Ok, I know you are there....Walt...Jack...Jason...BTalkers....PLEASE share with us one of your most recent dives...I beg of you

Oh, my....poor Cynde Lee...I feel your pain, I feel your pain....a good story would be wonderful about right now. I am just thinking of where Joe and I would be at this very moment if we had not had to cancel the trip...we would be in the water at the Divi relaxing, snorkeling and awaiting the sunset and then probably a very casual dinner (still in wet bathing suits!) at the Chibi Chibi....oh, woe is me...and woe is you...oh, woe is us. Carole (Shutterbug)

Hang in there Cynde Lee....Sir Andrew is flying home this day!!! His stories will fill up the board as we have never seen before! Patience, my child, patience....

I hope you're right Carole.

Cynde, while not Bonaire diving, I'd like to share my friday experience with "you".

I, for at least 15 years, have been the poster boy of support for all of the federal land grabs that have been underway in the FL keys marine park, the most recent at dry tortugas.

I first saw the keys reefs when I was 16. (1970) In some 700+ dives I witnessed the degradation of this reef system until I quit diving there in 1992, it was breaking may heart.

A newer diver grand old friend visited the house with all of his new gear(kit) filled with excitement about going to the keys for a day of diving while(whilst)on vacation(holiday)[sorry saw too many ops to convert to metric english for sir andy]. I agreed to go just for the road trip portion,to catch up with of old times. Good conversation plenty of yuks and of course some industrial drinking.

Dive day, and I'm really not looking forward to boarding a commercial boat to do two 35' dives at molassas reef. It almost made my hangover worse.

So here it is, the one thing I wanted to say and could have done it with one sentence, but I think it is so monumental its worth sifting through all this prolix. The shallow reef here is as healthy as I've seen it since about 1975. New sea fans are about 2 feet tall, the bones of the mature ones don't have any trace of alage, Some staghorn is actually reestablishing itself. the fish population is as good as I've ever seen it, particularly the groupers.

The restoration plan looks like it is working, and faster than anyone knew! I think this is great news, its a rare thing to be unjaded.

So here is a happy face from me to all of you

Dave, thanks for sharing that story, very nice to hear. It reenforces what I've always felt, that nature will fix herself if only allowed to. Here's a Key's Sea Fan (maybe Molassas Reef).

Oops.



More coffee, please.

Thanks Dave...and for the pic Cecil...yes Shutterbug, I think I have it bad, you must really be dying! I read an article by Walt Sterns in my Sport Diver this morning about diving for sperm whales...made me feel a little better to look at the pictures too...(sigh)

another keys pic (near minnow caves)taken 10/4/01.
my profile pic was taken on the same dive.

great pic Susan...you got the hang of it already!

Cynde,

I think I'll be thirsting for dive reports soon too. I had my shoulder surgery (an arthroscopy) to fix a torn tenden last Thursday, and things are going okay, but I have to have my right arm in a sling for the next 4 weeks, and no diving for at least 4 months (because no swimming or overexertion/extension of my right arm is permitted during that time) :-(

Typing is challenging (although a wireless keyboard and mouse help, although using the mouse left handed is a trick.

So, while I may not be responding on-line as often I'm still reading everyday or so...

Jake

Dave,

What an encouraging story, I hope we can all her more news like that in the future. BTW great profile pic. J.

Jake,

Glad things are going OK. The surgery sounds like it wasn’t a lot of fun. Hope you have lot’s of Turkey and Cranberries to help take away the pain.

Jake, hope the shoulder gets well soon. Must be tough no diving for that long, but I hope you do what you're told to (no "tough-guy" stuff!!!). I know you're a tough guy anyway -- you don't have to prove yourself!

Dave, that certainly is good news to hear. It seems as tho Mother Nature can recover very well when assisted by man and very much so when NOT assisted by man. Really glad to hear the Keys are coming back. Maybe the rest of the Caribbean and Atlantic that was hit badly over the years will soon make as good a recovery as you have witnessed.

