LONG day yesterday. Got up at 4:30 am and took the opportunity to call Mum back home before heading down the Anacapa Dive Center for 5:30 to meet up with the other guys. We headed down the freeway a few exits to Ventura to the boat that would host our day’s diving. As I surfed the radio dial on the way down, I stumbled upon a discussion on anti-semitism on K-DAR: Christian Radio for the Gold Coast. As the item ended and the guest caller’s comments summed up, they faded in one of these horrible American sentimental / holy backing tunes full of wistful little-house-on-the-praire strings and walking-in-memphis piano… only the tune was God Save the Queen… That was bemusing to say the least…
The coastguard checked us all out for signs of terrorism, then we pootled off to an oil platform. We rookies hung out on board while the more experienced divers went and checked stuff out. I got signs of seasickness for the first time ever. Not pleasant. No actual puking, but lots of willpower required to keep tricking myself into seeing the boat moving and the ocean moving and it all being OK.
After the oil rig we bimbled over to Anacapa Island and Goldfish Bowl Point. We made our way down the anchor line and found a sandy patch to kneel in to’do some skills’. Visibility was a little under 20 feet and as I settled to the bottom with the group I was startled by a Sea Lion, which biffed in and out of the scene in about 1/4 of a second. I think this was the dive where I had to fill my mask completely with water and clear it again. I had very little trouble with this in the pool but in the colder ocean water I had a lot of difficulty forcing myself to breathe out of my nose into the cold salty mask interior. I just stopped, gave the instructor the OK sign, and collected myself then went for it. Not perfect, but I think I scored points for taking my time instead of continuing to panic. After that, we set buoyancy and went for a short tour: I got to cuddle a sea cucumber and a Sea Hare. Lowel spotted a shark under a rock but as I went over the rock I had to fight with my buoyancy so I ended up missing it. (as you go shallower, you expand and so you become more buoyant - you’re supposed to mostly use your breathing to compensate, and have an inflatable jacket for larger adjustments. I noticed a bit late that I was floating upward, and had to fumble for the control on my jacket.)
Dive three of the day, my second, was at Cat Rock on the same island. Vis was better again, and this time we had to settle carefully in a field of spiny sea urchins to perform some more skills. This time the tour took in a lobster, which eagle-eyed instructor Lowel spotted and extracted from its lair. When he released it in mid-water, it shot backwards using its tail as a paddle. I’m still pondering the evolutionary benefit of that. It seems in the underwater world it’s better for a crustacean to be able to see what it’s running away from rather than where it’s going. This trip was where I saw my first Senorita too.
My final dive, I was all qualified, so could just float about and check stuff out. My initial attempt to hang out with a shoal of fish was halted by on of the other guys smacking into the seabed and kicking up a cloud of sand and assorted debris! Miles, who’d also qualified on the previous dive, had hired a camera and was snapping away… that was cool, but in all the excitement, the buddy system started to go a bit wobbly: the idea is that you pair off for safety and generally stay within a couple of metres of one another, but we were an odd number, plus all the posing for photos…
Woo yay! Did my first dive in the ocean today. I don’t actually remember being born, but I’m sure it wasn’t as hard as the entry off the beach. Dressed in a 7mm thick rubber suit which makes your arms and legs stick straight out, and carrying a steel cannister full of air on your back, add about 26lb of lead weights around your middle and put on ridiculous long fins to make walking even harder. Then, trek backwards through the surf looking over your shoulder (in itself impossible) breathing through a tube while the sun bakes you in your jacket. By the time I got past the surf zone into the water I was ready for a nap. Once down there, visibility was about 1 foot which almost freaked me out: For a short time I had no idea whether I was still with the party or the instructors at all… But we just hung out for 20 mins making the OK sign at one another then made our way back up the line to the surface. About half the party gave up at that point (with 3 boat dives scheduled the next day we only needed to do one beach dive) but after 20 mins hanging at the beach the rest of us went back in for another one. Vis was a little better, about 4 feet, and this time we ‘did some skills’ toward certification, i.e. partially filled and drained masks, took out regulators and replaced them…then went for a wee tour of the seabed and cuddled a few starfish and decorator crabs.
