DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

                 

For about 15 years my passion sport was downhill skiing. I would stop at anything to do it. While living in Hawaii I was introduced to SCUBA diving and my passion sport quickly changed. It was further embedded after I moved out East, away from the fresh powder days and world class skiing in my backyard in Utah.

I’ve dived, as chance would allow, the last 10 years when I traveled to warmer locales outside the country, but for the most part the sport has remained largely unsatisfied for my overwhelming love for it. A few months ago the need became unbearable (it was also the middle of the winter and everyone in our house had been sick for 2 months). I asked Anna if she would  like to go the Caribbean. She was interested and suggested we invite another couple to join. So we invited Jason and Kim Harris, friends of ours who live nearby in NC. Jason is a dive enthusiast and they both are up for the fun and adventure of travel. They were in.

But then a curious thing happened. A couple days into the planning of it, Anna backed out. She claimed she wasn’t that interested in diving or going to a resort and relaxing on the beach in the Caribbean sun or something like that. Frankly, I stopped listening to what she was saying, because honestly, who decides not to go on vacation… to the Caribbean. Well, I guess Anna would be one. They are probably dozens of people like her all of the world. Dozens!  All of them should be in counseling of some sort.

(Anna... come on! What's not to like?)

Anna backed off. Kim decided hanging out with the guys is not her idea of fun. So there Jason and I were staring at the reality of a vacation to Grand Cayman for 5 days by ourselves… with the sole purpose to dive! And dive we did.

We stayed at a resort that caters specifically to diving. We did 2 boat dives in the morning and as much shore diving as we could handle in the afternoon. After 4 straight days of we had accumulated 13 total dives and 10 hours underwater. It was awesome. The entire experience exceeded whatever lofty expectations I set for it.

(The Cobalt Resort where we stayed)

Cayman is an excellent place to dive, not least of which is that there is an outer wall surrounding the island that drops off like a cliff to 4000 feet of water. I never could get enough of diving to the edge of the wall and peering down… into the deep blue. Imagine peering over a Grand Canyon wall underwater at 90 feet of depth, that’s kind of what is was like. Stunning. I’d say it took my breath away, but the SCUBA manual is pretty explicit in its recommendation that divers “not stop breathing” while underwater. (I’ve always found it strange that PADI is compelled to explicitly instruct and remind people to do that).

(Floating above the 4000 foot abyss on the outer wall of Cayman)

Of the thirteen dives we did, the most memorable was when we rented underwater diving scooters. The scooters are designed to be held in your hand and propel you through the water, allowing you to move much more quickly than you could by diving normally. Before entering the water, the dive instructor told us the scooters could be placed between the legs to allow our hands to remain free. It’s hard to describe this… but we got in the water, turned these things on and, once we got the hang of it, it was as about as close to flying as I can imagine. The whole experience seemed other-worldly. The sensation of gliding up and over the reefs, through rock canyons and tunnels and holes in the rocks was a thrill that I will never forget. It may have been the most exciting and fun thing I have ever done. It was like living a National Geographic IMAX movie. I highly recommend it to any fellow diver reading this post.

I won’t go into any of the other details in diving, because like a lot of things in life, you “had to be there”. But here are some underwater pictures (courtesy of Jason)

You can’t dive 24 hours before flying home, so on the last day we rented a car and drove around the island (which didn’t take too long). I’m sure Cayman has its merits as a destination, but after four indescribable days of diving, I could not have been more bored checking the place out. We did find a good hole-in-the wall stand that served delicious Jerk Chicken.

Also, there is a curious little section of the Island named Hell.  This fact alone can incent tourists from nearby cruise ships to spend sums of money to take a taxi ride through Hell, which can take all but 1 minute to do.  In honor of the stupidity and banality of the locale, I myself had to take some picture... the post office in Hell, the gas station in hell... Yes, even the Church in Hell. 

Anyway, I can’t wait to go back… or at least get back in the water and dive. PS if anyone is looking for a good dive buddy, Jason Harris could not be better company.

