Grrrgggrrrrggggrrr

The title of the post is dedicated to Alex, I think she'll both know why and will enjoy it. At least I hope.

Today was the first day in a long while that I didn't dive in the morning, so I got a rare morning to sleep in. It was the first sad day that I have had here, the first day that hasn't been perfect in every way. It was a sad day because tonight we had to say goodbye to our Swiss friend Simon. Over the past weeks I have really become close friends with him and I am really sorry to see him leave. In a way it is surprising to feel this way. I have only had a couple of weeks to get to know Simon but the amount of fun we have had together is extraordinary. The story of our friendship really is the story that I wanted to tell tonight anyways, and it seems especially fitting since he is leaving.

Millie, myself, Halie, and Simon at the pig roast on one of my first nights here.

There is a German woman named Mary who is an instructor at UDC and for the past week and a half she has been teaching a tec course to a student named Ant, a gent hailing from the UK. Tec diving is different from recreational diving because unlike us, they actually have to spend time decompressing. As you descend, the pressure exerted by the water forces nitrogen from the air you are breathing into your blood stream. As you ascend, the pressure lessens, allowing the nitrogen to come out of solution and be "off gassed" through respiration. By ascending too rapidly, you risk "the bends", meaning that the nitrogen turns into gas before reaching your lungs and so you have nitrogen gas bubbles in your blood. Your blood can literally boil in severe cases. Recreational diving is limited to the depths that you can reach while also being able to ascend directly to the surface (at safe rates of course) without risking the bends. So when I say that I can stay at 100 feet for ten minutes, I mean that I have 10 minutes before I will be required to make stops, decompression stops, on my way back up. Tec diving is when you plan on making stops at certain depths in order for your body to properly off gas. It is a crazily advanced course and requires major smarts and commitment. For the past week or two Mary has been taking Ant through the course and teaching him all of the different steps. Tec divers tend to dive a lot deeper than recreational divers and so this is the reason we have been going North side every morning, because it is the North side that has all the deep drop offs and walls that allow them to reach the depths they want and need.

Hardcore with four tanks. And this was only at like 100 feet!

All week Simon and I have been on every single boat that has gone north. Not many other people are willing to get up each and every day, especially because it is for a single tank dive, not the normal two. I am really not sure why, given how incredible the diving is there. Better for us though. Since Simon and I have been on each of the boats and have watched the progression of the tec diving, and have asked questions and shown a general interest, Mary asked the two of us if we would like to be "support divers" for their final dive. Mary and Ant would be descending to 300 feet and would spend over an hour decompressing (compared to the seven minutes they were allowed at 300 feet). They would also be breathing complex mixtures of gasses since oxygen actually becomes toxic to the body at a certain depth. As support divers, our job would be to meet them at about 50 feet and take tanks off of them and bring them different ones if something went wrong. They descended with five tanks each, so you can understand the importance of removing tanks when possible.
The two of us jumped at the opportunity, not only because it sounded super cool but also because it would allow us to dive CJ's Dropoff, one of the top sites on the island. Thus began perhaps two of the most extraordinary dives, and moments, of my entire life.

Mary and Ant before their big dive.

There were seven of us in the boat as we began the forty minute trek north. Mary and Ant had briefed us the night before on our roles and everyone was feeling pretty giddy. I felt both nervous and excited at the same time. Nervous because I knew what was at stake and how easily things could go terribly wrong and how I would suddenly be called upon to act. Excited because I was going to be a part of something really, really cool.
Just as we pulled up to the mooring line the heavens opened above us and began dumping half of the world's fresh water supply on our heads. Since Mary and Ant would be on such a long dive, Simon and I would have a half an hour window to do our own dive before we were expected to meet up with them. As soon as their heads disappeared underwater we began strapping our own measly single tanks on and piling into the water. CJ's Dropoff consists of a reef at about 20 feet and a wall that plummets to nearly 2000 feet deep. Our plan was to get deep quick, burn up our no decompression time and ascend to the boat to prepare for the second dive with Mary and Ant. I won't say that PADI officials would have completely approved of our plan but I will also maintain that it was well within our limits and abilities. We were not being stupid, just having fun and pushing the limits a little bit, which is what diving is about in a way. That being said, it was a hell of a dive profile.

Preparing to get out of the rain. All these photos are by Simon by the way.

So cool to look up when it is raining.