Jake: Oh my, oh my....four months...geesh. That's a long time for a fish to be out of water! Joe had rotator cuff surgery a while back but your must be more severe as he did not have as many restrictions...at least not for as long a period of time. I do hope you make a miraculous recovery and blow the minds of the doctors and that you will be back in the swim of things in HALF the anticipated recovery time! Please keep us posted as to how you are doing, and Linda's knee updates, as well. Be strong and be healthy...Carole

Hope that you had enough luggage space to take the "remains" of the Single Malt with you Jake...it should provide a little comfort & I'm sure you'll have no trouble raising your tumbler with your left hand. Thanks for your (& Lindas) hospitality when we visited you. Linda seemed a little cool towards me, perhaps understandably. But I take my hat off to her.......it's a special woman that is prepared to allow her home to be invaded by every Talker who happens by & expects to be greeted by the pair of you, like a long lost friend.
It's 03:20 here & I've had no "real" sleep since stupidly getting up at 04:00 two days ago to watch the Leonid meteor display. It was the last day of our stay on the Island so it seemed like a fitting finale. Needless to say it also provided a good opportunity to polish off the remains of the spirits we had left between us. We made a sorry picture, as the seven us huddled together clutching stiff necks & aching heads, some forteen hours later in the departure lounge (surely there's a case to be answered under the Trades Description Act here) at Flamingo Airport. Anyway we're all safely home, albeit with no luggage. Hopefully it got as far as Amsterdam & only failed to make the last leg of our journey back to Norwich, England.
Right....really must get my head down now & try to catch up on the last two weeks posts tomorrow.
Hmmm....Sir Andrew eh? I think I could grow accustomed to that. Perhaps I'll have to go away more often as it's certainly an improvement on the Fancypants tag that I left two weeks ago with.

Welcome back, Sir Andrew!! Glad to see your body (if not your mind and/or your luggage) made it home safely. That surely is dangerous when there is "a little bit left" in the old spirit bottles right before one goes to leave for "home"....been there, done that! Oh, what the heck..that's what vacations are for, anyway. Can't wait to hear about your tales all the adventures and explorations you experienced while on Bonaire. Nighty, night...Carole (Shutterbug)

PS One would get the distinct impression that Linda is a very perceptive young lady after "speaking and listening" to her on the BT board for so long...I wonder.....hmmmm.

A dive! A dive!.....My Kingdom for a dive!
Here's one, while it's still fresh in my memory...
It was early afternoon midway thru' our trip & we were about to do Red Slave for the second time that day. In the moring, when we had first attempted it we had eventually given in to the 2 or 3 knot current & allowed ourselves to drift dangerously close to the rougher waters of the Lighthouse on the southern tip of the island. It had been exciting flying along with large schools of schoolmasters & jacks flashing by at regular intervals. This time however, we didn't swim out to the bouy but dropped down in only a few feet of water to check if the current had eased as we wanted to do the dive properly & just have a gentle "bimble" in the 100 or so yards either side of the sites marker. Immediately we came face to face with a 6 or 7 inch black seahorse swaying gently to & fro on a piece of dead black coral in the sand with nothing else in the desert of sand around us for 20 yards in any direction. We all had to clear flooded masks......the previous afternoon we had spent nearly 50 minutes before we had been able to find just one of the seven seahorses which Monique had told us were in plain view at oil slick leap...Why didn't we have the sense to look in the areas where the coral had been trashed immediately? As the laughter subsided we could here the unmistakeable squeaks & clicks of a pod of dolphins but despite swimming off frantically into the blue in all directions, none of us was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of them. I guess they could have been far away as the sound travels for miles, doesn't it? As we converged together back at the reef face in 80 feet, a fair sized turtle swam lazily between us on his way up from the depths below to take a fresh breath of air at the surface. I followed him merrily with my video camera...up, & then back down again, to produce a fine example of yo-yo diving, which earned me a severe verbal lashing from Marcia when we were back on dry land......"Yes, I know I was a bit naughty love, but wait till you see the film!". "S*d the film!" came the reply "If you do that again, I'm going to drag my knife across your lens!" She's always had a cute way with words & I just love it when she talks "dirty"!
But I digress.....back to the dive. Suddenly Pierre (the French Angel) was amongst us & making a neusance of himself, poking a tail fin or his beak in at every opportunity just as the still photographers were trying to frame shots. The reef was simply teeming with small fry thus enabling the trumpet fish to have a field day, as they lunged from the cover of their "host" parrot fishes, where they had been riding "shotgun" until getting close enough to snatch their next meal. A vast carpet of discarded shells lay before us, the remnants of the local octopuses numerous previous dinners. Sadly, he was nowhere to be seen. Probably sleepiing off the effects of his last binge I guess. All too soon our air guages crept into the red & we reluctantly finned our way back to shore & the welcoming Amstells which were crying out for our attention on the back seats of our trucks.
Yep, maybe life wasn't so bad after all.
Ah well...back to the real world. Guess that I'd better scrape the frost off my shovel & go find out what dramas have befallen "Doggie Bags Are Us" in my absence.
Hoefully, I'll be back on the keys tonight.
It's sooooo good to be back!

Glad to see you survived the trip governor. How did those Lucas relays hold up on the cam?

