Night Dive
Since I was on the topic of SCUBA diving (an acronym for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus), I thought of a few stories you might enjoy. These all occurred in the mid to late eighties, after my initial certification at Divers Way SCUBA School, in Bayshore New York, out on the south shore of Long Island, like I described yesterday.
One thing about training on Long Island–the visibility underwater is absolute crap. You can barely see three feet in front of your face. And it’s cold, even in summer. The only thing it’s good for is wreck diving, that is, exploring sunken ships that litter the ocean bottom around Long Island, even a German U-Boat that lies offshore. Even on a great day, though, the water is milky and cloudy. If it’s stormy or the bottom mud is stirred up, forget it. You can barely see at all.
But if you can dive there, you can dive anywhere in the world. Huh. You go down to the Caribbean, where the water is so warm, pure and clear and the visibility is so good, you can look straight up from 100 feet down and see the sun, shining in the sky. “Blue Water” diving, as we call it, ruins you. Once you’ve tried it, why would you want to dive anywhere else?
And then, my brother-in-law, John, had the idea of a dive vacation on the island paradise of Bonaire. If you don’t know, Bonaire is one of the ABC Islands in the Western Caribbean: Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. And, after the Red Sea in the Middle East, Bonaire is supposed to be the best diving site in the world.
So, we went. We managed to convince my wife that this was a great idea and we were in Divers’ Heaven. Stayed at a hotel called the Sand Dollar, with a deep water dock, right off the back deck of the hotel. You just suited up and stepped off right into the water. We did three dives a day and drank rum drinks in the evening, watching for the “Green Flash” on the horizon, at sunset. It was pretty cool, I can tell you.
Then, one day, John talked me into doing a night dive. If you’ve never done this , it’s hard to express how weird and silent and wonderful the deep sea is at night. You’re 80 feet under crystal clear water, look up and see the moon hanging in the night sky. Breathtaking. And the colors of the corals, lobsters and fish in the light of the electric torch are incredible. If you turn off the light and sweep your arm through the water, thousands of tiny sparks trail your arm, like pixie dust, from microscopic bioluminescent organisms, suspended in the sea.
Dangerous? Oh yeah. But beautiful. I remember seeing a seven foot baracuda lazily swimming by us and a giant pike that was out there, behind the hotel, waiting for us. Very, very cool. But my knees kept aching from the indirect torsion of all that kicking with the fins against the resistance of the ocean.
By this time, I recognized that same problem again. Of course, I had slacked off my exercises, which had helped me eliminate the ache in my knees, last time. The same ones I teach today in my PAIN-FREE PROGRAM http://drbillsclinic.com/exercise_eliminate.html
So I went back to the gym and started them up again. And they helped quite a bit. Kept me going through the rest of our stay. That’s the thing about these exercises. They work. And FAST. It’s common to see some improvement within a week. If you have any knee pain, just try them for yourself and see: http://drbillsclinic.com/exercise_eliminate.html
Then, the next time we went out at night, we found a sunken Tug Boat from New York City, of all places, and inside it was…but that’s another story, for another time….
Til next time, my friend, have a great weekend and be well.
Yours for a pain-free tomorrow,
Dr. Bill
P.S. For DR. BILL’S LITTLE GREEN BOOK ON ELIMINATING KNEE PAIN, a concise, but complete handbook on the root causes and the various options for treating knee pain, go to http://drbillsclinic.com/eliminate_knee_pain.html
P.P.S. For DR. BILL’S PAIN-FREE PROGRAM: EXERCISES TO PREVENT OR ELIMINATE KNEE PAIN, please go to
http://drbillsclinic.com/exercise_eliminate.html
P.P.P.S. For the giant, comprehensive ADVANCED MASTERS’ COURSE: HOW TO ELIMINATE KNEE PAIN–ONCE & FOR ALL!, everything you need to know on causes and solutions for knee pain and the complete exercise program, too, go to
http://drbillsclinic.com/advanced_masters.html
FREE BONUS CD with any order: THE HEALING POWER OF POSITIVE PAIN PERCEPTION
Copyright, 2008 by William Thomas Stillwell, MD
All rights reserved
Tags: blue water diving, Bonaire, eliminate the ache in my knees, exercises, knee pain, night dive, SCUBA diving, wreck diving