The Dive Evangelist

Tomorrow I'm going on my first local dive of the season to the wreck of the USS San Diego and I'm giddy as a bottle of bubbles. Oceanblue Divers chartered the trip which quickly filled with a as many old salts as there are folks who are tentatively giving local diving a chance to impress them. The weather reports are as groovy as the crowd with predictions for seas like glass and wind blowing just enough to keep you cool in your drysuit.

Just as I've never gotten to dive the San Diego before, so is the dive is from a boat I've never jumped off before, the R/V Garloo. This is the boat that once was the legendary R/V Wahoo, arguably one of two boats that defined Northeastern wreck diving over the course of the 80s and 90s.

This is the exact dive which I woke up at 3AM about a year ago to make. I packed my gear in the car and drove the 70 or so miles out to the dock.

I'd gotten there early, before the folks who had slept on the boat were up. So, instead of getting on board for the first time without the captain's permission I went back to the car to set up my rig. I opened up the crate I tote everything around in and stared. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I slowly admitted to myself that what I was looking at was the sad truth... I'd forgotten my BC.

Well I'm not making the same mistake this time. I'm all packed up, checked, double-checked, and redouble-checked. Everything is where it belongs and I'm ready to rock and roll.

Now there's just the bit about having to wake up at 3AM.

Wish me luck.

This weekend Oceanblue Divers had a fantastic barbeque and dive at Dutch Springs Quarry.

We met up and we laughed and we traded stories about the places that we had each been and where some of us were going or hoping to go. I met some folks I've heard about and I met some folks I've never heard of before and I met some folks I haven't seen in months and I was grateful to see them all. The grill was hot, the drinks were cold, and the company was rock'n'roll.

We went diving. Sure, it's not the Caribbean, but it was diving. The relaxing burble-and-swoosh of the regulator. The weightless drifting. Even a curious fish or two to stare down. The cool serenity of being underwater away from the heat of the dry world above. It was a perfect day for diving.

It was a perfect day.

But that was yesterday.

Today was spent thinking about diving, about how great yesterday was, about how it is going to be a week until I get back into the water, about how I'm not sure when my next trip will be. Preoccupation filled most of the day, as it fills most days. I hung around the Oceanblue website along with the other diving messageboards, magazines, and blogs that I read over and over, whether there are new postings or not.

More than once (OK, more than 100 onces) I closed my eyes and put myself back in the water. Just as many times I opened my eyes to disappointment. I can't imagine that such single-mindedness is at all healthy, but am I about to stop giving myself over to it? Are you kidding?

Each and every day is spent dedicated to diving, mind, body, and soul. The crummy thing is that, despite the permeation, far too many of the days are spent dry.

Diving isn't a hobby. It isn't a sport.

It is an obsession. It is a fixation. It is an addiction. And I love it... no matter how much the withdraw hurts.