I have my chance to break away, but I may not take it.

I've spent a good portion of the year getting ready to break away from my normal day to day life to go beach bumming around the world. Finally, I have a possibility of going to work for a reputable live aboard and I may not take it. You see, I've also "unofficially" been offered a job locally that has been growing like wild fire, even through the recession, and has a laid back, friendly atmosphere. They are also offering me a good sum of money. So the question is Beach bum it for little money, with almost no expenses, and live the life style, OR white collar it locally with a thriving, friendly company with good pay? It's something that I've been trying to wrap my head around for a few days.

The Texas Clipper - July 18, 2009

A buddy and I made a long road trip down to South Padre for a four day weekend, last weekend. While we were there we dove on the Texas Clipper through American Diving.

It's a longish boat ride out to the clipper (18 miles off the coast / about an hour boat ride). We had a mild surge (2 ft surge) the entire way out there, so it wasn't too bad. We had the privilege of diving with four disabled vets (two of them recently back from Iraq). Great bunch of people.

Current's were mild, visibility was about 40 - 60 ft. Apparently there were shrimpers scraping the sea floor around the clipper shortly before we arrived at the site at around 8AM. We did two shortish dives. 85 fsw for 35 minutes. It's a long ways out for a couple of short dives. I would have been more pleased with three or even four dives to really get a feel for the ship. She's about 350 ft long and sits in about 120 of water. Either way, we had a good time.

Here's a short video from the dives. (My third over all attempt at underwater video... I'm slowly getting better...)