Scuba Diving Vacations

I was driving down the highway today and had to check out the Kona Commons because they'd opened up the parking lot. There were probably 50 cars out front and Petco was open. What a nice store. I'm not just talking nice because I like pet stores, but nice because I like looking at well merchandised stores. 10 years ago I was in lower level management for Petco, going back and forth between a couple of stores in Oregon, this store is big and laid out very nicely. My only gripe right now is I'd probably switch what looks to be a help desk right up front with their second register island 'til they slow down... it was crazy busy and it put a lot of people in one corner... but then again, I'm no merchandising guru and it sure looks like they did a great job on this store. Their official opening is Friday and this weekend, but they're doing just fine sales already. It's definitely nicer than any of the Petco's I've been in over the years.

I'll probably go equally as ga-ga over Sports Authority if they've upgraded their layout over the other stores I've been in (granted I don't get out much... I've pretty much only been in one in Oahu and maybe another one in years, they've always been good, but if the newer stores are upgraded like Petco has done, wow). The small note on the door of Sports Authority says it opens Thursday the 9th. Office Max is set to open on the 17th, it looks a little less ready to go at this point but the merchandise is coming in. Circuit City went from a hole in the ground last month to where it's got the building shell (not sure if it's roofed yet) and is starting to look like a Circuit City.

The highway looks fairly finished to Makala from Honokohau Harbor, south of there it's a mess as expected. They've shut off the access to Kaiwi for a few weeks to rebuild that intersection, so the Makala exit is quite busy with people turning down to the old industrial area.

Here's a pic of a Scrambled Egg Nudibranch (Phyllidia vericosa) I took the other day.

Later,

Steve

I wish these critters were around all of the time, they aren't, so when we do see them it's a real treat.

Last week we had a customer who wanted to do a reef night dive. We were able to get another who wanted to do one and weren't working the next morning... so why not? I sat on board while Bob led the divers for a 70-80 minute or so long night dive. We've done a reef night dive a few different spots and Cathy did the last one at this spot. Cathy came up very excited from her dive here in June, and when Bob came up he could barely get his regulator out before saying "Wow Steve, this is a fantastic night dive". He said it was probably the best reef night dive he'd ever done in Hawaii. He said the reef was nothing but little red eyeballs looking back at you and he was going to have to look at his invertebrate book to figure out what all the different types of shrimp he saw were. My turn next! I want to see if this place is better than what I've done so far. We don't get a lot of call for reef night dives, although I wish we could get more, the trick is trying to get enough divers to make it worthwhile for us. We're slower now so it's something we can do with fewer people IF the schedule works.

Later,

Steve

The "summer" water conditions we've been wanting finally hit now that it's officially autumn. It's been really flat. The other day we did a dive down off "shark fin rock", off the old airport park, and one of our divers said he'd looked up when they got to 100' of depth and he could still see the boat... thing is, they were over 100' away from the boat at the time, and if I recall my 10th grade math correctly the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the length of the legs of a right triangle ... in other words we had really great viz... I can't figure out square roots anymore now that I'm old and getting gray in the cerebrum these days.

Later,

Steve