We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog posts for a short announcement… 🙂
Just got home to Texas yesterday…. I was gone 7 1/2 months this time. To sum up (for those who are new and aren’t following my blog yet 😉 ), I missed over 3 month’s of diving because of the heart attack in November, but have made up for it a bit after I was cleared to dive again in March.
This trip I made 91 dives between March 10th (my cardiologist cleared me to dive on the 8th) and June 26th. In the Philippines I did 80 dives split between Puerto Galera, Subic Bay, Moalboal, Malapascua Island (I went there twice), Leyte, Panglao Island (Bohol), Dauin/Dumaguete, Apo Island, Anilao, and El Nido. I also made a side trip to Micronesia where I dived Chuuk Lagoon, making 21 dives in 5 days there.
As I mentioned you can read about a lot of this here in my blog. I’m working on Chuuk now and will write about El Nido after that. I have a few things to take care of while I’m home but I will be getting back to writing again in the next couple of days (someday I’m going to catch up my blog ?).
Although I was cleared to dive back in March, my cardiologist did caution me I wasn’t completely recovered (even though I’d met the standard set by DAN to dive)….. but she also said that she’d never had a patient recover as much as I had in such a short period 🙂 (so thanks to all my friends and family who thought good thoughts and said prayers for me!).
I’ll be meeting with a cardiologist here in the US next week. I’m expecting more tests and hopefully he’s going to OK me to continue diving. I have no reason at this point not to believe that will be case, but I’m being cautious 🙂
I hope to do some diving here in Texas and if that happens I’ll be writing about that of course. Also as soon as my doctor here confirms that I’m still okay to dive I plan to schedule my IDC and finally become an instructor (after being certified over 35 years ago and being a Divemaster for almost 8 years maybe it’s about time? 🙂 ).
If all goes as planned I expect to be returning to the Philippines in September. I’ve made many friends in the Philippines over the last 10 years that I’ve been diving there. I originally met many of them through the Philippine Paradise Divers sub-forum at https://www.scubaboard.com/ Recently a few of us were chatting about the fact that although we’d known each other for years, and met in person several times since meeting online, we’d yet to dive together! The group used to get together when members from other countries would show up in the Philippines. Sometimes DOR’s (Dive-O-Rama’s) would be organized. We’re tentatively planning now to put something together for mid-September. Stay tuned as I will do a blog post on that. If you are in the Philippines or think you might like to attend message me. I know they are having some discussions about where to have it now. Anilao is the easiest for most, but there are other destinations that are being discussed also. When we start nailing it down I will let everyone know. We’d like to do it the first weekend that I’m back in the Philippines. I have a tentative plan to fly back around September 12th, but that will be dependent on my cardiologist, when I do my IDC, and of course when I can get a good deal on airfare.
After the Dive-O-Rama I will be going to Dauin near Dumaguete for a few weeks to do some photography for my friend Mark Gormley. He is opening a new dive resort right on the beach in front of the Dauin Marine Sanctuary! Can’t ask for a better location than that! I’ll be writing about it in my blog so stay tuned for that. I’m pretty excited at the opportunity to really explore Dauin in depth!
After Dauin I’ll be leaving the Philippines again and headed to Guam where I expect to spend at least a year. Guam has decent scuba diving itself and I plan to teach scuba diving while I’m there (the reason I’m going to do my IDC while I’m home). I decided a bit of extra income to supplement my retirement will allow me to do more trips. My other reason for going there is a simple one… one of the biggest drawback to diving Micronesia for most people is cost of airfare. I plan to take advantage of the money I will save in airfare, by living 7,000 miles closer, along with the extra income available to me for teaching, to make multiple dive trips around Micronesia! So stay tuned for more stories of underwater adventures!
We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog 🙂 Next up will be diving the world famous Chuuk Lagoon!