tPod
Last weekend, Easter, was spent in a bizarre debauched mixture of dinner parties, drinking and diving... not all at the same time of course.
Went to Pete's for dinner on Good Fri, which was good fun, but after 13 bottles of wine between just 7 of us, getting up early to go to Kerry just was never going to happen. Instead i left at lunchtime and got to Kerry at 5pm in time for the last dive of daylight, which i didn't go on, instead waiting to go Nightdiving....
Nightdiving is spooky and fabulous, you're surrounded by inky darkness, with only the cone of your torchlight and gurgling of your exhaled bubbles to focus on. To add to the spookiness we dived on the wreck of a small trawler which had been sunk in the bay, just 300 metres from the pier, in 12 metres of water.
Saw the biggest Lobster of my diving life... HUGE! I really need to get an underwater camera.
The rest of the weekend was spent staying in the dilapidated splendour of the Royal Pier Hotel in Knightstown.
Dancing on the bar in the local pub, in a Coyote Ugly stylee, may or may not have occured...
I don't think the locals would be quite used to 40 members of a college scubadiving club descending on them too frequently.
The next day, between dives we went adventuring to see
Tetrapod footprints
These beasties roamed the earth around about 350 million years ago (not the ppl in the picture obviously!). Back then, the rocks of Valentia Island were part of Pangea or somesuch non-country, and located south of the equator almost the other side of the world... look how far we've come! The fossil record makes you realise how fleeting our hold on the earth is in fact. Unless you're a creationist of course LOL
Speaking of which, farewell il Papa... rest in peace. For obvious reasons I couldn't agree with many of the proclamations of JP II. You could argue that he did right by the teachings of the Church. So the church is at fault for alienating and ostracising many minorities rather than the individual. But then again not really. Whatever...
Blueness
This past week has been pretty dismal personally. I don't really get depressed when things go badly, in that I know it's generally just a phase. It still happens that I feel really lousy and down in the dumps though from time to time. But in that I'm no different from anyone else. That is how i felt all last week. Not feeling quite so bad now. That is all i will say on that.
Rescue me
Yesterday morning I helped out as an instructor on the Dublin (South Region) Rescue diver course. It went well. I was on the Curragh SAC Lencraft which is a brand new boat, but a truly horrible little thing... Talk about a sinker! We shipped a hell of a lot of water over the transom, despite the sea state being not all that bad. At one stage the water level came above the cowl line of the outboard. Rubbish. There's no doubt that we picked a better build of boat. Even though they each have design drawbacks they are both very good diveboats compared to some of the junk out there.
Every day i love you less and less
Last night i went to the Kaiser Chiefs gig in the Ambassador which was quite good. Me and Dr.Dishy were right up the front, surrounded by mostly teenagers... felt so old! The crowd back from the stage were much older however, I think we were just in the creche of the crowd because the older generation would have gone for pints first and so were stuck down the back!
Went to Pete's for dinner on Good Fri, which was good fun, but after 13 bottles of wine between just 7 of us, getting up early to go to Kerry just was never going to happen. Instead i left at lunchtime and got to Kerry at 5pm in time for the last dive of daylight, which i didn't go on, instead waiting to go Nightdiving....
Nightdiving is spooky and fabulous, you're surrounded by inky darkness, with only the cone of your torchlight and gurgling of your exhaled bubbles to focus on. To add to the spookiness we dived on the wreck of a small trawler which had been sunk in the bay, just 300 metres from the pier, in 12 metres of water.
Saw the biggest Lobster of my diving life... HUGE! I really need to get an underwater camera.
The rest of the weekend was spent staying in the dilapidated splendour of the Royal Pier Hotel in Knightstown.
Dancing on the bar in the local pub, in a Coyote Ugly stylee, may or may not have occured...
I don't think the locals would be quite used to 40 members of a college scubadiving club descending on them too frequently.
The next day, between dives we went adventuring to see
Tetrapod footprints
These beasties roamed the earth around about 350 million years ago (not the ppl in the picture obviously!). Back then, the rocks of Valentia Island were part of Pangea or somesuch non-country, and located south of the equator almost the other side of the world... look how far we've come! The fossil record makes you realise how fleeting our hold on the earth is in fact. Unless you're a creationist of course LOL
Speaking of which, farewell il Papa... rest in peace. For obvious reasons I couldn't agree with many of the proclamations of JP II. You could argue that he did right by the teachings of the Church. So the church is at fault for alienating and ostracising many minorities rather than the individual. But then again not really. Whatever...
Blueness
This past week has been pretty dismal personally. I don't really get depressed when things go badly, in that I know it's generally just a phase. It still happens that I feel really lousy and down in the dumps though from time to time. But in that I'm no different from anyone else. That is how i felt all last week. Not feeling quite so bad now. That is all i will say on that.
Rescue me
Yesterday morning I helped out as an instructor on the Dublin (South Region) Rescue diver course. It went well. I was on the Curragh SAC Lencraft which is a brand new boat, but a truly horrible little thing... Talk about a sinker! We shipped a hell of a lot of water over the transom, despite the sea state being not all that bad. At one stage the water level came above the cowl line of the outboard. Rubbish. There's no doubt that we picked a better build of boat. Even though they each have design drawbacks they are both very good diveboats compared to some of the junk out there.
Every day i love you less and less
Last night i went to the Kaiser Chiefs gig in the Ambassador which was quite good. Me and Dr.Dishy were right up the front, surrounded by mostly teenagers... felt so old! The crowd back from the stage were much older however, I think we were just in the creche of the crowd because the older generation would have gone for pints first and so were stuck down the back!