I've had better trips; I've had worse. Drove over to Southern California for Mother's Day weekend to get in some diving in La Jolla Submarine Canyon and Laguna Beach.

Friday (5/11/2007), I was forewarned that the Red Tide had reared it's ugly head and anticipated the words out of Pete's mouth the night before, "We're diving Deadman's" (in order to get out and under the bloom).

Met up with my buddy Pete of 28th St. Productions and a couple other divers at the crack of dawn at Crescent Bay in Laguna and geared up. As we got to the bottom of the stairs, I was adjusting a glove, while the other 3 strolled through the seemingly calm surf, I hurried to catch up and as I entered the water a 3-4' set of waves came rolling in. I allowed the first two waves to break and when I thought there was a lull I headed out...then another wave started to build and I waited for it to break and waited and waited and waited, crap it was going to break right on me, I jumped for it and didn't quite make it over the wave, so I spun around and rode it in a few feet and stood up, no harm. At this point I thought, OK put your mask on stick in your reg and get out there dummy, as I reached for my mask it was gone. Poseidon had claimed it.

As this was an early dive and the only one I planned on doing this day I didn't bring my full kit, including my spare mask; which I have grown accustomed to having with me on every dive but had forgot to pack it up for this morning's dive, which just made the situation more frustrating. I dropped my gear and searched in vain to find my favorite/original mask while the other three divers continued on without me. I didn't find it nor did I dive this day.

Headed over to Scuba.com's Headquarters/Showroom to get another mask and say "Hey" to my buddy Ruth, seeing as I still had a weekend full of planned dives. Their showroom is not really a showroom at all, apparently they just changed it. You walk into a room decorated with surfboards and big screen TV/Monitors, in the middle is a table with 3-4 laptops on it. You do your browsing on the laptops, whatever you want to see in person you "Add to Cart", when your done, you fill out your name, click a button that says, "Bring gear to me" and ring a doorbell type buzzer on a pole in the middle of the table. The warehouse folks then pull the gear and bring it out to you to try out, look at, etc. Since I was looking for a mask, this was sort of an inconvenience, so I added every black silicone mask they had and had them bring them all out. I ended up getting a Zeagle Ebon, not only did it fit the best, I'm partial to Zeagle products.

Saturday (5/12/2007) I headed down to La Jolla Shores to get some dives in at the monthly ScubaBoard Wrinkles Dive event. Again got up at the crack of dawn, probably predawn and headed South to La Jolla. Met up with the group around 8am, the Red Tide was here too, but since we'd be diving in the canyon it wouldn't be a problem. The surf was mild.

At about 8:30AM my phone rings, it's Big Mike, one of my Arizona dive buddies, he asked where I was. I was expecting him to ask me to go jump in the lake, but low and behold he and a guest had made the trek to La Jolla that night. After their Catalina trip was cancelled due to a fire, they decided to track me down.

After some socializing, general BS'ing and waiting to see if Christian could dive with a foot injury (which he couldn't), finally geared up to hit Vallecitos as our first dive spot. I buddied up with Dan. La Jolla Shores has some long surface swims if you've never been there, you can swim out a couple hundred yards and still be in less than 10' of water. About an 1/8 of a mile out and after repositioning ourselves due to a Northerly long shore current, we dropped into the Red Tide, hit sand at about 30' and headed West to find the start of the canyon. We reached the edge of the canyon in about 3-4 minutes in about 55' of water, headed left (Southerly) along the face. Saw some large Sheephead, lobsters, gobies, etc. Big Mike joined our buddy team on the dive, I won't get into that story, having been his first SoCal shore dive, I snatched up a bug for his close inspection and pointed out some other usual species including Sand Dollars on our way back in. Nice dive, glad I finally got wet.

Dive #127
Time In: 10:50
Viz: 20-25'
Bottom Temp: 53F
Bottom Time: 00:36
Max Depth: 75'
Buddy(s): Dan & Mike

Had lunch and socialized a bit more. After the food had settled Dan and I decided it was time for another dive, we both only had 80's remaining so we decided we'd head back to Vallecitos again, as there were reports of a Wolf Eel at 55' along the canyon wall. Didn't see the Wolf Eel (See links to pics below), but did see a baby Horn Shark and some other critters missed on the first dive, on the way back in we went right over the Sand Dollar field and in about 8' of water a bait ball swam around us.

Dive #128
Time In: 14:43
Viz: 10-25'
Bottom Temp: 51F
Bottom Time: 00:42
Max Depth: 60'
Buddy(s): Dan

I didn't bring my camera on either dive, but to see some great underwater pics from these dives visit these links:

• Pictures by Scott (aka Scottfiji)
• Pictures by John A. (aka Roughwaterjohn)

Didn't get in another dive, I was wiped out, so I joined the crew for dinner at The Spot in La Jolla village and made the drive back to my home away from home in OC. I had suggested to Big Mike's travel companion that they should head up to OC to dive with me on Sunday morning in Laguna. He wanted me to guarantee the sun and the moon and the stars, but this is SoCal shore diving the only thing I promised is that I'd be there early in the morning ready to dive.

Sunday (5/13/2007), once again was an early morning met up with Ruth, Larry, Mike & Co. at Crescent Bay in Laguna. The plan was if the Red Tide was present we'd go out to Deadman's if not we'd go over to the Pinnacles and Seal Rock. Well of course it was still there, probably go away on Tuesday after I'm home. So I took control and told the group we we're going out to Deadman's to get under the tide. As I was the only person in the group who'd dived this site before, I was the leader, Ruth & Mike bowed out of the dive.

