You Can't Get Lost

 Good writing dictates that you are suppose to start with the small stuff.  It's been a long day, my back has hurt the last half of it, and dad-gum-it, I want to show this.  I'll fill in the filler later, like tomorrow.   OK, time to back up.  Diving on Thursday and Friday have been great, the days you remember later and make you want to come back.   We saw lots and my camera worked somewhat on the first dive. These next two days will be mostly pictures, because the photos tell the story.   First turtle sighting of the day.  That's pretty exciting.  You don't see them often.                                                                                            ...

 Last night, I slept on my back on a rolled up beach towel.  It felt good to stretch my back out that way.  I'm not sure it did any good in terms of posture and walking, but it was better than not having it.   I slept late today.  I didn't have to get up for anything except breakfast, and I could sleep through that.  I got up about 10:00 or so.  Steve and the rest of the crew had been up much earlier, but no one said anything.  Mainly, I had to go to the bathroom.  (I hope this doesn't inspire another Google warning.  I don't know why that came up and I've asked them to take it down.)  I did my morning weight, which has been holding pretty steady, my glucose level (well within range), my blood pressure and took my pills.  It all indicates that I should live in Cozumel rather than Laramie.   And I wasn't particularly hungry, so I went back to bed.   I read and dozed until about 1:30 when I decided I wasn't al...

 I had my alarm set for 7:30 so I could do my morning stuff, get my gear together and then walk over for a nice breakfast with Steve and Ralph for the boat to pick us up at 8:45 like yesterday.  Except as he walked out the door, Steve said, "Oh, by the way, Jeremy texted and we are leaving at 8:30."  Yikes, so I sped up as best I could and got to the breakfast buffet at 8:10 and gobbled up and got to the boat at 8:25 when it arrived.  Not the nice leisurely breakfast I was looking for.    When we got on, there were only four other people on the boat, all previous Living Underwater customers.  Pepe told me about testing the Buoyancy Compensator and that it didn't leak and where we were going to put the weights this time, in the front and low.  Whatever.  The reef we were going to is Columbia Deep, on the south end of the island, close to Maracaibo, the southern most reef on the island and one listed for advanced divers. When we got to the site...

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 Uff, my second day here, I've got to slow down.  Which I did do.  We start diving tomorrow.   I set the alarm for 7:30 because everyone in the group is an early riser.  I did my morning measurements, and everything looked really good.  (My blood sugar was 107, my weight was 195.6 lbs (8 lbs less than two weeks ago and the lowest in about 6 months, my blood pressure was 117/64.)  Not bad for an old guy. Walking through the breakfast buffet was a breathe of old air, scented with many years of having breakfasts here before diving.  And still serving about 8 different style of pork and ham, lots of Mexican food (that is real Yucatán Mexican, not Tex-Mex), omelets and scrambled eggs mixed with up to 10  add-ons (like mushrooms, bacon, chilies, cheese, and tomatoes, just the way I like them.)  Of course, some melon slices and a banana.  I didn't have any cereal this morning, to be honest, I was full enough.  And I even had a cu...

 So, after finally logging off last night about 2:30, the 5:00 alarm came around fairly early.  Push Through, Carry On, Man Up and all of that.  Wake up and pretend you are functioning.  And I did.  Steve and I had agreed to leave at 6:00 for the airport and we pulled out of his driveway at 6:01.  Right on.   Accept, the parking lot was Full.  A sign out in front said to park at row J.  I turned on to row J and drove the full length and if was full.  Turning back to row K, the same thing.  And rows L, N, P and finally, I just drove west until I saw some open spaces, on row BB3.  There was open space on row JJ, that's what their sign should have read.  That wasted about 15-20 minutes of our time,  Luckily, we had accounted for that amount of time when we left at 6:00.   And, in fact, by the time we had walked the 12 miles to Gate A18, we were some of the first people there.  Soon, another couple sho...

 And I can never reproduce the spontaneity of the first draft..... My nephew Steve asked me in December if I wanted to go SCUBA diving.  I told him no, I really wasn't feeling it at the time.  But a couple of pieces came together, so I got back to him in January and said yes.  So, tonight, I'm at Steve's house in Denver and we are flying out tomorrow morning for a week of diving in Cozumel, both of our favorite dive site.   So, what happened?  Why did I change my mind? I've had real problems with motivation to exercise. When Sally was alive and before Covid, I was getting pretty regular at the local Planet Fitness gym.   After that, I've kept my membership, but I was really spotty about going, literally a couple of times a year.  I'd go for a week or two and then stop. Then, last year, when I decided it was time to go scatter Sally's ashes at her family's farm in Norway and then I decided to do the Paul tour of Greece with Bishop Mike Re...