Call Me SCUBA Steve

Put it in the books, baby... I am an officially licensed open water SCUBA diver. Fuckin' A, right? The course took three and a half days and consisted of some videos, classroom sessions, tests, and lots of diving. We went as far down as 60 feet, so I am certified to go down to 18 meters. It's a pretty surreal experience to be breathing under water. I dove once when I was thirteen, but it was only in about ten feet. When you are as deep as 50 and 60 feet, you lose all sense of reality. You don't know where up or down is, you just float around having a good time, do flips and cruise for things that look cool. But SCUBA can be very dangerous, too. You have to constantly equalize your ear drums by pinching your nose and blowing out, sort of like when you are on the airplane to pop your ears. The pressure on your ears and lungs from being so deep can basically force your inner parts to implode, so you have to descend and ascend very slowly. But once down there, have a ball! The group we had was great. The leaders are around our age, a little older, and all the people in the group are in their twenties, so the vibe is very easy going and fun. Aside from our SCUBA instructor humping every girl in the group, I'd say the course was problem free.

But all the while, I couldn't help but think that the number one method for transmitting oral herpes can't possibly be through sex... it has to be through SCUBA... everyone sharing mouth pieces and what not, and it only gets rinsed out in water. There were some dirty ass people on this boat, man, let me tell ya. Maybe I'll write a joke about it.

The crew that formed back in Ko Phangan is slowly breaking up, as people are venturing onto the next phases of their trip. Long gone are the sweet sounding accents of the Swedish girls, the 'eh's' from the Canadians, and today we said good bye to Haley and George. It's sad, because we all clicked really well... but that's travelling. What began as twelve is now down to the final three: Kevin from Ireland, Tim from London, and myself, pictured below.