How Much Experience Have We Had?

Funny how the wife influences diving a lot!   I had four open water dives in between age 17 and 52.  Then I met Connie, and she asked me one day if I thought I'd like diving. I said, sure, but it's been 35 years.   She really wanted a dive buddy as she'd been diving alone for the past 10 years or so.  (And only had about 25 dives in.)

She then paid for me to get re-certified, and we started diving.  I immediately fell in love with it.  It's very much in my nature to do things I like to excess.   She said she created a monster, and I wanted to make every vacation a dive vacation.  Eventually that worked into dedicated dive trips as I had too much equipment to carry to make it worth doing 2-4 dives on a cruise.

After Connie died in early 2017, I really didn't know what to do.  Most everything I did related to vacations was planned by Connie, and we were working her bucket list pretty hard.  I didn't even know what my bucket list would have on it.   I decided one thing I wanted to do for sure was to get more dives in, and I set myself a goal of someday doing 100 dives in a year.  I immediately started doing two week dive trips, but I just did them to the same place in Roatan where I was already comfortable.

Why Roatan specifically?   Well, first off the diving is really, really good.   Rivals the best I've seen in the Caribbean.  Second, it used to be easy (and cheap) to get to.  Before flight schedules changed a couple of years ago I could catch a 2-hour flight to Houston, have a 2-hour layover, and then a 2.5 hour flight to Roatan.  I could get there early enough Saturday afternoon to put my camera rig together and do a checkout shore dive.  Then I would get in around 36 more dives over the next two weeks.  Only $850 round trip.  (Now it's up to $1400 and climbing, and I have to fly through Miami, or overnight in Houston).

The Reef House Resort where I always go isn't a luxury 'resort' in about any way except laid-back.   But it has a very small-town, homey feel to it, especially now that I've been there so much and know so many residents.  But the real reason is the diving, and the divemaster David.   Let's face it.  As underwater photographers, we need subjects!  And the first part of photographing a subject is actually finding it.  My eyesight is probably typical for a 65-year-old.  Not as great as used to be, particularly in dark conditions.  David's eyesight must be phenomenal.  I've followed him too many hours not to marvel at his ability to find things.  Helps that he has over 20,000 dives in along the 20-30 dive sites around the Reef House.  Besides being incredibly good at finding things, he is also very good-natured and pleasant to be around.  Most people who dive with him have probably heard him give a big belly laugh underwater.  He's always smiling.

Now I wonder if Reef House will survive, and it I will ever dive again.   At my age - and after losing my wife to pancreatic cancer - I go out on every last dive of a trip and try to make a strong memory of it, in case I am never able to go back.