While at work one morning, I decided getting my advanced SCUBA license would be a fun thing and started looking into it. I was delighted when a few hours later, eating lunch with Tyler in the arboretum, I found out he was SCUBA certified as well and was interested in getting advanced certified with me. Eventually we made the plans official, and while we were at it, made it a camping trip for any friends who were interested. By late afternoon Tyler, Caety, Tina, and I were driving off to Monterey in a car Tyler had rented from UC Davis.
Shortly into our drive, as I was looking back at Tina talking to her, I noticed the occupants of a car behind and to the left of us looking intently into our car. I thought this was a bit odd, but passed it off as them looking back at me, thinking I was looking at them instead of Tina. This assumption proved to be wrong, however, when they appeared on the other side of the car, looking at me and motioning for me to roll my window down. After doing so, the driver of the other car, with a black tooth, asked "Who are you?" Having no idea how to answer this, I sputtered for a few seconds, before he further questioned about our license plate, which we later found out said "For Official Use Only" and "CA Exempt." I responded with something about being from UC Davis. In any case, it was an odd conversation we had, traveling at 70 mph on the freeway, but only a start to our adventures.
A little while later we stopped in San Jose for dinner. I was craving a burger, so I went to In N' Out, but the others went to Subway, where I joined them to eat. I was still hungry after a burger and fries, but did not want a whole sandwich. This is where the semi-interesting part comes in (I know you don't care what I ate). It turns out Subway has a small sandwich that is not on the menu (only shows regular and large) for only $1.07. And it is still like 4" long, what a fantastic deal! So I managed to get a sandwich, burger, fries,and a drink for barely over $5 :). Eventually we got to our campsite just before it closed at 10:00, checked in, set up our tent in a little cave like area made by the trees, and went to sleep. I slept outside, and the others shared the tent.
Getting up around 6:30 the next morning, we planned to eat and leave camp in time to get to the beach by 8:00. This of course, did not go nearly as smoothly as planned. First, as we started to make breakfast, we realized we had forgotten all kinds of eating utensils, and had no way of spreading peanut butter and jelly for sandwiches for lunch, etc. In the end a piece of cardboard, ripped off a saltine box, was used in place of a knife. Then, as we were driving out of our campsite, happy to be relatively on time, we got stuck in a ditch. The car's right side, between the wheels, was up on a hill, making it impossible for Caety to open the door and get out (she was stuck in from the other side by the cooler and food in the middle seat). The front of the car was also stuck on the road, with the wheels down in ditch and spinning, unable to grip the loose dust beneath them. After trying various ways of piling rocks under the wheels, backing up and going forward, pushing and pulling, our neighboring campers saw the pickel we were in and came to the rescue. With their help pushing, the wheel turned in the right way, and rocks piled under the wheels, we finally managed to escape our predicament. From then on whenever we went into or out of our campsite we drove up to the end of the road, turned around, and came back down so we could enter/exit going uphill. Needlessto say, we were late by this point to the beach, where we did our diving.
Diving: I had forgotten we were already certified when we went diving. Our instructor, Damian, basically told us to get our stuff on and go out by ourselves, and he didn't need to be there. That was a rather pleasant realization that I really could do this whenever I wanted, provided equipment and a buddy. Anyway the diving was great, we got to go through the kelp forest and saw hundreds of starfish, a few schools of small (less than four inches) fish, some larger (about a foot long) fish, many hermit crabs, and hundreds of jellyfish of all sizes. Most of this was in and around the kelp forest, which was a fun experience to swim through and practice our buoyancy control as we drifted up and down over obstacles. The highlight of the dives for me was the deep dive we took, down until 65 feet before one of our group members ran out of air and we had to ascend. We had just gotten to this giant white anemone looking thing with translucent tentacles when we started to ascend, and looking up, we found ourselves to be below hundreds of jellyfish, some six feet long and others much smaller. Against the backlit surface it was a gorgeous display, but not the best place to ascend by any means, and our instructor got stung badly on the cheek, the only place that was showing with his drysuit and mask. After some trouble, Tyler and I passed the navigation tests, completing a perfect square. For future reference I do 22 kick cycles/50' (I think).
During our time in Monterey, there was a large car show, so it was fun seeing all the really fancy cars parked all up and down the street. We saw one with a pretty awesome license plate: "Awwsum." Saturday after diving, we went to the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was really cool. We went through almost the entire aquarium, and I especially loved the Sea Dragons (a kind of sea horse). Kim, thanks for the membership card. They gave me slightly a weird look but let me in smoothly :). After the aquarium we ate at a diner Caety and Tina have gone to, and Caety and I had the brilliant idea to split our meals, so we each got half a burger and half a BLT, perfect :).
After dinner, we spent the rest of the night walking down Cannery Row, the main street sort of in Monterey. Visiting lots of shops, we tried some new kinds of candy from a candy shop, found a bakery with delicious cinnamon rolls, etc. Going into those candy shops always makes me feel so good for some reason. It is like a combination of a really olden days style general store and Willy Wonka. Oh, we also found a military base by accident driving around, and a block of "old Monterey."
When we left the campsite early Sunday morning before our neighbors got up, we left them the following note:
Dear Neighbors, Thanks for being such great neighbors! Sorry we didn't see you during the day. Enjoy the rest of your trip! Thanks for helping us out of the ditch! -Your Neighbors
Later, after diving, we had a lovely picnic lunch near the beach where we went diving, walked around some more in downtown Monterey, climbed the rocks by the beach (I am doing the "Where the Hell is Matt" dance in the picture above), got Baskin Robbins (yumm), and tried to go down the 17 mile drive, but it was closed :(. Eventually we had to start heading home, so we crammed ourselves back into the overpacked car and headed home, listening to Spanish music for much of the way, as we did for a great deal of this trip by the way.
Since Tyler had never been on dunes, we stopped at a really nice beach, where we saw a paraglider and taught Tyler how to do a cartwheel. After a pizza stop for dinner, the rest of the drive went smoothly, with some traffic but not terrible. At one point I really had to go pee, so when we exited to find a bathroom we ended up seeing a "Peabody," an "Outback," and one other place that was the best bad pun of all, but I forgot.
Overall a successful trip, I had a lot of fun :).
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