The other day, Daniel broke his snorkel, so I went to Chuck`s Dive World to get him a new one...$40! OUCH!

While I was there, I saw that Chuck had a bunch of shocking pink snorkles in his clearance bin. I understood why they were marked down.

Well...who wants PINK? BLeh!

Then I chuckled at the evil thought that had briefly entered my mind, but in the end I eschewed the pretty pink for a nice blue one, Daniel`s favorite color.

After our dive the other day, we scrambled up to the pavilion to doff our gear. It was fairly crowded so we shared a picnic table with another group of divers. The gear is quite heavy, so there`s no point in standing around waiting for a table to clear just you can lean against it to get that heavy BC and tank off.

If you`re gona be a diver, you gotta learn to make friends. :)

The other group was a certification class that was being taught while we were there. The instructor excitedly showed us some cool pictures he`d just taken of an octopus that climbed onto his face mask. He also teased me about my troubles with the diver down flag.

He said, "You use a diver down flag???"

Which momentarily made me feel silly, "Uhhhh yeah?"

"Not me! I use Ernie!" And he formally introduced Ernie to me.

Ernie looked sorta like this...


Ernie


Except he was a bit rough around the edges and had a crude face scrawled on both sides, reminiscent of Wilson from the movie, Castaway. On one side, a happy face, "See, this is when Ernie`s happy..." and he spun Ernie around so I could see the back, which had a somewhat scared looking face, "And this is when he`s wondering, `Where the hell are you???`"

I rolled my eyes at him, "You`ve been inhaling way too much Nitrox."

Hehehee... nitrox. A scuba joke. Ahem!



Anyway, while we were just getting our gear off, the class was loading up their gear and quickly left the park. Then when we finished loading our stuff in the van, we discovered that my son, Daniel`s snorkel and mask were missing.
We pulled everything out of the van and went through it several times. We sent Ben to trace Daniel`s steps.
Eventually it occurred to us that the other group must`ve accidentally picked it up when they were loading their gear into their cars.
Well I`ll be.
I had no idea who ANY of those people were or where they were from. I just PAID $40 to replace Daniel`s broken snorkel and he only used it ONCE! The masks alone are worth about $50.
Scuba diving`s EXPENSIVE! Especially if you gotta keep replacing your gear!
Ugh! Ouch!Damn!
I noticed another instructor sitting at a table at the next pavilion over and decided well hey, maybe these guys (who are both instructors) know each other. Hmmm.

If you`re gona be a diver you got to learn to make friends....

So I walked over to him and asked. He said he didn`t know him, but he recognized the Dive Locker T-shirt logo.


Dive Locker

What LUCK!
So we called the Dive Locker and sure enough they had Daniel`s mask and snorkel, which we retrieved later.
But meanwhile, this other instructor said to me, "That`s why all MY gear is PINK!" He smiled at me, "I`ve lost MORE gear on dive trips that way. Now all my stuff is pink and no one messes with it!"

No way.

How foofoo can you get???



Never mind.[font style="color: rgb(255, 153, 255); font-style: italic; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"[