Tickle Tackle and other Good Times

  Oliver and Elliot have invented a new game called "tickle tackle." I think we will have to post a video of it because any description will not do justice to the mayhem that ensues. Basically the boys roll around on the floor and wrestle. What Elliot lacks in size and strength he makes up for in agility, stamina, and enterprising tactics. He's definitely got some bulldog in him.  His signature move is the open-mouth slobber attack. Oliver will shriek, "Ellie's EATING me! Ellie's EATING  me!!"  Sure enough, Oliver will come away with wet spots all over his pajamas from where Elliot face-planted.

I took these pictures this morning because I finished making these pajamas for Elliot last night and I'm really happy about the way they came out. He wasn't the most cooperative model so I don't have any great ones but I actually love this photo (above) because it captures something of their distinct personalities. It looks like Oliver is really mad but he is giving Elliot an emphatic warning that if he keeps on trying to crawl off the bed he's going to fall and get hurt. He is saying, "No, Ellie. Dat DANGERSUS!!  Elliot is laughing because he wouldn't know DANGERSUS if it jumped up and smacked him in the rear, which it will one of these days. This kid is fearless. Oliver on the other hand is very cautious and won't attempt any stunts that he isn't 100% sure he will survive. 

    

These are the pajamas I made from the Amy Butler's Little Stitches book. I think they are too cute to wear only to bed so they are going to be play clothes, too.

Oliver loves to pretend he is a "construction worker man" at  the "sandbox park".

 

My mom got Ollie the coolest bike called a Skuut. It's a balance bike so it has two wheels but no pedals. The plan is that he will get used to two wheels and skip training wheels altogether...we'll see. Oliver loves it and we've gone on several mile-plus walks with it.  This was this morning at the sandbox park.

Piedmont Farm Tour

Last weekend we visited a few of the farms that sell at the Durham and Carrboro Farmer's markets. There were 40 farms that participated in the  Piedmont Farm Tour  but we only got to three: Chapel Hill Creamery (farmhouse cheeses), Fickle Creek Farm (pasture raised beef, lamb and pork, free range chickens and eggs, pigs and vegetables), and Maple View Farm (heavenly ice cream). It was really hot and that was about all the troops could handle without naps. My dad was in town and had ambitions to see all 40...in the end he was satisfied with 3 but wished that one of them had been Celebrity Dairy, the goat-cheese maker in Silk Hope, NC. Well, there's always next year.

It was interesting to learn what these farmers are doing to raise healthy animals and crops without artificial inputs like chemical fertilizers, pesticides, hormones and routine antibiotics. Specifically the process of rotational grazing is absolutely fascinating. The ruminants (cows/sheep/goats) go and graze a pasture for a few days and leave behind their cow pies, etc. When they have eaten down that pasture they move out and on to "greener pastures" (either to those green pastures in the sky or to actual greener pastures). The chickens move in next in their mobile chicken coops. They eat the grubs and scratch around in the cow pies, thereby spreading that stuff around and helping work it back into the soil. The chickens poop out awesome nitrogen-rich fertilizer, too, so that when the farmer goes to replant that pasture the soil is good and ready to grow more grass for the cows to eat. Cows/sheep/goats were designed to eat grass, not grain, so they stay healthy and don't need the routine antibiotics that cows that are fattened on grain in crowded feedlots are given. Pretty cool stuff.

It was fun to see where our food comes from and meet the people who are running these farms. It makes me even more committed to trying to eat locally. Ryan is pretty skeptical about the whole "locavore" thing...he reminds me frequently that if we were to eat locally sourced food exclusively that would mean no more mangoes or pineapples. That's a tough reality. I don't think I could do that. Also, really, I don't think Diet Coke grows too well in this climate. So, I will make some small changes and try to support these local farmers but I don't think I can go all the way. 