Exit was into a different world. We dived off the coast of sleepy Santa Barbara and surfaced in Beachsville, California. By the time I’d made it past all the hard bronzed bodies to the car and got changed out of my wetsuit I was all but reduced to a slavering wreck. I *think* I stopped short of doing the wolf routine from The Mask but I can’t guarantee it.
Continuing the California therme, I saw a genuine CHiPs motorbike tonight! Yay!
People have been gently nudging me to stay for longer and longer while I’ve been here. The last figure mooted was two years. Hmmm. Take a bit of thought. So far I’ve thought “yeeeeah!” “aaaargh!” “yeeeah!” “aaargh!” “eeeeer!” “ummmmm” “arrrrgh” “yeeeah!”
That’s an approximate transcription. Let’s try some pros and cons
good: the weather
bad: the time difference
good: the weather, no, really the weather!
bad: medical bills
good: the service
bad: ummm
good: the beach
bad: I won’t be living on mission ridge
good: I will be working on mission ridge
bad: all the bread tastes wrong here
good: everything’s cheap
bad: the TV
good: I get to see lots of america from relatively close up
bad: the time difference
good: the local bands
bad: the radio
good: I get out of York
bad: I won’t be getting married and settled down anytime soon
dunno: whether I can afford a “fixer-upper” house here
dunno: how much relocation help I can get out of bosch
dunno: what strategically is better for career
dunno: what I’m going to do with all my stuff
Just got back from the finest Indian meal I have had anywhere, including India*. Viswanadh tempted fate by ordering the house special Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani - what with him being from Hyderabad and all… By the end of the meal, he was beaming all over his face! They’d got it wrong on a technicality or two, but he said for the first time he really tasted India. We were both slightly bemused to be served complimentary chinese-style pea-and-sweetcorn soup to start with but the main course (sorry, “entree”) was delicious from the first mouthful to the last. It was strange to hear the Indian accent of the woman at the front of house and the curled-up-at-the-corners Californian of her daughter. And be served by someone who seemed half Chinese and half Mexican…
* during my stay in India I had a portion of daal** and two portions of rice pudding.
** daal is a Bengali word, meaning “muck”
This is a pukka American-style diner, like you might get in england, but without the obligatory Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Dean busts. I ordered ‘Vive la French Toast’ and got my first chance to ask for my eggs over-easy, so that’s what I’m getting. I couldn’t really figure out what was going on with the food: it seems like it’s a breakfast thing, so the restaurant is very quiet tonight, and the waitress recommended the weekday breakfast special despite its being 8pm. ‘Pancakes’ seems to generally mean ‘Butterkmilk pancakes’ which are like Scotch pancakes back home - spongey, puffy things. They also have “international style” pancakes - French-style crèpes, German style and some other that I didn’t read. I assume these were the thinner sort. To an extent they have the Dutch thing of mixing savoury and sweet: though sausage, egg, pancakes and strawberries seems a little incongruous to me right now. I think I’ve ordered something all-savoury. I’ll see in due course…
Decided to visit Gisella’s tonight, a mainly Italian restaurant that does Brazilian night on Mondays. Downtown is properly foggy tonight, and that, combined with my fatigue, hunger, and general bamboozledness, contributed to me speeding past a cop, jumping the queue at an all-way-stop and nearly running over a jogger. Ho hum. En route to Gisella’s I spotted a place called IHOP - International House Of Pancakes - wow! Must try that on a day when my lunch didn’t consist entirely of flour, cheese and egg… Made it to Gisellas, glanced through the door and was terrified to see two samba queens going at it full tilt to some very loud music. This is not the Brazil of bossa nova, the Girl Fom Ipanema, but the Brazil of Rio de Janeiro, carnaval, etc… As a rule I am not in favour of naked or nearly-naked women except on a 1-to-1 basis… And especially not in the 5th consecutive week of relative solitude IYSWIM. I’ve ended up in Carlitos Café Y Cantina once again wishing I either had the guts to stick to the Carter Diet,or the stomach for US portions….
