tynanpatrick
Registered
Hello!
I've kicked around the forums as a reader to get information for a long time, but finally made an account today.
I've been diving for about 18 years, but at a pretty low volume (until a few years ago, I lived in Oklahoma. not the greatest location in the world for diving). I had kind of drifted away from diving after I moved away from home. It was always something I did with my Dad, and with him living 1000 miles away, It became something I had to more actively work to do and With all of my experience being in murky lakes (which are fun in their own way, don't get me wrong), I just wasn't wanting to put any effort into it anymore.
Then about a year ago, I went on a trip to Isla Mujeres in Mexico. I went to swim with the whale sharks, but I was staying at a dive shop and figured I should do some diving while I was there. My father had passed away about a year earlier and that felt like a big internal hurdle to do it without him. Not because it scared me, but just because it had been our thing we did together. Anyway, it started as just a cathartic thing to try and move on and reclaim something I used to love, and it turned into a life changing week. That was my first ocean diving, the clarity, the life on the reefs. I saw turtles, sharks, lobsters, eels and billions of fish. Pretty routine for some folks around here, I know, but for me, it was mind blowing. This stuff wasn't just seen by documentary crews that filmed for weeks or months to get 30 minutes of good footage? apparently not. it was just everywhere.
I had been leaning into heavy travel since my dad passed, but the focus immediately shifted to diving. I've been a few places, have some trips to the Red sea and Galapagos planned, in November I am taking the trip I've wanted to take since I was 10 and going to Palau.
Anyway, that's the short version of my story, happy to join the conversation here and happy to keep getting in the water.
I've kicked around the forums as a reader to get information for a long time, but finally made an account today.
I've been diving for about 18 years, but at a pretty low volume (until a few years ago, I lived in Oklahoma. not the greatest location in the world for diving). I had kind of drifted away from diving after I moved away from home. It was always something I did with my Dad, and with him living 1000 miles away, It became something I had to more actively work to do and With all of my experience being in murky lakes (which are fun in their own way, don't get me wrong), I just wasn't wanting to put any effort into it anymore.
Then about a year ago, I went on a trip to Isla Mujeres in Mexico. I went to swim with the whale sharks, but I was staying at a dive shop and figured I should do some diving while I was there. My father had passed away about a year earlier and that felt like a big internal hurdle to do it without him. Not because it scared me, but just because it had been our thing we did together. Anyway, it started as just a cathartic thing to try and move on and reclaim something I used to love, and it turned into a life changing week. That was my first ocean diving, the clarity, the life on the reefs. I saw turtles, sharks, lobsters, eels and billions of fish. Pretty routine for some folks around here, I know, but for me, it was mind blowing. This stuff wasn't just seen by documentary crews that filmed for weeks or months to get 30 minutes of good footage? apparently not. it was just everywhere.
I had been leaning into heavy travel since my dad passed, but the focus immediately shifted to diving. I've been a few places, have some trips to the Red sea and Galapagos planned, in November I am taking the trip I've wanted to take since I was 10 and going to Palau.
Anyway, that's the short version of my story, happy to join the conversation here and happy to keep getting in the water.
