... was sit or lie on the loveseat (good thing I'm short) trying to figure out a way to get my sinuses to drain so that I don't feel like the inside of my head is bigger than my skull. That was my whole day, except for a few short naps and knitting a few rounds on the felted hat.28 December--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire.
Max wasn’t kidding when he said he
wanted to dive his brains out while he was in Bonaire, George thought. Every morning Max was at George’s door, dive
bag in hand, ready to drive off and explore another pair of dive sites from
shore. They lucked out and in the second
week of their visit the tradewinds dropped off for a few days allowing them to
enter the water from shore on the windward side. It was a different world there where the
waves usually pounded the ironshore and burst into the sky in an explosion of
foam. Giant sea fans as tall as Max
waved in the current and schools of silver tarpon twenty or thirty strong
patrolled the drop off. George was
amazed to see that the gray vase sponges that grew round and narrow on the
leeward reefs spread out across the current like fans with only a slit for the
outflowing water to pass through. He
supposed that the little sponges weren’t up to the struggle of holding
themselves open with the weight of the current pressing against them so they
expended their energy growing to the side.
Max was always ready to tackle the most challenging conditions. He didn’t care if waves dashed him around and
tumbled him as if he were in a washing machine, he wanted to dive every inch of
shoreline from Playa north and south and all the way around. George had little luck dissuading him from
driving them to Boca Onima up by the Indian inscriptions and insisting that of
course it was safe for them to time the waves and enter the water between them,
riding the surge out beyond the break.
George wasn’t too happy about Max’s idea to jump off the cliff at Rappel
and drift up the shore to Karpata or Old Blue either. Now that he was retired George thought he’d
like to spend most of his time in calmer water, not battling surf, surge, and
punishing rocks.
And that was it. Not very interesting but it was all I felt like doing so that's what I did. Drank egg drop soup, ate vanilla ice cream, drank a lot of water, sucked lozenges, and snorted nasal spray. Woo, riveting.
--Barbara
2 comments:
Even though your day on the sofa was pretty sedate, the description of the surf at Bonaire was anything but. I don't blame George for wanting calmer waters in his retirement years. Too bad you don't like football since you're stuck indoors. It's all over TV all day and all evening this weekend. I said I was cheering for whichever college team was ahead at the end. Of course, when it comes to the Packers, I'm all in for the green and gold.
Right there with George about challenging diving at this stage of my dive career. Been there done that and beating myself up just isn't fun anymore. Boats with good ladders, calm clear water, good dive buddies of the same generation and we're good to go.
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