as it tells me everything. Such a gossip.

We had two days of two tank boat dives and two days of one tank boat dives. The shore diving was spectacular and one day Lori, Betty, Sally and I decided to hop in the van and take a ride down the coast and do some shore diving. We decided on a site, The Hilma Hooker, which is a 300' vessel scuttled in 1984. We dove and swam to the reef which dropped off to a sandy area and another reef across a deep channel of sand. I didn't see any ship anywhere. But I did get to see a nice eagle ray glide past in the channel. So we paddled around for a while till the air ran out and came back to shore. Coming out of the surf, Lori remarked, "Wow, that was a great wreck". When I went back to the shop and told Lala we couldn't find the Hilma Hooker he thought I was retarded.
We went back another day and snorkeled out to the buoys and descended the lines to the wreck, so we ended up finding it after all.
The last day we went shore diving, Charles had rented a motorcycle and was tooling about the island. He came upon us at a dive site to stop and say hi and that he was having a great time. Later that day, he was in the hospital getting his face stitched up. Wrecked the motorcycle, cut himself up pretty bad and broke his foot. Only the day before he had a close call with a scorpion fish in a mangrove that took a shine to him. He had gone on a kayak snorkel outing and met with some mischief that day as well. Scorpion fish, in case you're wondering, are poisonous.
Earlier in the week, Betty and Lori declared that they saw a shark. No one believed them as seeing a shark in Bonaire is about as likely as seeing a polar bear wandering the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. but they stuck to their story. Everyone else was pretty convinced that they say a tarpon, which is a large fish.
On our last dive together, Lori and I were cruising down the reef at Buddy Dive and there was a huge tarpon just hanging there. I looked at Lori and made the shark gesture, she looked at me and made the f*** you gesture. I laughed so hard I flooded my mask.

Later on we took a sunset sailboat cruise, which was really nice.

We took a day long surface interval before flying out and did some touring of the island. We pretty much stuck to the South Farthing as we were lost in the area the first day we tried to find the Hilma Hooker. There is a lot of garbage washed up on the beach around there and it's kind of a shame that no one picks it up. There was an amazing amount of flip flops.

So that was Bonaire.

The ScubaJedi

Whale Riding in Rocky Point

2008-07-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

So I had never been to rocky Point, Mexico. For someone living in Arizona, it's almost a required duty to "go to the beach", and that is the closest beach. Coming from Florida I had never really been that tempted to go to the beach again until I fell in love with SCUBA/Snorkeling. So a friend of mine and I decided we would go to Rocky Point as neither of us had ever been there. We gathered up two other women friends and made reservations at a swanky hotel on the beach and went.

I drove the Altima, my status symbol, and not only is it a comfy, attractive car, it also gets great gas mileage. Heidi, who I concocted the trip with, parked at my place and we went and picked up Amy and Betty, who live in the lower east portion of the Valley of the Sun and we headed out on a sunny, warm Friday evening.

We were busy yukking it up and generally being silly en route and right after we turned off of I-10 to start the southward journey to the border, Amy piped up and declared that she forgot her passport! In order for Americans to get back into their own country from Mexico these days, you need to show a passport. I think we would have been able to pull it off on the return trip as Amy is a tall, willowy blonde and could in no way be really mistaken for being Mexican, at least not in the stereotypical sense. But you never know if you get Lieutenant Neidermeier at the border who would detain us indefinitely until proof of Amy's citizenship came forth. So we decided to err on the safe side and went back for the passport. After all, we were only 1 hour into the journey and that meant an hour dive back and another hour to get back to this point. 3 hours down the toilet, but hey, we were on vacation. The only real concern was getting to the border before midnight because after that, Mexico is closed for the evening.

But we made it and without incident.

I had made the hotel reservation and after taking the underside of my car out on a vicious speed bump in the hotel's drive through guest offloading area, I went inside to check in. I had neglected to call my bank and inform them of my travel plans and I had just gotten back from a Caribbean vacation on Grand Cayman, now I'm trying to use the card in Mexico. To the bank, it looked shady and the card was declined. In a way I was happy that my bank was looking after me as well as covering their ass in avoiding refunding my money if some low life slime ticket had appropriated my debit card, but then I had, like, no money. So I went back out to the car and told the girls that we couldn't check in with my card and so Heidi stepped up and put the room charges on her card and we would reimburse her. I would call my bank in the morning and straighten it out.

