Energize.....

I'm floating with my wife in the Caribbean sea. We're tethered rather tenuously to our dinghy, which is tied to a mooring ball off Bonaire. We're both stylishly dressed in neoprene with huge tanks strapped to us; flippers and masks complete the ensemble...........above us, sky blue with accents of puffy white clouds. As our heads are the only thing above the water, waves wash over us as we prepare.  Our yacht is two miles away is in the distance. Bonaire's downtown just beyond that. Three, two, one, BFFFFFFFFFFFF. We let all the air out of our BCDs (buoyancy control devices; basically vests filled with air). We both sink like a sack of batteries into the ocean........and into another world. Only bubbles mark where we were on the ocean.

Under the water, everything gets weird...........a spotted ray swims gracefully past us. Directly underneath us (like 100 ft) is the bottom. It seems like you jumped off a building but are falling in slow motion. The coral heads are everywhere.......each one has it's own universe of fish large and small.....eels, bigger stuff occasionally.

We swim in tandem..........pausing and hovering over anything interesting. Kirstin swims ahead and starts making wild gestures with her hands. As I get closer, I see a VW sized turtle on the bottom, not 10 feet away. It must weigh 1000 lbs. Gigantic...........probably 60-80 years old.

It dawns on me that we've now perfected leisure. It's hard not to think about the fact that in 4 months I'll be doing my old job. But there are at least 70 dives in my future before that. Tomorrow, maybe an octopus ?