No more hole in the kayak.

We went kayak diving today. Oh Boy! Jim and me and Dick and Sue and uncle John. Uncle John is using my old kayak. I melted a hole in it a couple years ago (read the story) and didn't think it was repairable. I just left it with Dick while we were on the road and said, "if anyone thinks they can fix it, they can have it". John and Dick spent many hours and several types of patches, but they DID it! So, uncle John can go kayak diving with us now. The water temperature was wonderful. Probably 83, maybe 84. I could just wear my diveskin and was perfectly comfortable. Visibility wasn't great, but I've seen it worse. And, we certainly don't see the things we did in Fiji! But, it was kayak diving! My Favorite. And, one thing that Fort Lauderdale has that Fiji doesn't is my favorite fish .. the yellow-headed jawfish. Such an ugly name for a beautiful creature. I call it a spirit fish. It looks just like an angel to me. I could never get a good photo of one in the ocean ... they disappear very quickly into their holes. But, last weekend at Pennekamp park, I got a photo of one thru the glass of one of their aquariums. We did see one today. They're relatively rare, but, if you know where to look, I can almost always see at least one when we dive off Fort Lauderdale beach. We also saw lots of lobster today ... unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) it's not lobster season, so all we could do is look. We also saw a moray with a cleaning shrimp and a bunch of squid.

Scuba Diving in the Keys

Each spring, our Kayuba dive club arranges accommodations and boats to go diving in the keys for a weekend. Jim and I were happy to be able to make it this year. We reserved 3 2-bedroom condos at Ocean Pointe and we put 17 people all total with 11 divers. It was a very pleasant place to hang out, party, and get reacquainted with old friends. Here's the view out our condo window. Doesn't it look like that boat is floating in midair?! It was a beautiful day for diving - look at that glassy ocean! And, here I am underwater. We saw several VERY large grouper. And, plenty of tropical fish like this juvenile Angel fish. What a difference a day makes. Here's view from our room on Sunday morning. 7 of our divers still went out and said they actually had better dives than the day before.

Oh Boy, Clean and shiny

Maintenance jobs around a motorhome are nothing compared to that of a house. As we drove by a house where someone was mowing the lawn the other day, Jim said, "Now that's something I really miss!" ... Not! Still there certainly are maintenance jobs to be done. And, waxing a vehicle this size is a bit of a daunting task. I think it's been a good year since we've done it. Last weekend the day started out a bit gray, so I figured it would not be too hot, and we got to work! Notice how it really does look shiny on the side where Jim is working. No, it's NOT because he does a better job! The back and front of the motorhome are fiberglass and the sides are airplane aluminum. The aluminum gets real shiny - the fiberglass just gets clean. Maybe we should try the Vertglass that George uses?! Ms. Tioga's fiberglass is looking awfully shiny! We're off to the Keys this weekend with Kayuba dive club. We'll be staying at Ocean Pointe Suites and diving with Rainbow Reef. Oh Boy! Should be fun.

Blogger Templates

Uh Oh .... Have you ever completely remodeled your house because you spilled a glass of wine on the carpet? You know what I mean. You spill the wine ... oooops. So, you get out the carpet cleaner and wipe it up, right? Then, you see that the cleaned spot looks SO different from the rest that you have to have the whole carpet cleaned. But, you've been meaning to replace that old carpet anyway, so you tear it up and you pick out some nice tile. Now the furniture doesn't go with the flooring anymore, and those curtains just have to go .... etc. etc. Well, that's what just happened to my Blog template. I was just playing around, and I mistakenly deleted some important part of the template. Well ... I couldn't see spending time and energy just to get back to the same old tired design! So, I went looking for a new template. I found one that I *kinda* liked at http://blogtemplates.noipo.org/ but, I would need to change the graphic and a few of the colors and, oops, why is it not aligning right now? And, where did the 'recent posts' go? Hah! I really hadn't intended to spend all night on learning how to modify templates. Now, it looks like I'll still be on it in the morning cuz it's past midnight and that's waaay past my bedtime. I'll get it to look right, don't you worry!

Kayak against Cancer

Our dive club, Kayuba, puts on an annual event called Kayak Against Cancer. People sign up to kayak a certain course off the beach of Fort Lauderdale, and they collect donations for the American Cancer Society. Jim and I were very involved the first couple years of the event, then we've been gone for the last couple years. This is the 6th year, and it was a great event. First of all, it was a beautiful morning. Club members and other volunteers gathered at the put-in point on the beach at 6am! Here's Geri and me at the registration table. Here's Glenn. I believe he is always the top fundraiser. This year he said he didn't even solicit donations and still he brought in over $5,000! According to my count, we had 33 kayaks participating. A good turnout. Here's our intrepid event leader, Chuck, giving the participants a safety briefing. And, they're off! How wonderful to have calm seas. Contrast this to the last one where Jim and I were involved. Here's Chuck in 2003, giving the start signal. And the kayaks taking off. It's a very 'feel-good' event. Running the registration desk, I counted over $15,000 donated, and that doesn't count sponsorships and more donations I know were expected at the post-race party. We didn't go to the party because we had a family event at Jim's folk's house. Way to go! Kayak Against Cancer!

K A Y U B A ! ! !