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July 20, 2013

IN A JAPANESE WRECK

... wreck diving, when and where in question ... notice the "high-tech" equipment ... tank, two-stage regulator and mouthpiece, lead weights, rubber fins and shin mounted diving knife ... that's it ... our "dive computer" consisted of a waterproof bag containing the repetitive dive tables (kept in the boat), a grease pencil, and a plastic tablet ... after each descent/ascent we had to "do the math" to calculate the next dive's maximum bottom time and decompression stops ...

... sometimes we would "bounce dive" to what i will now admit to having been rather extreme depths, other days we spent hours and hours at the one-atmosphere level, thirty-two feet ... my favorite times, of course, were when i would free-dive to over one-hundred feet searching for rare and/or beautiful shells to sell to the australian tourists, of which the the extremely venomous  conus textile was my favorite ...

PHOTO COURTESY OF ©RICHARD LING

... ma knew about this, but i'm fairly certain she never learned the extent of our explorations ... i told pa, he said, "just be careful, okay" ...

... [sigh] ...

... up in heaven, together again, another thing for which he's probably going to have to suffer an eternity or so being scolded ...