Credits and Thank-Yous

Our trip to Cozumel is coming to an end; the curtain of night closes on the last evening I will spend in a tiny flat on Calle 5 in San Miguel... at least until next December. Three long months on Cozumel have gone by like... well, three months. Not too fast and not too slow. I have many people to thank for the success of this long venture.

How I Did It

Before I roll the credits, here is a brief description of "how I took all those photos." Seen here is the Aquatica A300 with the flat port (hidden behind the strobe arm) and a Sea&Sea YS-90TTL strobe. Those four pieces were long-term loaned to me by Andrew, a most generous friend, a great diver, and an excellent underwater photographer himself. Also shown is the Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens with a 12mm extension tube attached, and two 6061-T6 aluminum zoom gears I machined myself specificially for this lens... for with and without the extension tube.

If you look carefully inside the housing you will see two homebrewed electronic doo-dads: a flood alarm (which thankfully never went off) and an in-water reset device for the Heinrichs-Weikamp eTTL converter... which never quite stopped malfunctioning but at least the problem was manageable. Also shown are two necessary tools of the trade: a paintbrush to knock off the daily layer of Cozumel dust, and a Giottos air blower for quick cleaning of lenses and drying of electronics ports.

On the right is how I stayed in touch with the world and fooled(?) my clients into thinking I was still home in Maryland. Call it "The one-chair internet solution." By special arrangement with our dive shop, I had excellent high speed internet service 24x7, with enough bandwidth to feed a Vonage phone. By forwarding the office phone in Maryland to this phone, we rarely missed a beat in the business world. Our calls back to the U.S. were cheap, too. Only 4 cents a minute. And believe me it was worth it, I consulted with one client for many hours!

The set-up may look hokey, but it is pretty powerful. That's a 14dbi unidirectional antenna going through 6 inches of concrete, to hit an antenna 300-400 yards away. Even through pounding rain I did not see degradation in bandwidth. There were times of the day where phone quality was less than adequate but for the most part it worked great.

And now... The Credits

In no particular order... Thanks!!!...

To all the divemasters of Aqua Safari, particularly Mariano, Asuncion, Miguel, Jose, Polo, Roger, Orlando ... sorry I cannot remember everyone's names!

To Bill Horn, for being both the Force and the Face that most people know behind Aqua Safari

To Joe, for fixing my (all too often) aching back -- I promise I'll stop wearing double tanks!! At least until next year

To Andrew and to Maia, for so many things

To Nemecio, for internet, for finding the impossible to find, and for just being a friend

To Connie LoRe, for leading a powerful week of cave diving in Akumal

To my wife, Tracey, for putting up with my bulky photographic gear

To Deborah and Peter, just for being themselves!

To Roberto, the "unsung hero" of Aqua Safari

To Gianni and Kathleen for an excellent week of diving and touring (let's do it again!)

To our apartment complex, for a clean and convenient place to live

...and all the geckos that crawled my walls and entertained me by their passing

To zolpidem, for letting me sleep when I REALLY needed it

To all the noisy street vendors of Cozumel ("Queeesooo, Waa-Kaa-Kaa", "Tweee, tweteeleeeooo" "Gas Gas Gas") for keeping Tracey's ears entertained

To La Choza, Manati and Prima for so many excellent meals

To Casa Mision for knock-you-off-your-feet margaritas and excellent seafood

To Sheryl for sharing REEF with Tracey

To Sac Aktun for showing me even more speleological wonders than I remembered

To Belinda and her captain, Augustin, for always being there when I surfaced

To Google, for helping me translate Espanol, find everything I needed on-line, and for providing Blogger.com to document these travels.

Things I Wish

There are a few things I wish Cozumel had...

More vegetables (easy to find in the markets, but ironically not in the Mexican restaurants)

Fewer mosquitoes and fleas (I *hate* flea bites!!)

A shop that sold car and moped mufflers, and a noise law that required them

A Greek restaurant and an Ethiopian Restaurant

A Costco (there's one in Cancun but it's too far away)

Decent bicycles for sale (or rent)

Four wheel drive vehicles that actually had four wheel drive

Hydroids (nasty, stinging fern-like corals) didn't exist

Some things I hope to do next year

Another week with Connie

HD underwater video

More dives with Nemecio

Enter and win some UW photography contests

Not touch any more hydroids on dives (ouch!!)