Unusual Dive Buddies

Here is my dive report from Saturday. Hope you enjoy. I've changed some names for the sake of privacy. But if you do figure out who I'm talking about it would be nice ifyou could keep it discreet.

Chuck Tribolet had reserved the entire park for 30 divers and we were lucky enough to take part in the event. In addition to the wonderful diving, we met some unusual people. First off, we were tripled up with **** who is a staffmember at Blue Water Diving - a Sunnyvale shop. Unfortunately, our cars were parked next to one another other, so I was treated to the sight of ****changing. Basically this guy is a bit on the stout side. While talking to me face to face, **** strips down and keeps talking to me as if nothing unusual had happened. I thought he was wearing some unusual bathing shorts, so I had to take a closer look. Ends up he was stripped down to his tighty whities. Mark had been smart enough to look away from the get go. My retinas are still burning from that encounter.

On our second dive, we were quadrupled up with an older dive instructor. All four of us wanted to dive the swim through -- which is about 40+ feet long and 30 feet deep. The instructor claimed that in his crazier youth, he had free-dived the swim through. Anyways, halfway through the dive, I turn around to see that the dive instructor was wearing a starfish on his head. When I indicated that he had a starfish on his head, he cocked his head to the side and shrugged. I laughed so loud that Mark could hear my laughter from afar. The dive instructor proceeded to wear the starfish for the rest of the dive. I saw a sun star the size of a bicycle wheel crawling along the sand. I pointed to it and then pointed to his head and gave him the OK signal. He intelligently declined to put the sunstar on his head. Later, the dive instructor told me he almost put an abalone shell on his head to protect his head from the overhead environment during the swim through. That would have been a sight.

As for the diving, it was great! The highlights were a huge vermilion rockfish, and an octopus on the gravelly pebble bottom that tried to pretend it was a rock.