Wicked Awesome

Tuesday, 3/22/2011 - 2am Moonlight Surf, crystal clear water, could see my moonshadow on the ocean floor below.

Left directly from midnight surfing to drive a couple hours to Brisbane.  Kat left us to go to Broome to work on Charter boats around the Kimberleys - which, as I understand it, are islands and outback destinations in North West Australia.  Left around 330am to make it for an 8am flight and realized the gas light was on.  They don't have 24 hour credit card operated petrol stations around here, so we hit the road and turned the music up just as my man Hunter S. suggests.  It worked, I think we drove for about an hour when we finally found a 24-hour BP near Tweed.  Forgot about the time change (daylight savings in Queensland, and none in New South Wales, gave us an extra hour), had extra time so we pulled over for a nap.  Alarm clock fail, plus left the lights on = dead battery and almost missing the flight.  Frantic.  Got some help and some jumper cables, got Kat to the airport just in time and I drove back.  Again pulling over to sleep a bit.  I bought Kat's car from her, so that's convenient.

Wednesday, 3/23/2011- Overnight diver road trip to South West Rocks.  4-5 hours south of Byron, a group of us bunk-bed-hostel-dorm style slept at the dive center, and the next day had 2 dives, first with grey nurse sharks and then through a 125 meter cave with flashlights.  SO GOOD.

We entered down on the right side at Sandgutter, then up through the chimney and followed the cave until we reached the other side. Coming out of the cave looked exactly like the photo above, except the shadow that was coming at us was a massive sea turtle, not a shark.  So cool, slowly gliding toward me through the blue, we looked face to face until I moved out of his way.  That is an actual image of the cave we dove through as you come out, but not mine; I found on the internet.  We didn't see any sharks in the cave, I was definitely OK with that.

Now, these sharks look scary.  Apparently it is very, very unlikely that they will hurt you ( I have read that they have never been reported to attack a human), but holy Jesus do they make you think once or twice about their rows of jagged teeth.  There were a whole lot of them, and I swear to you they were so close you could easily reach out and touch them over and over again.  At one point, I was looking below me, and when I looked up there, easily less than 5 feet in front of my face, was the curious face of a shark coming to say hello.  That made my heart jump, provoked an involuntary shriek, and looked something like this but head on rather than side view.

Generally in diving, one of the things that you work for is low air consumption.  I have been pretty good at this, which is just an indication that I am mostly calm under the water.  The calmer you are, the calmer your breathing is, the longer you can dive for.  But let me tell you, with a pretty strong, rocking surge, tight squeezes through a cave, and sharks twice my size an arms length away, I was tearing through air like never before.

Oh, there's just so much more to tell, but that will have to do for now.