Things are looking up all over it seems. Can you really leave a beer cooler in the truck and have it there after a dive?

Jake - hope you mend up quick.

Andy, you sure do have a way with words! I just floated away in your descriptive dive that you shared. I can't wait to go back in January!

Andy - I loved your dive report. I was almost ready to do a mask clearning myself it was so real to life. I've been dry too long!

Jake, good luck with the shoulder. What a bummer to be out of the water. I'm finally back to about 90% after my rotator cuff surgery in March. One of my mistakes...I did not do the "range of motion" exercises for long enough, so things kind of scarred down a bit... I'm getting there now, but it's still a fight. Sounds like you had a different procedure if they are restricting your motion that much...check with the docs about range of motion stuff vs actual exercise. You may be able to do some gentle stretching if it's not weight-bearing.

Dave, the "new" video controls were a joy to use & worked without a hitch. I'll post some snatched stills from it in a few days once I've got things together here again. Incidentally, I liked the line you wrote a week or so ago about me diving with the rib still attached to my crotch strap.
About the beer cooler.....I was amazed to find that the one of the twin cab rental trucks we hired did indeed have a coolbox which plugged into the dashboard cigarette lighter. A luxury unheard of over here, where as you doubtless already know, we have been convinced by the Licensing trade that we enjoy warm beer. As I'm sure you're implying, it was a rare treat to return to the truck & not find the blikje's scattered empty, around it.
Must go, as some of the dogs have been removed from their bags way to soon before collection (despite the clear instructions I gave Nanny, before my departure two weeks ago) & I can't get 'em cleaned up as there is ice on the hydrotherapy pool.
I'll be posting a fairly weighty trip report in the next week or so. I have much to say (so no surprises there then, I hear you say), mostly funny, happy stuff but a few more disturbing & seious issues which perhaps we can discuss more fully, if there's an interest.

let 'em rip, the good, bad and ugly.

Fancypants...what a fix!!! Wow, just what the doctor ordered...(big smile)...

Jake, no diving for 4 months! eeekk! Who will clean the lens for us when it gets all mucked up! I hope your shoulder is on the mend soon...does this mean that Linda has to pick up all the dog do-do when you get back cause you "cant' use your arm for 4 months?" he...he...get well soon...

Keep 'em rippin', Sir Andy...we anxiously await your "full" trip report...sweat pants and all! Carole (shutterbug)

Notice how quicky it went from Sir Andrew to Sir "Andy"...subconsciously, too...hmmmm. Carole

Jake, Gosh, so sorry to hear about the diving ban. What about floating: can you float about with Yana and Bas wearing a snorkel mask? They could tie a line to you and haul you in and out from shore so that you don't actually have to swim. Be sure to have them do it in front of the beach cam so we can watch :-) Here's hoping you a quick recovery.

Andy, You'll ALWAYS be "fancypants" to me! Glad you are back, safe and sound. We enjoyed hearing bits about your adventures with Princess Martin. Looking forward to the report :-)

Hey, Jake,

Sorry to hear about the shoulder! With some luck we won't have to hear you constantly talking at Sea Rovers about constantly diving in Bonaire. ;–), ;–)

How about trying a cordless track ball run with your right hand??? One of the jazzy, narrow ones. Just let it sit in an extended sling!! 'Let your fingers do the walking'. You might even learn to like it (just the trackball, not necessarily with the sling!!). Never did understand how people can use a mouse.

jake, hope you heal up quickly and become as good as new. at least you are in a wonderful place for healing, just watching the sunset over the ocean will be theraputic.

Well, physical therapy today was a lot less painful, so that's a good sign. As far as Bonaire sunsets being therapeutic, no doubt - but being back in warm weather would be even better (puddles of ice on the driveway here in NH this morning were not very comforting - brrr!).

Glen - as far as the trackball goes, what I really want is a cordless keyboard with integrated track ball.

Thanks for the well-wishes everyone :-)

Jake

PS I just got a note that Darlene Ellis got her knee brace off last night - one more BTer on the mend!

sorry jake, didnt realize you were not home.
i sincerely hope you and your lovely linda and children don't have any more difficulties and need surgery.

Jake,
Check out http://www.contourdesign.com/rollermouse.htm for an add-on to a keyboard that might do the trick with a cordless keyboard.

Jake -

Just do what the doc says and especially the PTs.

I had to use a immobilizer/sling for one of my surgeries, but could use the trackball within a week or two.

But, watch out for Fritos bags. I was trying to get one open later when I had more motion, but I wasn't supposed to do too much. I got frustrated and really ripped at it. I was sure I had 'ruined' my surgery. All was fine, but at least I was more careful for a while.

Bea