I never liked Mexican food, having formed the opinion it was always pink or brown mush wrapped in a tortilla of some kind, but this close to Mexico it’s rather good, actually made of food… Oo and más que nada just started…
PostScript: Well, that food and service was a dozen times better than Left At Alburquerque, and only 50% more expensive… the portions were still huge though. I have a Beef Hangover today.
Friday night was my first SCUBA session, straight from work till 10pm. I was starving by the time I was done, having had a punnet of raspberies and a banana for lunch and dinner respectively. I decided to indulge myself and try out “GO FISH and CHIPS”, the closest approximation to a chip shop Santa Barbara has to offer. It serves chips in the paper, but has tables too (I think I’ve already mentioned that) so I ordered fish and chips.
“2 pieces, 3 pieces or 4 pieces?”
uh oh.. it’s already gone wrong.. “uh, 2 please”
“Batter or crumb?”
um.. “batter please”
“Regular French fires or Sweet Potato fries?”
this is just getting sill now. “Regular please”
…
I took a menu … hmm let’s see…
2 Piece fish & chips … $5.95
…
Chips (French Fries) … $1.95
…
Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Pink Lemonade, Orange Sode …. $1.75
So far so good….
Foster’s, Guinness Stout, Heineken, New Castle [sic] Brown Ale … $3.75
Ok. Enough pussying around with the slightly strange stuff. How about
Mahi-mahi and chips
Fish Tacos & Chips
Salmon & Chips
Fried Chicken Popcorn
House Red or White wine by the glass..
No steak & kidney pie :-(
We’ve had lots of marine fog over the last two days, so it’s a lot less glamorous than my pics now. Last night to fill the gap between dinner and bed I decided to ‘get lost’ in the car - something I’ve been doing a lot of to get to know the area. But once I’d done “Coyote Road” and followed the sign to “West Mountain” (cos I knew I was East of home) my bottle began to give out as I was on a pitch dark winding mountainside road in the fog and I wasn’t sure where I was. After a few more twists I wasn’t even sure which way I was facing! Eventually I stopped the car and got out to look around. By then the fog was clear and I was there alone on a dark mountainside with a huge clear dome of stars and the sound of frogs/toads all around… it was great! I decided to turn around at the next opportunity as I’d been driving for about 10 minutes and the only thing I still knew was the way back. When the next opportunity came, there were street lights and there was a clear route down, off the mountainside, so I took that instead. And just as I was about to give in again, I found Mission Ridge Road, which is the road my road branches off. I seem to have the habit of giving up just before I get there, so I’m gong to turn up my intrepidness by 5% and see where that gets me! I was on a completely unknown part of Mission Ridge Road, but made a judgement about which way to drive on it, and wound up home without hitch!
I couldn’t quite make them all out in the dark, but I passed some pretty ostentatious properties. Santa Barbara is a kind of holiday home for LA’s glitterati, e.g. Wacko (Jackson, not Warner)… I had visions of accidentally straying up a driveway in the dark and my confusion, and getting shot by attack rottweilers with laser beam eyes or something.
Ok. Something went wrong with girls’ names around here in the mid 70’s. So far I have met the following women at work:
Judi, Jane, Michelle, Annette, Susan, Alison and Tracy
And in the evenings out dancing I have met:
Rashmi, Erin, Sandronella (or something: “call me Sandy”) and Tamarind. She’s a nice girl, but it must be tough being named after a poo-shaped fruit.
Well, already knew it was hard, but i thought i was up to the challenge… after tonight i’m not so sure. I know how a newbie guy feels at salsa now faced with the critical eye and politely mute face of a partner who is clearly levels above him. I imagine i’ll drop out of level 2 pretty soon but no great loss as it’s the same price to do both levels as to do just one.
I’m in ‘left at albuquerque’ - some kind of texan or mexican cuisine. I ordered a quesidilla starter out of curiosity… i’ve just polished that off and it was nice but i’m full. My cowardice prevented me following the Carter diet so i think i’ll be missing lunch tomorrow.
Fajitas for main course. If i’d realised the size of the ‘appetizer’ and that they’d bring salsa and a basket of nacho chips as big as my head I probably would’ve skipped main course altogether… Tasty though. Only problem is the one - sided conversation… Enough of me… Tell me about your day..?