Lake Whatcom Underwater Cleanup

Thanks to all 25 of you that came out to help clean up our lake. We cleaned up Bloedel-Donavan Park's boat launch area and headed west to the swim area. The area that we covered was approx. 300x50 yards. This was a small area for the amount of trash that we pulled up and out. The best find was a jar of pickled pigs feet. Yummy. Ron found a fin that was lost from a student of mine from two years ago! You can see the slide show posted on this blog on all the trash that we pulled out.

This event was a lot of fun. I have to admit this was the first time I have organized a full event like this. I unfortunately over looked a really important part. Where do you put all that trash once you pull it out?

I just assumed that we would have been able to take it to our local waste services. We did after all, donate our time to cleanup up a very controversial topic here in town. This lake is our drinking water. If you had a chance to see the huge pile of trash that was pulled out of a very small area, you would have been disgusted. Bystanders on the shore were amazed how much trash was pulled out. Here where the most common questions, "Where did you get that trash from?" The lake. "How did it get there?" People put it there. Seems simple. People dropped the trash, we donated our time to pick it up, collect it, separate it and bag it. We thought it would be no big deal to just to take it to our local waste services. I was wrong.

After a few trips around town, (thanks Jake!) the trash finally found it's home. We had to pay for it to be taken away. So next time you turn on your tap for some water. Think about your local hero's that took the time out of their days to help make your water that much better.

The estimated weight, easily weighed 500 pounds! The cans were 25 pounds just by themselves.

Once again, thanks to all of you who came out to help. You are all amazing and should be proud of a great day of community service!

The Gman's Adventures

hey there chimichummies,

i tried to reply to the gone diving blogs but i couldnt get on my blogger account. anyways, bogota is totally *itchin. last night we partied with guillermo vives who is the brother of a famous colombian singer named carlos vives. guillermo owns a restaurant that doubles as a night club that he sings at with his band. he gave me the scoop on the diving in santa marta where i will be in 2 weeks. its the south end of the caribean sea and there is a lot of current so its basically drift city. tomorrow we leave for 5 days of river rafting, hangliding, waterfall repelling, horse back riding, hiking and debotchery. our friends here are very generous, as is the colombian culture. sorry for the lack of transitioning.... the other day we were on walk about around the city and there was this bum on the side of the busy road, just a bum, no one was paying attention to him, but this image is burned into my mind and i am trying to draw a picture of it. this guy had the nastiest, gaping wound that was once his ankle but is now a hole with a knife stuck straight down from the top, into his ankle, perpendicular to the ground and probably just rests right above the bottom of his heal. i cant get it out of my head.

anyways, happy diving. i will be in touch.

johnnnnnn

The Gman's Adventures

This is a post from Gman John. He left to South America for a few months. He will be giving us short updates via me.

dear charchar and scotzilla,

i made it safely to colombia and its been raining for a while, but we caught some sun breaks yesterday. the coffee is good, the hot betties are few and far between, i think we just have to find out where they are hiding. leaving for the santander region on monday for river rafting, waterfall repelling, horsy riding and getting drunk. hope the sale goes well, and the sports bar thing, and the lake whatcom cleanup. happy adventures to you all.

johnnnnnnn


If you have comments or questions to send to him. Let me know and I will pass it on.

Group Gone Benchdiving

What a great turn out last night at Extremes. JoLynn, Britt (.5 ND), Joe, Scott, Jake, Jason, Hailey (ND), Joshwaht, Eye Candy Andy, Tim, Tara, Kevin, Christina and myself. We played some Wii, ate some pizza and had some great pickles! They make those pickles in house, sweet but nice and spicy!

We talked about our upcoming event, which will be October 22nd at Gone Diving, 6:30pm. We are going to have the Port of Bham come in and talk to us about the planning and redevelopment of The Waterfront District. We specifically asked them to be prepared for us to talk about doing an underwater park. If you are interested in attending please let me know so we can plan accordingly.