After thirty seconds of swimming along the reef I came across a channel that cut through the reef and sloped steeply downward. I pulled my dump valve and began rocketing downwards as air was squeezed out of my BCD. Every few seconds I would check my gauge as feet ticked by. 40. 50. 70. Deeper and deeper. Light faded until everything was a deep, deep blue. At 80 feet I came out of the chute and had only empty water beneath me. I picked up speed as everything on me compressed from the pressure. The next time I looked at my gauge it read 120 feet. Pulling myself from the swan dive I was making, I slowed my descent by adding some air to my BCD. When I finally stopped falling and leveled off I found myself at 140 feet. Holy shit I thought to myself, this is fucking deep (I can't censure myself on this one, sorry). I looked up above me and could see bubbles streaming upwards forever, seemingly never reaching the surface. Looking over at Simon I flashed the "rad" sign, not even coming close to expressing myself. He flashed it back and then we both flashed the double rad at the same time. Hand gestures just couldn't do it justice.

It was at this point that I noticed that my head felt about three times bigger than normal. I also felt giddy. Not just the normal flutter of excitement that fills me whenever I dive, but an all encompassing euphoric bliss that consumed me. Nitrogen narcosis had set in. This is the "high" that sets in when you near 100 feet and can at times be really dangerous. It can make people do really dumb things, especially to people that claim crabs start talking to them. For me it was more of an incredible high (I can only assume that is what it feels like to get high. The fact is that no drug can feel that incredible, that amazing). I started laughing into my regulator, laughing at the beauty of being 140 feet underwater. I wasn't the least bit afraid because I was fully conscious of my situation and where I was. For instance, I knew that I had three minutes before I would hit my no deco limit. Simon and I snapped a few photos and began kicking our way a bit shallower.
I wish that I could fully capture how it felt to be at 140 feet. It was unlike anything I have every experienced before. Imagine the moment you have been happiest in life, the moment you have been most content. Now pair that with the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. That is what it felt like. Not only did I feel happy and content and thrilled to be alive, but looking around I found myself holding my breath because of how beautiful the wall was. Light had all but disappeared and we were surrounded by nothing more than inky blueness. Nothing else will ever compare to that moment.

There is more on the slate than just the 130 but that is the important part. Ironically I think this was at 140 feet.

After spending a minute or two at depth we began to slowly ascend, aware that if we screwed up, Mary and Ant would also be in trouble. Just as we began to surface we realized that the boat was much further away than we thought, and we were already supposed to be on it looking for the marker that Mary and Ant would send up. We dropped down to fifteen feet and kicked as hard as we could for the boat. No sooner had we gotten on board and switched tanks than the surface marker buoy broke through the surface. I jumped into the water and Simon handed me a tank of 100% pure oxygen. With some difficulty I clipped this to my side and we began our descent to meet up with the tec divers. We found them content and in one piece, happily chewing on some snickers that they had brought with them as a snack. They gladly handed off some tanks and we shuttled them back to the boat before returning to watch over them for the remainder of their forty minute decompression.

Look Mom, I'm almost, kind of a tec diver!

I almost can't tell you what happened in those forty minutes because they just flew by. I saw some cool fish on the reef as we were hanging out, including a beautiful Queen Trigger Fish that G was tempting with the two Lionfish he had speared. It kept trying to eat the Lionfish off the end of the spear and just at the last minute G would pull it away, wanting to save them for lunch.

I'm kind of a big deal, don't worry about it.

Ant and Mary surfaced to cheering and they were all smiles as they climbed back on the boat, exhausted but thoroughly content. As the boat headed back to UDC I think everyone shared in the moment, smiling and laughing at what a wacky, crazy, amazing life we all had.

We were all a part of something special that morning and I think everyone on the boat knew it and felt it. I know that for me, those were two of the greatest moments of being alive that I have ever experienced, and I can't really say why. Something about never feeling more alive, more present in the only moment that matters: the present. It is something that I have struggled with, and will continue to struggle with. In that moment, however, there was nothing else, no future or past. The next minute, the next second didn't even matter because I was alive in that one singular moment I could comprehend and that one moment was greater and more incredible, more special, than any moment that came before it. That moment is what true happiness is all about. In a way, I think that is what grrrggggrrrr means. It is about being content in the moment, happy to be alive in that one instant that you can think about. We spend our whole lives thinking about the moment before or the moment to come but when we truly find joy and happiness we find it not in the before or the future. We find it in a single instant. A single instant of bliss, of joy, of happiness. We find it in a single instant of being really, truly, alive.

Maybe that is why I am sad to see Simon go, because we shared something truly profound. Or maybe it is just because I found a friend in him, and with all friends, you wish you had more time together. But, if all works out, our paths will cross again. Maybe in Switzerland. Maybe in Oregon. I told him I would take him to the Channel Islands to dive and he promised me some dives in Switzerland. Either way, I know we will both be gunning for that 150 foot barrier! And no matter what, I will always remember that remarkable dive and the look on his face that mirrored my own as we sat at 140 feet. It was the look of being really, truly, fully alive.