Vacation

On Monday, my octopus (the regulator for a buddy should he run out of air--my buddies have always been male, so no s/he) was free flowing. That means that rather than delivering air on demand, air was swooshing of the regulator. My son and I decided to dive anyway, but go off the beach in front of our apartment. And off we went. It was OK, but the exit was a bit tough. The water near shore was so silty that I couldn't see where I was going. My son warned me away from one rock and I hit my knee on another. It was bleeding, looked worse than it was. I think it must have been fire coral, because I had welts on my knee around the scrape. But it didn't hurt or itch. I'm just not strong enough to manage an exit through surf if the bottom isn't firm. And those rock-free, coral rubble-free places are few and far between here. (In fact, I'm not sure I know of any) So, yesterday, we went to Oil Slick. It's a great entry--just jump in (of course getting to the jump in place is over eroded ironstone which is sharp). And someone has put in a ladder, so one just pulls out of the water on the ladder. I checked the ladder and the bottom step (which at low tide was at the surface level of the water) was broken. So, there was no way I could get out of the water there. We then went to the place in town where we had done our check out dive to sign up for boat dives. I said, so why don't we just go in here. I knew I could get in and out fairly easily. The dive is not a great one. There are tons of tires that I guess have fallen off boats or have just been dropped in the water. But we saw the octopus we had seen before. It is amazing to watch it change colors, shape and texture. Lots of queen angel fish. All in all fish were fairly sparse.

I have been walking or running every morning. I am amazed that when I exercise hard I don't have pain from my hernia surgery. If I don't, then it seems I do. I don't understand the connection, but it's an easy fix.

We took some pictures yesterday. I decided not to buy underwater camera equipment, so no octopus pictures, but a pelican and flamingo may be posted later.