I was always fascinated by diving and any TV show (Sea hunt, Cousteau, Primus, Flipper) or movie in the 60's got my attention. As a kid I loved snorkeling in the ocean here n Maine and had a pretty good duck dive even as a kid.
The diving community around here is not a big one. When I may have had the cash to try I really didn't know where to start and not having an athletic bone in my body I wondered if I could even do it. Eventually it was a family and other priorities that overshadowed the desire to dive.
When we started camping with the kids (~1995) I got a decent snorkel gear package and it became part of the camping gear. I was in the water every chance I got and after being out of the water for about 25 years it was like I never stopped.
That was all good fun until 2003 when a daughter wanted to do some body surfing late in the season. We snapped up a few 3mm wetsuits to ward off the chill and went out to play. The next June I wondered how that suit might extend my skin diving and I began to be more ambitious. It was like a doorway opened and within a month I had a full new set of skin-diving gear, 5mm suit, weights, the works. My wife wasn't going to be left behind and she geared up too. That summer I logged 100+ skin-dives, some hours long.
By late that summer scuba didn't seem like that big of a leap. Being here on ScubaBoard I learned that 21st century scuba training didn't seem that intimidating. I made a discover dive (shallow pond open water) as a bucket list item, and loved it. I announced that I would start OW that winter to certify in spring 2005, you guessed it, she followed too.
We certified that spring (2005) and logged 100+ dives for a few years. Over time I have tempered the obsession a little. There are just so many cool things to do around here that I needed to seek some balance. Warm water travel has been infrequent, diving locally for the most part. 50 dives or so local dives seems to be a good number for me now.
So that's our story. The point I wanted to make is that done as a progression through skin-diving adaptation was very easy. By the time I touched a regulator and BC getting into a wetsuit, handling weights, propulsion and steering with fins, having a masked face in the water and sustained oral breathing were all second nature. Just add scuba!
Pete