A couple of days off.... mostly non-diving related...

Time to catch up on yardwork and everything else. The other day, on the tail end of my long stretch of workdays, the drive shaft on my pickup truck broke in half. That was kind of a noisy event. Luckily it was right at the bottom of the driveway while I was moving very slowly and I was able to roll to a spot at the side of the road, it could've been much worse. Also luckily, my wife had the day off and we were able to transfer all the gear to her vehicle and still get the charter off.

I did have a couple of days I had off at that point and it was spent searching the internet and local car lots for a new truck. It couldn't have happened at a better time... 6 years of zero percent interest and the new vehicle (Ford f-150) might run me the next couple of years little more than we've plowed into the old Dakota after replacing breaks, transmission and other assorted work done the last couple of years, not to mention this repair bill.

The diving conditions are pretty nice right now. I'm intending to get back in the water just for grins the next couple of days, maybe just play with the camera as I haven't really shot any pictures in the last couple of weeks. I don't have a charter pre-scheduled 'til Thursday, but I'll take charters if a phone call comes up.

Here's a picture a little critter I really enjoy... a medusa worm. These guys are a type of sea cucumber. They can be very long, are very soft, and have an accordion-like movement. I took this shot on a night dive, we generally do not see them during the daytime. Medusa worms, as well as other sea cucumbers, are sort of the vacuum cleaners of the sea - they pick up detritus and eat it. The medusa worms can be upwards of 3-4 feet long and slink along with their feathery fronds picking up items and passing it into their mouths. I used to have a pink medusa worm in a large reef tank I had at the front of my aquarium shop, way back when, that amazed people... one day it died and poisoned the tank... sea cucumbers tend to prolapse their guts when threatend or dieing and it's toxic enough that things stay away on the reef, in a closed system like an aquarium the toxins can have a devastating effect on the fish. I lost everything but the invertebrates and a pair of mandarin gobies.

later,

Steve