We went to our room which was really very nice. they are beginning to realize that the gringo money can be very handy and so luxury resorts are popping up all alone the coastline in Baja. There were two queen beds and a safe to lock up our passports. I brought a box 'o Sangria and we partied for a couple of hours before hitting the hay.

The next morning was perfect. I was looking out at the quiet beach and all of a sudden a motor boat towing some sort of inflatable water sled came rushing up to the beach from the open ocean. I was perplexed as to what manner of watercraft that was and was later informed that it was a "banana boat". They are towed behind motor boats as a thrill ride for tourists, or anyone with $5. This particular "banana boat" was shaped like a killer whale. It did not take long for vendors with tents, tables and various and sundry crap to sell turned up on the beach. Our own pool deck was off limits, thankfully, and it was nicely appointed with cabanas, lounge chairs, a swim up bar in one of the pools, everything a gringo could want.

We dressed and went down to breakfast at the hotel dining room buffet. Heidi and Betty took the first round and were gone for the better part of an hour fetching food. After a while Amy and I began to wonder what happened to them. Did they get caught in an unusually long line, or captured somehow by local white slave traders and are now somewhere in Morocco addicted to drugs? I got up and went to see. Waking up in Morocco addicted to drugs would be a welcome relief for me considering the stress I've been under from work lately, so I decided no matter what it was, it was all good. It turned out that the self-serve buffet offerings were strange Mexican items that were not a usual breakfast for Americans, and Heidi and Betty were not interested. There was an omelet line and that's where they were. They were pretty much up next for their order so it wasn't much longer. Amy and I opted for the weird food as we could eat it right then. I cannot tell you what I ate, but it wasn't too bad.

After that we staked out a cabana and parked there for the day. Betty and I had the lofty adventurous idea of snorkeling off the beach and so we had our SCUBA fins, boots, masks and snorkels with us. We decided not to enter off the beach where it had become very crowded with vendors, suckers for the vendors, food wagons, Mangoes on a stick, people renting jet skis and of course, the banana boat operators. We walked down the side of the hotel for a while along a wall that provided a barrier to the pool deck and the ocean. We scrambled down the rocks, suited up and splashed.

Absolutely nothing to see.

I don't know what I was thinking, there is no reef there. It's just sandy bottom all the way out to Baja California. I mean, this was the Sea of Cortez. I have scuba dived it many times, there is cool stuff down there. I've not seen but heard stories of whale sharks, and hammerheads, giant Humboldt squid that will kill and eat anything, including fishermen and scuba divers. I have a friend who caught one once and said it was like reeling in a parachute. But I wasn't really expecting the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, just maybe a couple of colorful fish, maybe a little ray. But not only could I not see anything, but I could not see anything! I saw Betty. She saw me. I was taking a new mask out for its maiden swim and thought it was completely fogged, but it wasn't. There was just so much silt kicked up from the goings-on from the beach, that there was total absence of anything to look at save sandy water and my snorkel buddy.

We paddled around out there for a while as it was relaxing to get away from the riff-raff nearer the shore, then we went to shore, carrying our fins with our masks around our necks and me in a shorty wet suit. We looked like weird diver people emerging from the deep. Creatures from the Sandy Lagoon. We went back to the cabana and enjoyed the scenery for a while. Amy, in a moment of giddiness, thought she was going to be able to take a nap in the cabana. Almost as soon as we got to the cabana, the music started. I'm not talking about soothing poolside cool jazz with a humming light saxophone and relaxing xylophone melodies, but loud, and I mean really loud, Mexican music. That coupled with the hoards of screaming kids in the pool made for not the most restful environment.

Heidi and I decided we would take a banana boat ride. Betty had done this before and her advice was "To just hang on". I thought, how hard could that be? So we each took $5 with us and went to the beach. By now there were two banana boat operators (hereinafter to be referred to as whale boat drivers as the sleds were colored and shaped like killer whales). We waited by the spot where one of the operator docked and there seemed to be a lot of kids awaiting a ride. We looked around and saw the other one coming to shore and rather than wait, we went over to that one. The guy who was taking the money looked a few pence short of a quid, missing many teeth and completely devoid of an understanding of English other than to say "Five" and "Want to ride Shamu?" Pronounced "Chamu". Of course we want to ride Shamu, who wouldn't?

I found out I wouldn't after the ride, but I am getting ahead of my story.

