Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Risk

Father’s day week-end was pretty cool this year. Erin volunteered to watch Jack on Saturday so I could get in a day of diving out at the old rock quarry near Bethlehem Pennsylvania. Diving in the quarry was a good way to refresh my diving skills and make sure all my stuff was working right. Dave and I headed out at 6am and despite a few equipment issues, it ended up being a good day. My SPG flooded at depth but thankfully continued to work so I didn't have to abort any dives. Dave had some rather more serious fin issues. A small plastic piece the size of a toothpick almost ruined the day for him.
I haven’t been diving since June of 2007 and I sorely miss the sport. It is a very Zen experience insofar as it requires a constant attention to your surroundings and total self-awareness. Petty concerns and neurotic thoughts are banished to the fringes while you glide through the water like a largemouth bass, completely focused on the task at hand. Which is not to say it’s easy. Diving in the Northeast is not the friendly splashfest you experience on a trip to the Florida Keys or the Caribbean. Diving in cold water in the quarry requires (at minimum) a tank, regulator, depth guage, SPG, compass, buoyancy control device with secondary regulator, mask, fins, a dive computer, a 7mm thick two piece wet suit, gloves, boots and a thick full head hood plus a weight belt to get all that neoprene under water. If you decide to venture out into the Atlantic you need to add a redundant air system, lights, a knife, wreck reel and signal devices. Probably about 75-100 pounds of gear overall. You’d also better be in pretty good shape since the physical effect of hanging off a boat’s anchor line 50 feet down the water column in a stiff current is akin to what an American flag flapping on a tall pole experiences in a hurricane. Your reward for all the effort expended going hand over hand down the line to the bottom is 20 minutes on a shipwreck in 45 degree water 100 feet down in near total darkness. There are also sharks. Which you really can’t see. For some perverse reason I find this to be great fun. Diving in the ocean in the Northeast is the closest the average middle-age man (or woman) can ever get to exploring outer space. It is adventure at it’s best and there is always the possibility that when diving on a wreck you’ll find an artifact. Maybe even a gold coin. It hasn’t happened to me yet but I’m going to keep on going.

Over the course of the last year I have wondered whether the risks inherent in the sport of scuba are too great for a single father to be taking. I struggled with this question for almost all of last year’s diving season and as a result, didn’t dive too much. I mean, the poor kid already lost one parent. What would happen to him if I got trapped in a U-Boat and took an unscheduled trip to Davey Jones locker? Anyway, I had almost decided to hang up my fins and take up something safer, like golf, when I got hit by a car while crossing the street back in March and my whole perception experienced a paradigm shift. There is so much random shit that can go wrong that we have no control over. I could have been killed right then and there, and probably would have if the car had been going a little faster or hit me an inch or two higher on my back. Living the straight and narrow is no protection against your karma or the vicissitudes of life. The only thing you get from living in a box for too long is a fear of open spaces and I would never want Jack to deal with the world from a position of fear. In order to be alive, truly alive, you need to take occasional risks and push the envelope. I’m not talking crazy risks, but risks where the danger, albeit present, can be handled if you pay attention. Children, after all, are natural risk-takers. They know instinctually that the risk of falling down is the price you have to pay for scaling the coffee table to see what's on top. They don't even give it a second thought. Its when we get older that we start to fret and worry about things we cannot possibly control. We are only here for a short time and the world is so very vast and wide. What do you want to do with the time you are given?

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