Scuba Diving

I watched a video my daughter showed me about someone's scuba diving adventure, and looking at the sea life made me think about the first time I went scuba diving. Coincidentally, I recently found the journal that had the information about that experience. It was back in February of 2000. We were on a leadership trip to Ixtapa/Zijuatanejo for our Home Instead Franchise. I took Kelly, Joe and Laine with me on the trip. Oh, it was so beautiful! I fell in love with Zijuatanejo. The hotel we were staying in was built on the beach, and designed with lots of stairs, so we were constantly climbing stairs to get around. I actually lost 5 pounds on that trip, but that wasn't the only reason I liked it.

Patrick and David went scuba diving and came back to tell me all about it. I really wanted to go, but I have two problems...I'm claustrophobic, and I'm a little afraid of deep water (from watching someone almost drown when I was young). I went through the training class and decided to try diving. We went out onto the water, and began to dive. No one else seemed to have any difficulty, but when I started to go down, I began to panic as I realized how much water was above and below me, and it became hard for me to breathe. I quickly went up to the surface. Miguel, our dive coach, followed me up. I told him I couldn't do it. He put his hand on my arm and told me to just breathe deeply. After I calmed down, he asked if I would like to hold on to him, and I said yes.

True to his word, he let me hold onto him the whole dive trip. We were supposed to dive to about 30 feet, but we ended up going to about 40, and what was supposed to be a half hour turned into nearly 50 minutes.  The fish were stunning. We even saw smaller sharks and tiny little critters and fish near the coral reef. While we were down there, I spotted an octopus and showed everyone else. I continued to hold on to Miguel, but my fear had subsided somewhat, and when it was time to go back up, I discovered that I was dismayed.

It was a memorable experience. I was really proud of myself for facing my fears and doing something that ended up being amazing. Scuba diving is an expensive adventure, but I still hope I get to do more of it someday.

A sad but interesting tidbit about that trip was that the day we departed from the states, there was an Alaska Airlines plane crash the previous day. The media was at the airport, and an AP guy took a picture of our family. The Alaska staff was tired, emotionally strained and quiet. On the plane, the stewardess couldn't get through her script without breaking up. We met people who had lost someone in the crash. 88 people died that day.