Back Home and Our First Seahorse

Aloha!

Gwen and I just returned from a two-week trip to the East Coast.  We spent the first week representing Lahaina Divers at D.E.M.A. which is a diving trade show.  It was a lot of fun.  We caught up with a lot of old friends and met a lot of really interesting people.  Some of the world’s best photographers and videographers were there too, which was very cool.  I got to meet Eric Cheng, Marty Snyderman, Stan Waterman, and Stephen Frink to name a few.  We got to look at all kinds of cool new equipment and hang out with a bunch of nerdy divers like us.  Some people even knew who we were, not many, but definitely some.

We got to stop at Universal studios and Disney World too!  I haven't been on a roller coaster in about 12 years, so Gwen decided to take me on the scariest one first.  It was called the Hulk at Universal Studios and it was not tame at all.  I closed my eyes for the first ten seconds until I found my happy place, then it was so much fun.  The thing spins, turns, loop-d-loops and drops more than anything I have ever been on in my life.  Needless to say, the theme parks are a lot of fun.

We spent the second week traveling around Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont visiting our parents and relatives.  Even though it was a whirlwind tour visiting each parent for a day and half, it was a blast.  As usual, it didn't feel like we were home long enough.  It was so good to see everyone though.  We had great meals each night; I actually gained 10 pounds in a week!  I got to visit with my three best friends from high school, which was awesome.  There were a million great memories from the trip, but two stand out more than any.  

The first and best memory was getting to sit and play cribbage with my grandfather all day.  Our family has bee so worried about his health especially after a huge open-heart surgery, which makes it so hard to be 4,000 miles away.  So to be able to sit there and hang out with him for a while was worth the whole trip, even though he ended up destroying me in most of the cribbage games we played.  I did skunk him twice though!  (I won't say how many times he won)

The second great memory was Gwen learning to shoot a gun!  Pat, Gwen's Mom's boyfriend, was teaching her, and it was hilarious.  It was just a little 22 rifle, but it was awesome and we were all laughing for an hour.  

All in all the trip was great.  I just hope that our family knows how much we love and miss them.  I hope we'll all be able to come back and visit soon!

Back to Scuba Diving, we saw our first Hawaiian Seahorse!  We've been diving around Maui for over 7 years and combined we probably have over 15,000 dives around here and we've never seen a Seahorse here.  It was very exciting, even though the little guy we found was in shallow water in a surgery area, which made visibility pretty poor.  It was still awesome.  We might have some little sea ponies around soon too.  We'll update when we can.  Check out the video clips from the encounter.

Maui Seahorse from C3 Submerged on Vimeo.

Thank you all who stuck with the America's Next Top Model Show to see us on TV.  Did you figure out who was who?  Did you see Dan rescue Sundai?  Could you see Gwen? Could you figure out which one of us was standing on the boat?  We were in almost every underwater scene, and Dan shot almost all of the underwater stuff.  Thanks for watching.  Here's the link if you missed it: 

America's Next Top Model



Talk soon, Aloha!

C3