Another World...

For those who have seriously thought about getting a SCUBA certification, I highly recommend taking the plunge. Ohmigawd I'm so funny I forgot to laugh. Ended up waking up at 4:30 yesterday morning after getting my solid eight hours of sleep, and just hanging around taking care of stuff until 8 when we left... I picked up a guy in the UCSB class at the dorm on the other side of campus then headed down to my friend's place downtown... I took the class originally with him two years ago so we've been diving buddies on multiple occasions... The group in the car ended up 5, myself, my friend, his girlfriend, her friend, and the other guy I picked up along the way. All those people along with five tanks, regulators, B.C.s, weight belts, let's just say the car was quite loaded down. Basically any bump of any size caused the car to scrape over something. We eventually made it down to Ventura in one piece, and onto the boat. It was a much smaller boat than we took two years ago, but it had a jacuzzi, so that was a huge plus. We ended up going out to Anacapa Island instead of the much larger Santa Cruz Island we went to on the prior trip. The conditions were pretty close to perfect, current was very minimal, visibility was great. My friend brought along one of those underwater camera things, so we took some great fish. At times you'd turn around and suddenly be in a huge school of fish, unable to see anything but swarms of them, as they all turned back and forth in unison. We also saw some of those cool animalish plants that dart into their holes when you get close to them, whole rocks full of them that would end up leaving tons of little craters before slowly inching their way back out. There were some bright bright totally orange fish that I chased around for a while trying to get a decent pic of, and there were various claims of seal spottings, although I some how managed to miss every single one. Overall it was just a blast, I'm really going to have to do that more often. Maybe not in the Pacific, where you have to wear 34 pounds of solid weight to go along with your double wetsuit and heavy as all heck tank and gear, maybe a jaunt to the Caribbean or Hawaii is in order. My friend and his girlfriend drove down and flew out of LAX to Hawaii for a week this morning, real rough life they're leading. :)

My favorite part was the sunset later on, as we were on the South side of the island so the mainland wasn't even visible, and it was just really beautiful colored clouds and the sun dipping into the sea. I snapped away some pictures, gettin on towards halfway through the roll I started in like June. What can I say, I'm stingy with film. After that I just relaxed for like an hour in the jacuzzi, as those who were certified for night diving (none of us) donned their very cool looking LEDs and flashlights and went for another dip. Looking down into the water and seeing all their beams of light darting around, bluish glows in the sea of blackness, was a very neat effect. That and you're sitting in the middle of the ocean in very comfortable 100 degree water with cliffs and waves all around you, looking up at an endless expanse of stars. I was really livin the good life.

Slept most of the way back, and then we made a quick sugar run to McDonalds for some ice cream cones before making the half hour drive back to SB. Then came the endless process of rinsing all the gear at my friends place, then loading it back into the car for me to take back the next day. I got that taken care of today with the help of a few friends, after attempting unsuccessfully to sleep most of the day, due to the incessant knocking of one friend in particular who disagreed with the idea of letting me recuperate. I'm quite sore especially my wrists and lower back, but it's lessening as the day goes on. More annoying are the ends of my fingers, I ended up cutting a few of the nails a little too close the day before, that combined with them being in gloves most of the day has them a bit puffy at the edges of the nail and quite sensitive. Making it hard to type, so I'm gonna lay off.

No class tomorrow since the one class I do hvae is cancelled since we turn in our Business Plan section drafts on Thursday. Hence, I won't be waking up any time soon.