Come on into the water!

Usually it's hard to get out of the wasted Saturday habit.

Not that I'm wasted on Saturdays, but more so that I just don't do anything on Saturdays.   However, that was not the case this past weekend.  Today we took it to a whole new level.


We took it to a level 15m deep filled with freezing water, hundreds of fish, large groupers and herds of sharks.

It was ridiculous.  

It was amazing!

Michael, Keith, Zac and I had planned to go diving with sharks back in April (around the boys birthdays), but my eyes were still healing from having lasers dance across them, so we had to delay the swim.  Things were delayed a bit longer than we planned, but the wait was worth it.

The dive was a truly great experience.  

I wish I could say that I was nervous about the sharks.  I think that would sound more rational, more normal.  Sharks are natural hunters and do on occasions bite, even eat, people; so it would have made sense to be worried about the 20+ predators that would be swimming around me.  But I wasn't.  As we've seen in the past with me (elephants, tigers, bungee jumping, tattoos)  I'm not too worried about the rational things.

I was, however, worried, afraid, nearly-about-to-back-out because of the scuba diving part.

Three problems were standing in the way of me and the fish tank.

First off, that shit is heavy.  I could barely stand up right with the tank and the extra weights.  I'm surprised I didn't fall over backwards.  My scuba failure could have been a youtube hit!  But somehow I managed to waddle to the training pool without becoming an overturned turtle.

And that's where the biggest problems came in - the training pool.

My second problem was that I hate, HATE, small spaces.  I become very uncomfortable with the idea that I could become trapped.  Not like I was going to get trapped in water - especially water that I could stand up in, but the feeling of unease set in nonetheless.

This then led to my third problem.  Because I felt trapped, I started feeling like I couldn't breathe.  I had my tank on, my regulator in; but my lungs felt empty.  I wasn't quite panicking, but I was starting to seriously worry I wouldn't be able to do the dive.

But I had to.  Not only because I paid the non-refundable amount, but I wanted to!  So I told my inner self to shut up! and I went on with the training.

And I made it through!!  But there was one more problem.  A problem that I wasn't expecting, but one that became very clear by the end of the training.

Wetsuits are not made for pear-shaped bodies.

The top of my wetsuit was like a loose bag around my arms and torso, which made it all too easy for the freezing water to get in next to my skin.  I was suffering, but I had just made it through the training - I wasn't going to stop because of hypothermia!  I took a quick break from the training pool, put on an extra wetsuit vest thing, grabbed a quick hot shower, and was back in the pool ready to face off with some sharks!

There were no face offs.  None of the sharks or groupers got too close to us.  The Korean onlookers were more of a threat than the animals, but it was a really fantastic time!   

Here's a little look at a video Zac took while we were down in the big tank.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=379110908841192

If you have a spare day and don't mind dropping some won, you should definitely come down to the Busan Aquarium and take a swim!