 

I love this picture of Oliver and Ryan in Carrboro. Ollie is such a Daddy's boy. He is the first one he calls out for when he gets hurt or is scared in the middle of the night. Ryan points out that it may have something to do with my typical response time (can I help that I am a sound sleeper?) but I think that Ollie knows that his dad would leap tall buildings for him. What lucky kids!

We actually went to Maple View Farm the weekend before with our good friends Ali and Mitch. Here are some pictures of that outing.

 

          

Easter Pictures

 

I have been playing around with Adobe Lightroom and LOVE it. I still haven't worked out all the kinks because what gets exported isn't exactly what I see in the Develop mode. These photos for instance have lost a bit of saturation from Lightroom to my blog. It's kind of frustrating after spending so much time tweaking the color...anyone have any tips?

Spring Weekend on the Farm

Oliver, Elliot and I had such a wonderful time this past weekend visiting old friends and experiencing a real slice of rural life in Virginia. Ryan had to bow out, which was understandable but still disappointing. I wish he had been able to come chiefly because we had such a good time and made some great memories that I really wish that I could share with him. So I made him look through all my pictures and hear all the details of our trip ad nauseum. I'll spare you, gentle reader.

The highlights included:

• going to the Culpeper small animal auction with John and Lynnie to buy bunnies and chicks for their kids for Easter
• spending a lazy afternoon with the Meyers, the Oakeys, and the Millers on Mt. Vernon Farm--watching animals, exploring old barns, and devising plans to get Cliff to hire us all to come live out on the farm
• eating some AWESOME organic, dairy and gluten-free meals at Mt. Vernon Farm...and then going home to have "real" dessert at Lynnie's (sliced strawberries and pears just didn't quite do the trick :-)
• Serious country breakfast at Eldon Farm on Sunday morning: John's homemade biscuits, fresh scrambled eggs and bacon, whipped cream and strawberries and cantaloupe
• Marching out to feed the goats and chickens in our pajamas and boots...we pretty much didn't change out of our PJs until it was time to go home
• Spending an anxious 5 minutes trying to locate Oliver and Nathan...only to discover them in the chicken coop, "Making a chicken party" in Ollie's words. They were trying to hold the chickens but the chickens "ran too faster." The boys had dumped out all their food and water and were tossing handfuls of chicken feed into the air and at each other.
• Stopping off in Richmond to see some good friends and old neighbors

I took SO many pictures because I really wanted to capture the experience, but I don't think I was able to distill the essence of what it was really like in these pictures. I have a good camera, but I lack the photo-journalist's eye. My camera is magnetically attracted to my kids. Somehow I am STILL surprised when I go back to look at my pictures and realize that I missed some really obvious details but I have like 100 shots of Oliver. Oh well.

   

Couldn't Possibly Be More Excited

Woo hoo! I can't wait. Tomorrow we are heading up to Virginia for the weekend to stay with my friend Lynnie and her family on their farm in the Blue Ridge mountains. Maybe it's because I was raised in The City and have never actually experienced farm life that I am fascinated with the agrarian lifestyle. (By the way, capital T, capital C obviously refers to New York, New York. I always thought it was funny that when we were at Cornell people would refer to "the city" and mean the bustling metropolis of Ithaca.)

In any case, being a city girl I have these strong pastoral fantasies, and what could be better than being on a farm on a gorgeous spring weekend? There will be piglets and calves, tractors and horses, small animal auctions and farm suppers. I will be living my own Charlotte's Web-inspired dream. T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C

To make it even more exciting, Lynnie and John our friends from Cornell, happen to live next door (three miles away) from Mt. Vernon Farm, which belongs to the family of one of my dearest friends from Richmond, Laura. Laura's dad is a pioneer in sustainable agriculture. He raises pasture-fed beef, pork and lamb without hormones or antibiotics. It was Laura's invitation that actually spurred this weekend reunion. She invited our other dear friend Molly and her family, too. We'll be staying with Lynnie and John but we plan to make it a whole weekend of fun on the farm(s) with all of our friends. I just can't wait!

Oh, and I think the boys will have a good time, too. :-)