Luggage and Literature

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. - St. Augustine

Friday Five 4-28-2017

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This is the twenty-sixth installment in my weekly series, called the Friday Five. In this series, I’ll tell you about five random things that I love, whether they be books, travel, music, movies…or whatever. So without further ado, 4-28-2017’s Friday Five!

1–Hilma Hooker. Mike dove this wreck when we were in Bonaire. It was his favorite of the trip. Reading about the history of the ship here was quite fascinating.

2–Carnegie Libraries. Modern Mrs. Darcy wrote about Carnegie libraries here. There are Carnegie libraries in every place that I’ve ever lived, so I really have a soft spot for them. The architecture is always beautiful, and the whole concept is just amazing.

3–Hotel Alex Johnson. I’m from Rapid City, so this article about the Hotel Alex Johnson jumped out at me. I’ve never stayed at the allegedly haunted hotel, but now I want to!

4–Nuclear meltdown. Nuclear power is endlessly intriguing to me. I recently had the opportunity to tour the local Becton Dickinson manufacturing plant (they make insulin needles) with the Young Professionals group. During the tour, they confirmed for me that the plant has a nuclear reactor, which is used in part to sterilize the product. They didn’t let us see it, but described the room and the pools used to cool the reactor. So when I stumbled across this article about an intentional nuclear power meltdown, I couldn’t help but read it. Check it out if you want to learn more.

5–Earth from Saturn. As regular readers probably know, I’m quite a space/astronomy buff. So the photos of Earth (and the moon) as viewed from the Cassini Orbiter through Saturn’s rings just fascinates me endlessly.

Guadeloupe (Part 4)

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Guadeloupe Part 4

Mike and I recently returned from Guadeloupe. In Part 1, I covered general information about the island, transportation, getting there, and our accommodations. In Part 2, I covered some of the many fun things to do on the island. In Part 3, I went through a breakdown of the cost of our trip. And in Part 4, I’ll talk about the scuba diving, and the dive operator that we used. So without further ado, the final entry in the series on Guadeloupe scuba diving!

Jacques Cousteau Guadeloupe
Hanging out with my buddy Jacques Cousteau.

We dove with Les Heures Saines, a dive shop located on Basse Terre. Mike and I are both SDI trained divers, so we asked for a recommendation for a dive shop on Guadeloupe. The French SDI rep recommended Les Heures Saines, and we were happy with our experience with them. They ensured that we had English dive briefings on all of our dives. And after they monitored our diving closely on the first couple of dives, they gave us a briefing and let us dive essentially on our own, which was appreciated. Most of the other divers were French, and I have to say that the French have different diving habits from the Americans (at least the Americans that we dive with). For example, many of them had gear dangling from them, rather than attached firmly to their gear. And most used full foot fins, rather than separate fins and boots. And they have a policy that you cannot surface without a surface marker, no matter if you are right near your boat and no matter how low your air supply. But despite the differences in diving style and gear configuration, we still enjoyed out diving with Les Heures Saines.

With the exception of one dive on the wreck The Franjack, our other dives were all around Pigeon Island, in the Jacques Cousteau Underwater Reserve. The reef was very healthy, with lots of colorful corals and sponges. The barrel sponges in particular were the largest that we’d ever seen. And the fish were plentiful. We were pleased with the diving, and that we even saw a sea turtle (although it happened to be on one of the two days that I dove without a camera).

Anyway, here are pictures from Pigeon Island.

Spotted Drum
Spotted Drum
Coral and Sponge
Brain Coral and Tube Sponge
Blue Tang
Blue Tang
Spotted Moray Eel
Spotted Moray Eel
Orange Sponge
Orange Sponge
Spotlight Parrotfish
Spotlight Parrotfish
Four Eye Butterfly Fish
Four Eye Butterfly Fish
Caribbean fish
Green Moray Eel and Spotted Trunkfish
Antler Sponge
‘Antler’ Sponge
French Angelfish
French Angelfish
Barrel Sponge
Mike with one of the many enormous barrel sponges.
Sea Turtle Guadeloupe
Sea Turtle

And here are pictures from diving the Franjack.

Franjack Guadeloupe

Franjack Guadeloupe 2

Franjack Guadeloupe 3
Mike doing a limited penetration of the Franjack.
Franjack Guadeloupe 4
Mike emerging from the Franjack.

Franjack Guadeloupe 5

Franjack Guadeloupe 6

Franjack Guadeloupe 7

Puffer Franjack Guadeloupe
A friendly Pufferfish on the Franjack.
Trumpetfish Franjack Guadeloupe
A trumpetfish on the Franjack.
Franjack Guadeloupe
On the ascent line after checking out the Franjack (which you can see in the background).

So what do you think? Would you want to dive Guadeloupe?

Friday Five 12-16-2016

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This is the twenty-first installment in my weekly series, called the Friday Five. In this series, I’ll tell you about five random things that I love, whether they be books, travel, music, movies…or whatever. So without further ado, 12-16-2016’s Friday Five!

1–The Gilmore Girls. I’ve been working my way through all of the seasons of The Gilmore Girls on Netflix. I haven’t yet watched the new movie, so no spoilers! So as a fellow bookworm, I loved Modern Mrs. Darcy’s post titled Gilmore Girls: A Series in Books.

2–SDI’s hilarious guide to throwing up underwater. In addition to being pretty funny, it’s also informative. It’s worth a read…enough said.

3–Postsecret. So, people send their secrets to this guy on postcards, and every Sunday he posts some of them on the internet. I love this site, and don’t know why I didn’t think to post about it before. If you’ve never read it, I’d suggest checking it out.

4–SDI/TDI/ERDI’s Story. I make it no secret that I’m an SDI scuba diver. Mike has training with both SDI (Scuba Diving International) and TDI (Technical Diving International). After diving with shops and folks trained in a variety of curricula, we really do believe their training to be superior. This short video about the history of the company was really interesting.

5–10 Crucial Decisions That Reshaped America. A lengthy but well thought out essay on the small decisions in the various campaigns that lead to the Trump victory. This is a very good read, no matter your position on the political spectrum.

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