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Dizzam.

I looked at a pic from the first Florida dive trip this weekend and saw the date stamp on 6/6/2016. I can't believe it was only 4.5 months ago... we did so much diving this summer it feels like years ago. That's good, right?

Unless your dive skills have degraded by how much you feel rather than the actual passage of time...

Na, what it really means is you miss doing it. Which is legit.

e: working San Jose this week, but should get the weekend off. Thinking about taking the wife to Big Sur Saturday so we can dive in that cove I went to previously. I sold her on the high chance of seeing a sea otter.

Spent all my money over the summer and can't afford a winter trip somewhere warm. This sucks. Next dive is March, prolly.

Next winter is an underground winter cave dive in Missouri, though.... they want all divers to be at least 12. The kid aint, yet.

Next winter is an underground winter cave dive in Missouri...

Where in Misery? Caves all the fuck over the place.

http://www.bonneterremine.com/diving

60 degrees year round. Booya. We'll spend a couple days there over his xmas break or something.

Wow. Only about an hour outside my old place.

It's slightly concerning that it's an abandoned LEAD mine.... but one hopes all the leftover lead ore is down at the bottom...

If it's good enough for Flint, it's good enough for you.

Hmmmm. Don't open your mouth I guess, or your pores.

My kid just opened his own youtube channel and posted the full video of our first day of diving at Devil's Den back in June. Not interesting unless you were there, but here it is. Keep in mind this is a 10 year old kid. I'm still impressed and someday I will look back at this vid and think to myself, "WTF was I thinking taking a little baby boy scuba diving..."

Just sent this email to the lead mine people:

Hi!

I just discovered you guys existed and we're thinking of coming down for a weekend next winter. But I am wondering... being an old lead mine... has anyone tested the water for lead saturation? I don't want to dive in the water towers in Flint, MI, either.

Thanks!

SG

Response:

Yes. no appreciable presence of lead in the water
Galena (from which lead is derived)is not soluble like iron, copper etc
It is not dissolvable in water

Regards,
Douglas Goergens
West End Diving Center/Bonne Terre Mine
314-209-7200
Typos courtesy of iThumbs

Looks like that's legit.

Lead(II) sulfide is so insoluble that it is almost nontoxic, but pyrolysis of the material, as in smelting, gives dangerous fumes.[15] Lead sulfide is insoluble and a stable compound in the pH of blood and so is probably one of the less toxic forms of lead.

And that's for the powdered form. If it's still in the raw mass of galena it sounds like it won't react or dissolve at all. Just, if you come across any iunmined deposits of it while diving, don't chew on it.

Sweet.

We only dive the top 50 feet or so of water at our qualification level, I think it goes down another couple hundred. Bad stuff is prolly down there.

Wife and I drove down to Monterey Saturday morning with purpose of getting Cat a wet suit for Catalina, and then if weather and time permitted, diving in Big Sur at spot from previous post. We ended up going to a few dive shops, looking at female wetsuit options, before finally settling on a pretty rad Mares black 5mm open cell. Dive shop guys talked us out of going to Big Sur. Seas were incredibly rough, in the 8-12 foot range.

But we wanted to test her new gear, so instead we picked a spot basically right in front of the touristy part of Monterey. Seas were really interesting, maybe 16ish second intervals of big 8-10 foot waves at our exposure. Then very calm in-between. Saw a ton of sea otters, and kelp, but visibility was a creepy 5 feet, or less. Was good to test out the gear, and do a safe shore-dive entry/exit with the seas being what they were. Also feeling like a bad-ass with all the landlubber tourists looking on. Got the wife officially hyped for Catalina.

Not diving related, but posting anyway for cool factor.

Mavericks, the fabled bay-area surf break that is flat 90% of the year is doing its thing right now. Dropping humongous 30-50 foot bombs in a WNW swell. Going to stop by on the way home and watch the madness.

Here's some shitty webcam footage. You can see a person making it over the swell to the left for scale.

"The sea in a storm" is one of the three things all wise men fear.

Just booked the hotel in Florida for the first half of the Mancation March, 2017.

Just booked 2 days of charters near Tampa Bay, in the Gulf of Mexico.

With these guys.

http://www.bluewaterexplorers.com/index.html

And that's why I'm not getting the new PC that I need desperately. I am learning to accept and love BSsOD.