Surf entry/exit was uneventful, no lost mask this day, you can be sure I tripled checked it and brought along my spare in my bellow's pocket. After another long surface swim (about 200 yards), most of which was through Red Tide so thick that you couldn't see your fins (yuck!). This was the first time I've ever led a dive of Deadman's virgins to this offshore reef, but as we descended through the zero visibility of the Red Tide to about 35' the visibility opened up to about 10', I took a 210 compass heading and hit the reef within a couple of minutes (sigh of relief). Once on the reef in about 45-50' the viz opened up to about 15-20' but the layer above us was impenetrable and it was like being on a night dive. The reef was teeming with life, saw most of the usual species and several FedEx nudibranchs, crabs, etc. Tried to explore some of the upper portions of the reef but at about 40' it became very murky and visibility was reduced to a cloudy 5' at best, so we stayed down in the 50-55' range. About 30" into the dive a teammate told me he was cold, did I mention it was freezing, 50F, so we headed back in over the sand, swimming through clouds of what appeared to be 1/4-1/2" shrimp, possibly feeding on the Red Tide. Saw some more crabs, etc. over the sand as we made our way back towards shore. Blue water safety stop, that's funny it was more like yellow water with about 2' of viz at 15', Larry and I were within arms reach of each other during our stop any farther and you could only make out a silhouette if anything. Decent dive despite the Red Tide, but no one was eager to do a second that day. Went and had breakfast at Ruby's in Laguna and Mike & Co. followed me back to the 91 Freeway to make their drive home.

Had a nice dinner accompanied by my Mother and Grandmother later that evening at the Lakeview Cafe in Yorba Linda and was fast asleep by 9PM that night.

Dive #129
Time In: 07:50
Viz: 2-20'
Bottom Temp: 50F
Bottom Time: 00:47
Max Depth: 56'
Buddy(s): Larry & Gilad

Monday (5/14/2007), Met up with Pete and Larry at 6AM at Montage/Treasure Island in Laguna, we had hopes that the Red Tide wouldn't be so bad, but were wrong we could see the reddish-brown water breaking over the reef, so we headed over to Shaw's Cove, same story here, none of us could get up the motivation to do another Deadman's run, so I said my Goodbyes until next time.

Was back at my home away from home by 7:30AM and packed up my truck for the trip home. Decided to get an early start and left about 10:45AM.

As I was driving through the Palm Springs area I thought I heard a noise coming from my left-front tire, I decided I'd stop for gas in Indio and check it out there. A few miles later I couldn't hear it anymore and thought maybe it was just the road, so I blew on by Indio and headed over the pass, once over the pass the tire seemed to be really out of balance, as I slowed it became increasingly worse shaking the steering wheel vigorously.

I pulled over and inspected the tire, it was failing and had a huge bulge on one side and the tread was just about to separate. Now I can change a tire, I don't like to, especially on the side of a busy Interstate with large semi's blowing by only a couple feet from me. Years ago as part of my Sprint cell phone package I signed up for Emergency Roadside Service (similar to AAA), just for these frequent SoCal trips. I have been diligently paying my $5/Month for several years and have yet to use it, so I figured now is the time to collect.

I call the special code (#ROAD) on my cell phone and the dispatcher takes all my information, including my location, which I told her was I-10 Eastbound, 20-25 miles East of Indio, 10 miles West of Chiraco Summit at Call Box 10-766, I was only a few feet from this call box at luck would have it. She tells me an ETA of 90 minutes, although since I was on the side of a freeway it more than likely would be sooner. Seemed like a long time to wait, but I was in no hurry and didn't really want to change the tire myself only a few feet from the semi's blowing by. So I hunker down for the wait; which actually wasn't that bad. After about 1:20 minutes my phone rings and it's the dispatcher of the Service company saying they can't find me, I explained where I was again to him, he responds by telling me they got the incorrect info from Sprint, nor did they get the call box #, they've closed the PO so I'd have to call Sprint and start the process again. Now I'm a little PO'd. So I call back Sprint, because this F-UP counts as one of my 4 annual calls, and I'm not letting 'em off the hook now. The Sprint rep, now is saying he can't find where I'm at either, they want a city name, helloooo McFly I'm in the middle of the desert, they can't find Chiraco Summit on their maps of course, so they decide to try to locate me with the GPS on my phone, doesn't work until the 3rd try, but apparently that still isn't good enough, neither is the Call Box # apparently, they keep telling me I need to call 911 and find out exactly were I am and call them back, did I mention I had to hold at least 10 minutes before this call. So I said screw that, got out of my truck and walked over to the call box, the call box operator said I was on I-10 Eastbound just East of Frontage Rd. at Mile marker 76.6 (the call box number is 10-766, pretty hard system to figure out duh!) So Sprint says that's the information they needed and I could expect assistance in an hour, I've now been on the phone with Sprint for 45 minutes so total elapsed time to this point is about 2:15, so now I'm really upset and ask to speak with a supervisor. I calmly tell the supervisor the entire situation from the initial call to what the service company said, and tell him 3+ hours on the side of the Interstate in the heat is way too long to wait, blah blah blah, he agrees says he call the service company's supervisor see what the problem was with the first dispatch and get back to me in 5-10 minutes with a precise ETA, never heard back from him. I call Sprint back after I had been on the side of the road for 3 hours and hadn't heard from a dispatcher or the Sprint supervisor and was told 20 minutes ETA, which was pretty accurate the truck showed up with his pneumatic tools and jacks and had me back on the road 15 minutes after he arrived. Total wasted time 3:40. Now if I had any idea it would have been such an ordeal I would have changed it myself but once it started it was the principle of the matter and I am seriously reconsidering this Emergency Road Service BS now. My parents had a similar situation the last time they were coming back from Arizona and were only a couple miles from their home, they waited 2.5 hrs on the side of the Freeway (via AAA). So I left at 10:45AM and didn't get home until 7:45PM thanks to the wonderful people at Sprint Emergency Road Service.