It’s been almost a month since I pur­chased my dry suit and almost a week since it arrived that I finally put the time in to trim­ming my seals and try it on before I start div­ing in April. Here I am trim­ming my seals, show­ing off how flex­i­ble the suit is by touch­ing my fin­gers from the back, and doing a “cool” super­man stretch pose. It’s dif­fi­cult and uncom­fort­able to do this with a full 7mm wet­suit, but it’s so easy and effort­less with the dry suit. The only neg­a­tive part is that the neck seal pushes the skin in your neck and makes your look like you have a double-chin, but who cares!!! This suit is so cool and can’t wait to try it out next month.

For being a Tues­day, St. Patrick’s day was excel­lent (apart from wait­ing 1 hour to get into the bar).

This week­end I vis­ited the Luray Cav­erns and the Luray Zoo in the Shenan­doah Val­ley, Virginia.

The Luray Zoo is a res­cue zoo for unwanted, abused, and con­fis­cated exotic ani­mals such as the Andean Con­dor (who can travel up to 200 miles [322 km] in one day in search for food), Cana­dian Lynx, and other really inter­est­ing ani­mals. Even though the zoo is very small, it is one of the most inter­est­ing zoos that I have been to and I have been to the San Diego Zoo, Philadel­phia Zoo, Mex­ico City Zoo, and Wash­ing­ton DC Zoo. It is really nice what this zoo does since many of the large zoos some­times don’t accept exotic unwanted pets.

In the cav­erns, for some odd rea­son, I got a des­per­ate sen­sa­tion to go scuba div­ing. Maybe because the cav­erns reminded me of the under­wa­ter caves and cav­erns near Tulum, Mex­ico that I vis­ited for the first time last year dur­ing my scuba trip. I have added the pic­tures here.

Recently I pur­chased a Whites Fusion Dry Suit and I’m extremely excited about it, con­sid­er­ing it’s by far my biggest invest­ment in my sport/hobby. Bye bye to my close calls with hypothermia.

Now I will be able to dive pretty much year round in a wide range of tem­per­a­tures. I got the Tech Skin for cold water div­ing and the lycra skin for warm water div­ing. All I need now is to get some fancy under­gar­ments so I won’t freeze when I do cold water div­ing (early April). I’ll upload some pic­tures of me in the suit once the dry suit arrives (aprox 10 days).

I guess my next big step is to go crazy for cold. Sport­diver mag­a­zine has a list of the 20 places to go crazy for cold so I’ll start tak­ing some of them into consideration:

1. Channel Islands, Cal­i­for­nia: kelp forests, unique marine life
2. British Colum­bia: soft corals, giant octo­pus, arti­fi­cial reefs
3. New York/New Jer­sey: wreck div­ing
4. Great Lakes: fresh­wa­ter, wrecks, the great out­doors
5. St. Lawrence River (Upper and Lower): wrecks, the Empress of Ire­land, giant cat­fish, all kinds of whales from bel­u­gas to blues!
6. Nunuvut, Canada: ice div­ing, bel­u­gas, Inuit cul­ture
7. Antarctic: adven­ture, ice-diving, stun­ning scenery, unique marine and wildlife, brag­ging rights
8. Norway: swim­ming with orcas dur­ing the her­ring run
9. Iceland: unique div­ing sit­u­a­tions and chal­lenges, mind-blowing scenery, Ice­landic food and cul­ture
10. Clear Lake, OR: incred­i­ble viz, 3000 year old pet­ri­fied for­est, under­wa­ter vents bur­bling through thick layer of ash and silt
11. Alaska: wran­gling ice­bergs on scuba, lava tubes near Sitka
12. Scapa Flow, Scot­land: WWI and WWII British block­ships, remains of entire WWII scut­tled Ger­man fleet, North Atlantic marine life, remote Scot­tish cul­ture in the way-off-the-beaten-path Orkney Islands.
13. Vladiviscok, Rus­sia: giant octo­pus, Russ­ian war wrecks, 100+ viz in sum­mer, can go up in moun­tains and ride horses into Siber­ian tiger reserve
14. Kangaroo Island, Aus­tralia: leafy and weedy sea drag­ons, blond sea lions
15. New Zealand: Rain­bow War­rior (North Island), Poor Knights islands, fjord­land (South Island)
16. South Africa: sar­dine run, great white sharks
17. Lake Baikal, Rus­sia: deep­est lake in the world, fresh­wa­ter sponges, fresh­wa­ter sea lions, ice cold vodka
18. Colorado River: 8-knot speed adrenaline-filled drift dives, river fish
19. Nova Sco­tia: wrecks, and some more wrecks
20. Puget Sound, WA: giant octos, wolf eels