Sharks! Day Uno.

So the big day arrives for my and Sander’s biggest adventure yet. We’re going to go cage diving with Great White Sharks (or the latin, Sharkus Gigantus). Not only does this involve the afore mentioned Great White Sharks, but Mexico. And nothing says safety like “Mexico.”

And that’s the thing about this particular trip. Safety. I’ve reviewed and researched, and this seems safe. But that doesn’t really matter, as this trip absolutely fails the “Oprah Test.” Meaning, no matter what I do or say or research, if anything goes wrong there’s no way to get my side of the story across on Oprah without getting soundly booed by all the Opraettes in the audience. An eight year old boy, Great White Sharks, and Mexico. No way. I’d be swarmed and killed like, well, like Great Whites on a feeding frenzy. So I’m actually nervous. I try to live my life by the Oprah Test rule, and I’m definitely in violation here.

But first a little history. We were watching TV during Shark Week on the Discovery Channel (here’s where the Oprah crowd starts fidgeting – how many great ideas start with two guys watching Shark Week?), and they kept showing people in cages looking at the sharks. Well before the smart part of my brain knew what happened (it was distracted learning about how sharks don’t get cancer) the 18 year-old part of my brain announced, “Hey Sander, we should do that!” Since he’s only eight, his little brain had no chance and said, “YES!” Well, just then the smart part of my brain spit out its popcorn and punched the 18 year-old part of my brain in the nose and took over. “Hmmmm,” says smart-brain, there’s no way you can do this without a SCUBA license, let’s just look it up and tell Sander that, “It sure would be fun, but no SCUBA license, no shark dive.” That should buy a few years. And the first few internet searches come up with just that fact. So I say, “Hey buddy, looks like a no go…” I write “…” because for some reason, out of nowhere I say, “But lets see if they have a way of diving with a SNUBA Hose (this is like the old school method of just pumping air from the surface through a hose).” Why, why did I say this? I was in the clear. I blame smart-brain. Stupid smart-brain, always showing off. And lo and behold, there is just such a guide service available. As it comes up I realize that I have only one hope, that, at eight, he’s too young. I mean, if you were a guide operator you’d be crazy to let an eight year old on a five-day shark diving trip right? And lo and behold (lo and behold, another lo and behold reference) you have to be 12 to even look at sharks from the deck. Hah, eat that smart-brain! “Sorry buddy, you’re four years to young to even be on the boat, and you have to be 16 to dive. We tried, and we got real close. How about some ice-cream?” Then he looks at me and says, “You could call and ask right? You always say, ‘It never hurts to ask’ right?”

Well, unless it involves 14’ Great White Sharks thinks I. But he’s got me. I have to ask, but there’s no way they’ll say yes. I mean, if you were a dive operator, you’d be crazy to let an eight year old on a five-day shark diving trip, right? So I call and purposefully make the classic negotiating mistake of leaving the actual message of what I want. This almost guarantees failure. It gives whoever you’re talking to time to craft all kinds of counter arguments without the benefit of your input. It’s negotiating suicide. So the next day Sander and I are at the movies when the Charter Owner calls. Says that he’s been thinking about it, Sander sounds like a really unique little boy, and that at his age his parents were taking him on all kinds of adventures and that this could be a life changing moment for the boy, so sure, he can come, but he needs to talk to me first. I’m so stunned here, that before smart-brain can ruin things, I blurt out, “Sander, we can GO!”

And with that, everything’s in motion for us to head to San Diego to go shark diving. We arrived in San Diego and set off for our Hotel Holiday Inn Bayside. This is important. Sander and I get into a minor debate about whether we should take a cab (his vote) or the free shuttle (my vote). After waiting for a while at the bus stop, and starting to lose the debate, I decide to call the hotel and make sure the shuttle is coming. “Yes,” says the nice lady on the phone, a shuttle should be there in 15 minutes. Then, two minutes later, a Holiday Inn on the Bay shuttle shows up. “Hmm,” I think, “that was fast,” and we hop on and head to the hotel. And it was awesome, right on the main marina area, across the street the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier, there’s a mini-golf course on site, and we talk about hurrying up and checking in and hitting it. At check-in the niceish lady behind the desk says that she doesn’t have my reservation. Well, I’m ready for that, and pull out my confirmation number. She carefully looks it over, sighs, and says, “Oh, I see, your reservation is for ‘Holiday in Bayside,’” here, I start looking around, her ID tag says “Holiday Inn,” there’s lots of green around, I’ve got to be in a Holiday Inn. She continues, “This is ‘Holiday in By the Bay.” Loooooong pause, as I try to figure out what she just said. I think I even said, “Huh?” (I’m not always the most eloquent). “We get this a lot,” she continues, “Get what a lot,” I think. “You want to go to the Holiday Inn Bayside,” this is Holiday Inn By the Bay.” “What? That doesn’t make any sense,” I think, “Why would you have two hotels within a few miles of each other, one called ‘Holiday Inn By the Bay,’ and the other called ‘Holiday Inn Bayside?’” And if you “get this all the time” why not do something to make it clearer. I’m thinking maybe an announcement when you get on the bus, a sign somewhere, or at least a way of getting between the two. Instead, I get, “you’ll have to take a cab to Holiday Inn Bayside. Next.” So a $20 cab ride later, I’m at my destination. And by “cab ride” I mean a 15 minute ride that consisted of my cabbie telling me repeatedly that this “happens all the time.” Now you would think that after the first time he mentioned this that the issue would be resolved. Nope. I won’t bore you with the banality of the longest 15 minutes of my life, but it was basically this.

Cabbie: Oh, you wanted to go to the Holiday Inn Bayside? Yeah, that happens all the time (told you). See, all the hotels want some part of the bay in their name.
Me: Yeah, that makes sense, thanks.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

Seriously, I lived, and relived this conversation for a solid 15 minutes. How many different ways can I act interested in various iterations of “Lots of people get confused because of all the ‘Bay’ names in San Diego”? The first time I felt vindicated, the 8th time, I felt like I wanted to jump out of the moving cab. It was like a scene from Faust. “Ohhhh, you like chocolate-chip cookies do you?” says Satan, “Then HERE, spend eternity eating your way out of a giant vat of chocolate-chip cookie dough! Bwah-ha-ha!” I wanted to not feel like an idiot, but by the end of the ride I felt like I was being force-fed vindication through a straw and it was coming out my nose.

Eventually, we arrived at our hotel the Holiday Inn BAYside. Checked in, and then bee-lined it to the drug store to get our handy-dandy ear patches. I’ve never used these before, but since I get seasick in a mud-puddle and was facing five days on a boat, I felt it made just enough sense to experiment with them. But to be on the safe side, I also bought every gimmicky seasick item I could buy; wristbands, powders, lotions, whatever. If there was a gypsy camped outside offering to rub “magic sea dust” in my hair, I would have happily paid her. Honestly, I was more afraid of spending three days hunched over the side of the boat donating my insides to the local fish population, than I was of donating my whole body to the local Great White Shark population.

So we returned to the hotel magic ear stickies in hand and stopped by the gift shop where I bought every kind of portable junk food I could find. Here’s the tally, two pounds of peanut M&M’s, 4 King Sized Snickers bars, 4 of those little bags of Doritos, two bottles of chocolate milk and a large bag of peanuts (the latter two destined to for tomorrow’s breakfast). They say an army travels on its stomach, well, a nervous daddy terrified of being seasick for five straight days travels on junk food.

And with that, it was bed time.