We hopped on the whale boat and waited for about 10 minutes for them to find more passengers. They managed to get a young couple and they sat in front of us on the sled. Then before you knew it we were off. I began screaming my lungs out right away. For some reason I was petrified. He went so fast and I felt so helpless and it frightened me beyond words. I don't really know why. I have dived to 120' in barracuda infested waters, been hopelessly lost in the wilderness and had to drink untreated creek water, been to Peru. You would think this would be nothing. But I was in absolute sheer terror. The ride went on for what seemed like hours. He flung us around a point and down by the area where we would be dining that night, then circled around to come back. Hanging on wasn't as easy as it sounded. At one point the girl in front of me fell into the middle and he stopped to let her get situated again. I was hyperventilating and shaking uncontrollably. Heidi then realized my screams were in sheer terror and not in fun. We got back to the shore and I couldn't get off that thing fast enough.

I walked back to the cabana and announced to the others that I just crapped my pants. For some reason they all thought this was funny. I guess the idea of being unceremoniously flung out into the open ocean is appealing to them. Whatever, I was never going to do that again. Fuck.

Betty and I decided it was toddy time and we went to the swim up bar for some libation. As fate would have it there was a drunk American there, surprise surprise, and his level of inebriation was off the charts. He offered to buy our drinks, we refused. Then Amy came by and he fell in love with her. He then produced a wad of folding money from his pocket and flung it into the pool. I grabbed one of the 5's and handed it to the bartender , motioned to the drunk guy and said, "Que pendejo". The bartender got a kick out of that. This gringa can swear in Spanish.

After a while, drunk man was escorted out of there after refusing to pay his bar tab. He tried to charge it to his room, but I don't think he actually had a room at that hotel. Some others joined us in the swim up bar and they found a $10 floating around. Drunk man could have paid his tab if he hadn't tossed all his money into the pool.

We asked the barman where a good place to go have dinner was and he told us about a restaurant in the seafood district or somewhere "downtown" called La Palapa. I think that mean umbrella. He told us to look for a huge palapa atop the building. So we took a cab and told him we wanted to go to La Palapa.

When we got out of the cab at La Palapa, there was what we thought was the Maitre 'D waiting outside with a menu. He was dressed nicely in a clean Aloha shirt and he asked if we were dining with them this evening. We said yes and he escorted us to a table. Then he sat down with us. We still thought he was a host of some sort so we yukked it up and made jokes up until he asked us to buy him a drink. We all sort of looked at each other with a "What the F***" expression and it occurred to us them that he was a local scamster looking for freebies. So we caved and bought him a drink. He originally asked for a beer and when it came to him ordering he took a rum and coke. Then he sat there for the longest time trying to talk Betty into going to the disco with him that night, I'm sure all on her dime. After a while everyone was looking down at the table and I was giving Taco Head my best "Get lost, Friendo" look. Finally he got it and left. He later ordered a meal and asked the waiter to ask us if he could put it on our tab. I think all at once we said "No!".

We looked around in the shops after that at all the vulgar t-shirts, cheap jewelry, and general crap you would find ultimately in a garage sale. We wandered over to a huge statue they have in the town square called El Camaronero. It's a man riding atop a huge shrimp. So, we took it that Camaronero meant "Shrimp Rider", like a Caballero is a horseman. Some weeks later upon speaking with a Latin American friend, I was informed that a Camaronero is a guy who catches shrimp. Like a Shrimperman. That blew it. I liked the idea of Shrimp Rider much better, because it was so completely preposterous it was hilarious.

After an hour or so of browsing the market and being duly offended by the vulgar t shirts we decided it was time to go back to the hotel. Then came the task of finding a cab to get us back there. We wandered for a while until we found a corner where a lot of taxis drove by and we flagged one down.

The next day we had a decent breakfast and a look around locally by the hotel, then headed back stateside.