You all have heard about the Massive Scuba Event by now, I am sure. Be prepared to come early, there is ALOT of buzz about this one. Free regulators and gift certificates, oh my! Beach cleanup on Sunday.

If you have any other ideas for group bench dives let us know. I heard something about a costume party! Sounds like that would be crazy.

Thanks all for coming last night, it was really great to see you all there! You are an awesome group!

Last Tour de Forts

The summer is now officially over. I think now, I am really looking forward to going to Cozumel this coming holidays. I am up for a beating from the warm sun. Aaaahhhh warm sun.

So yes, it was raining this weekend for our last Tour de Forts at Keystone. I made it over Saturday night for the night dive. There was up to 4 octopus spotted! In the morning Adam, Heather, Jaketwo, Laura, Jason, Scott, Jake, John, Disco, Caiti, Techno, Ron, Tori, Zack, Shawn, Chad, Melissa, Brad and myself did some dives on Sunday. The vis was amazing. Some of us did the pilings, some the jetty and some did the drift. The sun did come out when we where all done diving so that was awesome.

Post to let me know if you came earlier. I know that there was a bunch of people that came out over Thursday to Sunday, What is your story, how was your dive/camping adventure. Any photos? Jake gave me his so I will get those posted later this week.

Remember we have our group get together for a bench dive this Wednesday at 6:30pm, at Extremes. We will be getting together to plan our next couple of months. Now that the good diving is just getting started! Super exciting!

What's in your gear bag?

I love to know what other gear people use so I thought I would ask the question, "What's in you gear bag?"

Here's what's in mine:

Oceanic FDX10 First Stage with EOS Second Stage

Oceanic Excursion BC

Oceanic ProPlus II Computer

Oceanic Shadow Mask(well until I lost it at Langley)

Oceanic Viper Fins with Spring Straps

Oceanic OP3x3 Dive Light

Plus lots of other crap!

No I don't work for Oceanic, I just bought all my gear at Gone Diving.

Favorite Local Dive Sites?

So what are your favorite local dive sites? Video or pics, post 'em if you got 'em!

Rat Fish at Langley

What an awesome weekend! We still have quite a bit of algae bloom in the water. The open water class did the rounds at Alki, Cove 1 and Langley Tire Reef. Like always, it was awesome! Langley has such abundance of life on it right now. Adam and Heather McAbee and myself saw a rat fish at 21 feet off the tire reef. Crazy, the floor was crawling with crabs. If you have not collected crabs underwater before, that is a great place to do it. Make sure you have your shellfish license.

Get ready for the last Tour de Forts at Fort Casey. This is going to be a fun event for all. If you are unable to make it for the full weekend, no worries, join us for the day.

Jason and myself will be at the Skagit County Fairgrounds at the Business to Consumer Expo. If you know someone that is between the age of 8-18 that would like to discover scuba in a pool, send them our way. We will be there until they close or nobody is around. Then we will sneak off to the campground to join the group camping.

Does anybody have any other plans or events happening this weekend?

Congratulations goes out to our Open Water students that finished their dives this weekend. Great job certified divers! BTW, Nick (our weekend guy) is now a certified diver. Come on in and let him know it was about time!

Great weekend

Did anyone go diving this weekend? Where did you go? What did you see? I did a Rescue class at Rosario beach on Saturday. It was a beautiful day with not so bad vis. Congratulations, go out to Holly P, Carrie Anne K and Tim B for passing their Rescue class.

Spent the rest of my weekend in the YMCA ool, (please keep the p out). Not so bad vis, beautiful hair balls. No band aids to be found. 8 new students soon to be out in the big ocean!

What was your adventure?

Welcome!

This blog is an opportunity for divers, people interested in diving, or any cool peeps to get together online and share thoughts, ideas and information. We are also planning to have get-togethers once a month at different Bellingham-area locations, just to socialize and have some fun.

Our first meet-n-greet will be on September 24th at 6:30pm at Extremes Sports Grill. There are tons of cool things to do there (Wii, pool, darts...) and some good food and beverages!

Let us know what you think....