This has become, by far, my favorite sport. I started diving in early 1996 while I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. At first I was afraid to go in the ocean because a 16 foot Great White was caught 1 mile off the shore within three months of my arrival to the island. I figured if they could get that close, that they could get even closer if they wished. My ex-girlfriend Christina, god-bless her, really wanted to learn how to dive. No self-respecting macho guy is going to let his beautiful little girlfriend go in the ocean without a manly escort. So, with that, we took up diving.

My Open Water Diver instructor, Rich Ruth, was amazing. He easily gained everyone's complete trust the first night. (Later we found out that he has over 6000 logged dives. Over 10 years teaching experience, diving 300 days out of the year with at least two dives a day...plus his prior military dive training, you can see how he could easily log that many dives. Talk about competence!) We made it through Basic Open Water and promptly went on to Advanced Open Water, with Rich of course. Many a day and night we spent in the beautiful waters of the Okinawa reef with visibilities of over 100 feet on good days.

I had built up so much confidence in the water that I had hoped to see a shark, but never got the privileged of seeing one. After Christina left the island, I took up a job at the SCUBA locker and enrolled in the Rescue Diver class. Rich taught me some valuable lessons about not approaching a person too quickly. He dunked my ass so hard that I wound up 10 feet under the surface without a reg in my mouth. Before I even knew it, I was inhaling and ingesting sea water. I was feeding chum to the crabs for the rest of the day.

After Rescue Diver, I went on to Master Diver. In order to obtain that, I had to do five specialties with Rich: Night Diver, Deep Diver, DAN O2, Wreck Diver (instructed by Bob Zimmerman) and Boat Diver were the ones I elected to do. After completing those, I went on to Divemaster training. Again, Rich as my instructor, I gained valuable insight to other aspects of diving as well as what it is like to be a dive instructor flunky. After Divermaster, I continued on the professional path of diver education and ended up becoming a PADI Assistant Instructor. I barely finished the course before I had to leave Okinawa. Soon thereafter, Rich became a Course Director through PADI...a very high status among SCUBA certifications.

I hope to get back to Okinawa some day because SCUBA Instructor training (IE and IDC) only costs $500 for the course while the same course runs around $1200 here in the states. I have logged over 100 dives which is to say that I haven't logged all of my dives. Some of my more favorite dive spots were Maeda Point and the Kerama Islands in Okinawa. I have seen sea turtles, sting rays, moray and wolf eels, schools of barracuda, a blue ring octopus (Very deadly! Check out a picture of one in my PHOTOS section,) numerous sea snakes and countless other fish.

My dive equipment includes: Reg - Scubapro D400 MK20 with R190 octopus, Sherwood BCD, Scubapro E.D.I. dive computer, Citizen Hyper-Aqualand dive watch, Force Fins (And yes, they totally kick ass. No leg cramping!!!) a steel 100 cu/ft. tank, an aluminum 80 cu/ft. tank, a couple of different wetsuits, copious amounts of weights both hard and soft, 4 different dive lights (one rechargable) and a gazillion little gadgets and gizmos.

I have gone diving one time since leaving Okinawa. I was, to say the least, VERY disappointed. The water was 40 degrees and visibility was a mere 12 feet. From what I understand, these are typical shore dive conditions here on Whidbey Island. I got too use to diving in shorts and a t-shirt back in Okinawa. I long to dive in those warm tropical waters...