The Diveblog

New York Day Trip

Quick business trip to New York today......just a day trip (I hope).

Snow in Chicago.....snow in New York......I've got a bad feeling about this!

Update: missed my outbound flight because of traffic caused by the weather.  You'd think the flight would have been delayed.....no such luck.  Sigh.  Caught the next flight (1 hour later) and made it to my meeting just as the pre-conference lunch was ending (glad I packed those meal replacement bars in the briefcase!).

As the meeting progresses, the view out the window gets grimmer and the snow is blowing sideways.  Laguardia is a nightmare on the best days, but this doesn't look good.

Woohoo, the meeting ends early and I hop a cab to the airport.

I'm scheduled on the 8:00 flight, but I'm hoping to standby on the 5:00 flight.  When I get there, United is forcing everyone to check in at the desk.  Looks like they are expecting trouble.  Get a boarding pass for the 4:00 flight, which leaves at 6:45.

YES!

Postscript: When I get off at O'Hare, I check the arrivals screen and see that my original flight and the one immediately prior were cancelled.  Whew!  I narrowly avoided another ORD-LGA daytrip nightmare (and I've had a few!)

Given all the extra airport time, I was able to finish the Shadow Divers book.  I'll post a review shortly.

First Frogman Review

First Frogman is a truly inspiring story of a man who overcame his physical limitation (poor eyesight) and fought WWII from the moment Germany invaded France to the Japanese surrender.  This book is the reason why there wasn't any blogging yesterday.  I couldn't put it down last night. 

Draper Kauffman was denied a commission in the U.S. Navy upon his graduation from the Naval Academy in 1933 due to poor eyesight.  After witnessing the rise of Hitler in Germany, he volunteered as an ambulance driver along the Maginot Line in France.  Then after repatriation from a German prison camp, he made his way to Britain and volunteered with the Royal Navy, where he spent the blitz defusing bombs and mines.  As the U.S. was drawn closer to war, he finally received a commission in the U.S. Navy, for whom he founded the first U.S. bomb disposal school.  In the lead up to the Normandy invasion, he was then tasked with forming what were to become the UDT teams (later to become the SEALs) in order to clear the waterline defenses of the beaches.  He and his men were considered "half fish and half nuts" by the troops they supported in the Pacific. 

This tale is told by Elizabeth Kauffman Bush, Draper's sister.  She is also the sister-in-law to George H.W. Bush, our 41st president.  Her narrative reveals the great love and admiration she holds for her older brother and provides testimony to the power of perseverance.  I found her third person narrative about events in her own life to be a little wierd, but the author's connection to the story is undeniable.  The book is well researched and documented.

New Tsunami Photos

These photos were recently recovered from the memory card of a digital camera found after the tsunami in Thailand.  The couple did not survive the wave.

Two things struck me:  first, how far the water receded prior to the wave's landfall.  Second, that the photos were able to be recovered from the memory card after saltwater immersion.

Bonaire Power Plant Fire

I was randomly googling some of my favorite dive destinations and I came across this post on Brad Swanson 's blog from Bonaire.  It appears that there was a big fire at the island's power plant on February 7 which took several generators out of commision.  The most recent post in which he mentioned the power situation is here, in which he speaks about occasional rolling blackouts.  Unfortunately, the only online english language paper from Bonaire is subscription only, so there isn't any easy way to get an update.

Happy Presidents' Day

The bad thing about having an extra day off is that you put off all the chores until Monday!  So no blogging today, but I have been testing out the photo album functionailty on Typepad.  So here's a link to a few photos from Bonaire.  I'll be adding more shots as I get the time.

Aaargh!

Woke up this morning to find a layer of snow on the ground!

I.......I........can't take this anymore!  Find a happy place.....Find a happy place!

Aaah.  That's better.

By the way, that's the dive boat dock at the Divi Flamingo Resort in Bonaire.  The dock was washed away last year by Hurricane Ivan.  But the memories (and photos) are forever.  Sigh.

Ghost Ships 2005

The problem with these things is that they really get me itchin' to dive!

The first presentation "Lost Leviathans: Lake Michigan's Largest Undiscovered Shipwrecks" by Brendon Baillod went through a countdown of the five largest shipwrecks in Lake Michigan.  Unfortunately, through his research, it sounds like they will likely be in 400-500 feet (too deep for me!).