The WhaleRider (aka The ScubaJedi)

July 4 Camping Weekend 2008

2008-07-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

I am a member of a local singles activity group. We do a lot of things involving drinking, dining, dancing but every now and then we have a real adventure such as a hike or a camping trip. This past weekend was a camping trip.
It started out as a trip up north to Payson, or so we thought. Mis-communication caused the organizers to think it was going to be in a forested area in the Payson, Arizona area but it turned out to be a four to five hour trip farther north than Payson getting into the treeless tundra area of Arizona. Anything is usually a relief from the Phoenix or Tucson area as the temperatures are sweltering this time of year and camping in extreme heat is just plain stupid.
So the plans were changed to an area south of Tucson, and we were to team up with a singles group in Tucson. I was asked to help co-lead the trip and even though I was looking forward to just kicking back and letting someone else do the work, I agreed since the northern excursion was canceled.
So I organized things as best I could for the Phoenix group. There were 7 signed up and they all actually showed up which is a miracle. So many times people wake up in the morning and change their minds and just blow off the activity, but this one was pre-paid, so the odds of people showing up are better.
I had everyone meet up at the Arizona Mills Mall parking lot in front of the Rainforest Cafe, since it is an obvious landmark. They have it decorated in a loud tacky way and I figure people can't miss it, but somehow they do. They think that they are supposed to meet for carpooling inside the mall at the cafe (which is never open at the hours we meet) or they can't find the location at all. I am amazed that some of these people can function in everyday life being so directionally challenged and unable to reason things out that I find to be perfect common sense. It's exhausting.
We carpooled up and I rode with one of the newer members who turned out to be really nice. She didn't have too much in the line of camping gear and so it made it easy to pack the Altima. I had no idea where we were going, but to meet the Tucson group at t a Fry's in Tucson. I am not all that familiar with Tucson so we went all the way through town to the meet up place, and still one carload in my caravan ended up getting lost.
So we met with the Tucson group and headed out. The campsite was dispersed camping which meant no toilets. This presented cause for concern with many people on the trip. They would drive into town to use the facilities. I am not kidding, taking an hour trip into civilization to pop a squat. Admittedly, using the bushes isn't my favorite thing, but I would rather bite the bullet and hang around camp than make a day trip to have a pee. The area we were camping in was pretty sparse of good trees and shrubs and it was a challenge to find some privacy.
The way out there was marked with chartreuse signs, the second of which I missed as I was trying to avoid the major ruts in the road with my low clearance car. I ended up leading two other cars to Kentucky Camp, which is what was mentioned in all the writings about our camping weekend. I ended up getting a call from one of the other campers saying we were way off track and guided us back. By the time we got there most of the great places to pitch a tent were gone and so I went a little bit up a hillside and found a fairly flat spot and started pitching camp. I am so generous and constantly worried that everyone else is content that I forget about myself. One other guy was looking for a spot to pitch his tent and I offered up part of my area. It was under a tree and there were scant places under trees in the much coveted shade. So I said, "Hey! I can scooch over a bit and you can pitch your tent right next to mine". Then I stop to think, what am I saying? I don't know this guy. For all I know he could spend the night snoring and farting and I'll never get any sleep. There isn't much sound insulation with a paper thin layer of nylon. So at 3 am when I was waking up to the sound of snoring and farting from the next tent, I really regretted being so nice.
Waking up at 3am really surprised me as on Friday night when most of the others went in to Sonoita to watch fireworks, I stayed behind to get plastered on vodka with the boys.
The next day we had two big things planned and that was to go to the ghost town of Kentucky Camp, which is really a derelict mining operation not so much a town, and ot go to the lake in Patagonia. We went to Kentucky Camp first, which was a 5 mile drive from where we were camping. You have to park at the top of the hill and hike 1/4 mile in and you see the old buildings that are being renovated and some that are not so renovated. There was an outhouse much to the delight of just about everyone, myself included. We sat on the veranda of one of the buildings and told stories and generally yukked it up for a while before heading back for lunch. There was a bed and breakfast down there as well, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to drive out there to stay.
We had lunch then all decided to head off to Lake Patagonia. It's an artificial lake, as usual in Arizona, and there was a little beach. Some of us went in swimming, and I can never resist the water, so I was the first one in. We explored the area for a couple of hours, then headed back for yet another meal. It was our last night camping out and of course, snoring and farting were in abundance from the next tent over. My carpool companion said it best when she said the guy didn't have much to say, but his body sure did.
I was still up by 5:30 in the morning to the sounds of yet another camper packing it in to head out as soon as possible. I had to use another table to make coffee on, and it was a plastic table. I didn't even think about it and I ended up warping it out with the heat from my stove. that was my bird-brained move of the day. Overall, I had a great time, it was sure a nice relaxing respite from the hell that is work for me lately. Beautiful serene scenery, friendly fun campers, and three days away. The cats were sure glad to see me though.
Until next time, the end.