I Saw a Fish

When I was in the van, on my way to the ocean, I still thought it was a good idea. Even when the driver started playing a song that had the lyrics (I kid you not) "My hair's turning white, my neck's always been red, my collar's still blue. I guess you can say I've always been red, white, and blue" (I guess the songwriter missed the obvious flaw in this: his hair hasn't always been white. He's only always been red and blue. Even then he probably wasn't always blue collar either: he'd have to have a job before he could be. So really, he's only always been a redneck). On the way back from the ocean, I was treated to the video for this song on his portable DVD player. Although he said it was "the best video I've ever seen," it was mostly just a lot of pictures of eagles and rockets.

The driver's name was Bob. He was late picking me up from the train station, and called to ask me to meet him at the army base in Daegu. It was a short taxi ride and let me take in the city. He was standing beside Paul, my scuba instructor, putting scuba gear into the van when I first saw him. He dwarfed Paul, who's not particularly a small man. As I got closer, I was struck he his flaming red mustache (I also noticed later that he had flaming red eye lashes) and, as I got closer still, his enormous hands. These were not joking around hands. These were some serious hands. These were hands that could palm cannon balls.

After a few stop offs, Bob, Paul and I headed to the ocean. We got out and started to unload. The wind had the water was biting. So much so, in fact, that I went in to warm up before we geared up. The wind also caused another problem: waves. Sure, you expect waves at the ocean, but not crashing ones over rocks.

Problem one was solved easily enough. The wetsuit warmed me right up. I was really surprised how warm it was. But problem two wasn't solved as easily. After checking the water and finding that it was two shallow to avoid the rocks, we decided to swim in a little rockless harbor up the coast a little. Rockless yes, but fishless as well.

While I was gearing up, an older (and visibly drunk) Korean man came along. He talked to me. And talked to me. And talked to me. I tried my best to respond, but he wasn't dumbing the language down at all, and he was slurring a little so I understood only a random word here and there, and a sentence on occasion. When he saw me struggling to get on one of my gloves, he grabbed the ends and tried to force it on. He wasn't much help and (now that I had a tank on my back) nearly pushed me over backwards. Still, I got on the glove and the man considered it a success. He was so excited by the success he went right to forcing on my other glove, even though the strap that holds it in place wasn't undone yet, making it impossible to get over my hand.

Waves make getting into the water quite difficult. The old man had called over some friends to watch our entry, which made it all the more embarrassing when I fell, got up, fell again, got tossed around by some waves and then just gave up and crawled out on my hands and knees.

Once I was in the water, it was actually pretty nice. I had a problem with my weight belt, but it was solved easily enough. The water was cold, but the air was much colder, so I prefered to stay down once I was down there.

So there I was, in the cold wilds of the pacific ocean...or at least a harbor connected to it.

I looked at rocks, and hundreds of starfish attached to them. I looked at seaweed and garbage. I looked for fish. And I looked for fish. And I looked for fish. But I didn't see any.

This was my first open water dive and the last requirement for me to get my scuba diving certification. I had to do three dives that day, so Paul cut them each short. We came up from the first one after only 20 minutes. The air before the dive seemed cold, but now that I was wet, it was freezing. I mean that literally. The water started to freeze on my equipment, so we had to go inside.

Dive two was better. I saw a fish. Just one, but it was a cool one. It was probably two feet long, but I had a hard time seeing it. It was completely camouflaged. Even when I came close to it, it didn't move. I got right up next to it. I probably could have grabbed it, but still, it didn't move. Finally, I flicked it's tail and it took off. It was out of sight before it even registered in my brain that it was swimming.

The last dive was boring again, so we worked on a few of my underwater skills (lifesaveing stuff, air sharing, using my compass) and headed back in.

The water had lowered my body temperature, so I couldn't stop shivering once I got back up into the wind. I ran inside and tried to run warm water on myself, but the water was as cold as the air. Luckily, it eventually warmed up and so did I.

And with that, I had my scuba certification. I think I'll wait for warmer weather before I use it, though.

R