Update: just sat through "The Newly Discovered Deep Intact Wreck of the Thomas Friant"  (pictures here and here).  The lesson I took away from this was that if you obsessively search for a wreck for years and years, you will find lots of other interesting wrecks (except the one you are looking for, of course).  Jerry Eliason, Kraig Smith and Ken Merryman have been searching for the Robert Wallace in eastern Lake Superior for several seasons. 

Trying to identify their find, which lay in over 300 ft of water proved to be a more challenging task than they had imagined. As they pieced the puzzle together from side scan images and drop camera footage, it became more and more difficult to make all the clues fit the Wallace profile. A final clue switched the name from Robert Wallace to Thomas Friant (other pictures here), which was confirmed on August 1 by divers Ron Benson, Bob Olson and Ken Merryman.

Oh....they also found the Benjamin Noble in a late season scanning survey.

Update: Sat through Greg Such's (Shipwreck Adventures) presentation on the schooner Home.  Good presentation, but the crowd was a little restless.  They quickly settled down when Greg (after finishing his core presentation early) put his footage of "the finest shipwreck" on the big screen.  Need another hint.....its a yacht, owned by William Harkness and sank off Rossport, Canada.  Still don't know?  The Gunilda.  I've been on her six times and every detail is etched into my memory.  Jacques Cousteau called her "the finest shipwreck in the world" and I can't argue with that!  I think the crowd was really rivetted by this lagniappe video presentation. 

Update: walked the floor and picked up a piece of art by Michael Angelo Gagliardi, who sketches a lot of the local wrecks and was the official artist of the NOAA Monitor Expedition.

Where's My Camera?

I have read with interest the articles in the Chicago Reader (not officially posted, but discussed here, here, here and here) about the City of Chicago's attempt to monopolize the Millenium Park postcard business.  Now there seems to to be an effort by Chicago bloggers to post as many pictures of "The Bean" as possible.  You can even buy a T-shirt here, to commemorate the effort.

Now where's my camera?  This might be just the excuse I need to buy this one.

UPDATE: Looks like we're not alone.

Puddle Pilot Toys

A friend sent me this article from the New York Times of a couple of weeks ago (requires free subscription).  The following sounds like a good use of high frequency sonar equipment to enhance port security:

The Anti Swimmer System, the sonar detection system, consists of two sonars, one operated from the shore to provide basic surveillance of a 180-degree area covering several hundred yards and a second that is mounted on a vessel to provide detailed images of underwater objects.

It can distinguish between marine animals and humans in part because of their different shapes and typical movements underwater...

That sound pretty cool.  But this:

The Coast Guard's new tools include....underwater weapons that are being developed, including an air gun that sends a nonlethal acoustic impulse to force divers to surface by causing them discomfort.

Imagine the scene on the Coast Guard boat.........

18 year old coastie: "Hey chief! This thing really work?" 

Chief Petty Officer: "I don't know kid, but since its non-lethal, lets try it out over that dive site over there and see if anyone comes up."

Kind of like leaving your stun gun in the room with a 10 year old boy and the cat.......chances are, Fluffy is going to have a bad day!

"Sod Off Swampy"

Not sure what that means, but I nearly soiled myself when I read it in this Times account (titled: "Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders") of an attempted Greenpeace invasion of the International Petroleum Exchange in London.

(HT: Glenn)

They went to disrupt trading and make a point about the Kyoto accords.  The traders (just back from lunch and a couple of pints) were not amused and pounded the crap out of them.  Some key quotes:

"We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs."

"I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view."

“I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.”

“They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.”

Sweet. 

I thought I would check out some other news sources and was unsurprised to find that Reuters kept the vicious beating to a footnote in an article about the "protest" in an article titled "Kyoto Supporters Halt Oil Trading".  The AP mentions the pugilism in paragraph 12 of: "Protesters Disrupt Oil Trading at IPE".     The Guardian, to its credit, actually makes more than a passing mention of the violence in: "Kyoto Protests Disrupt Oil Trading".  AFP makes no mention at all: "Greenpeace activists in custody after protest at London oil exchange".