A long trip home, but arriving just in time ...

My flight back to the Caribbean left Nashville at 6:00 a.m. It is an international flight so they say you should be at the airport two hours early. My experience has been that at 4:00 a.m., there is absolutely nothing open in the Nashville airport, including the airline ticket counters and kiosks. But I still had to get gas and return the rental car so I left Murfreesboro about 3:45 a.m. Ugh.

I was flying United again so it was with some trepidation that I handed over my bag to be checked.

The first leg of my flight was to Houston, then hustle from one terminal to another for the next leg which was Houston to San Pedro Sula. I again, when making the reservations had faced the problem of if I flew into San Pedro Sula on any day other than a Saturday I couldn't get a flight back to Utila, so I would have to take a bus and a ferry and likely stay overnight somewhere, so I booked a flight to Roatan instead.

At the time it made sense, Roatan is another of the Bay Islands, I can on a clear day see it from the dive boat. How hard can it be to get to Utila from there?

I arrived in San Pedro Sula at about 11 a.m. Here is where things get worse. Every flight to Roatan from Nashville included a LONG layover in San Pedro Sula. Mine was about 21 hours. I tried to convince myself and anyone who asked that it wasn't going to be that bad. I've spent lots of hours in airports and while not great I have music, books, games on my myriad of electronics and a computer with all that time to write.

The problem with San Pedro Sula Airport is that there is almost nowhere to even sit. There are some tables and chairs at the restaurants but when the place is busy it is tough to find a seat, and I usually try to avoid taking up a seat at a restaurant if I'm not a paying customer. Before you go through security, which you can't do until a couple of hours before your flight, there is one five seat bench not at a restaurant. The other problem for me is there are almost no electrical outlets. I asked if there was one and was told by the customer service people that there was nowhere to charge a phone. I found a plug against a wall finally and spent some time just sitting on the floor charging my phone. My luggage had arrived safely but again, until two hours before my flight to Roatan I could not check my bag in so had to lug it with me around the airport as I looked for somewhere relatively quiet and comfortable to wait it out.

Many hours sleeping sitting up -- or at least sleeping while trying not to fall over.

I had attempted to make arrangements for a boat ride from Roatan to Utila, on a ferry called the Lady Julia. Unfortunately, the day I wanted to travel they didn't have enough customers so the ferry was not running. No one had a flight going to Utila so I took the only other option. I caught a ferry going from Roatan to La Ceiba (back on the mainland), then a second ferry from La Ceiba to Utila. The ferry rides are reasonably cheap but it added more hours to my long travel days.

Once again it had taken me two days to get back to Utila.

I left Nashville at 6:00 a.m. on the 26th of August and stepped off the ferry in Utila at about 5:00 p.m. on the 27th. But I immediately knew I was "home". David from Pirates Bay Inn was at the Ferry Dock to meet potential new guests. He helped me with my bags and offered me a ride in a truck they had at the dock.

The first whaleshark in four weeks or so had been seen couple days before so I was anxious to try and get in the water. I scheduled a dive for the 28th.

We completed the fist dive of the day, it was really beautiful and I was so glad to be back in the water. Then during our surface interval Captain Louis started driving out towards the open water. He was watching for the tell tale signs that start with  a lot of birds at the surface. As we got closer he looked for the "Tuna Boil", large schools of tuna near the surface jumping out of the water and feeding. It really does look like a big pot of water at a rolling boil.

All of us on the boat got our fins, mask and snorkels on and waited on the back of the boat. Louis watched the water, slowly moving around the three separate boils we had come to. Suddenly Louis yelled, "there it is, right next to the boat, get in, get in!!" We all slid into the water and there it was.

Most people are lucky at times like this to spend a couple minutes close to a whaleshark. This whaleshark was probably around our boat for 15-20 minutes. The experience was absolutely incredible and the whaleshark was magnificent.

Hard to tell but all that mess at the top of the water? That is birds diving in and fish jumping out.

Tuna, lots of them, these ones just looks so calm, but imagine this multiplied by hundreds all racing around and jumping out of the water.

They estimated this whaleshark to be about 7 meters long (about 21 feet). Most graceful huge animal ever.

I felt so fortunate to have the opportunity to be in the water with this amazing animal.

After about 20 minutes the tuna boil had dissipated and the whaleshark had returned to the depths. We then left to get to another dive site for our second dive.

The second dive was gorgeous but hard to compare with what we had just experienced.

My friend and dive buddy Laurent.

Butterflyfish

Gray Angelfish peeking out from behind a sea fan

Since then I have been on the boat a couple more days. The visibility has gotten a bit worse and last week the seas were a little rough but still gorgeous dives. Up until now I've always just worn my 2.5mm Spring shorty wetsuit but I think I'm about  ready to start wearing my full 3mm suit during the rainy season.

Take This ... .Leave That

When I finally made the real decision that I was going to go and it would be right around the first of the year I had to then seriously think about where I would end up, what I would take with me and what I would leave behind. And, for all that I left behind did I want or need to store things or what did I want to actually get rid of.

I started looking online for places to rent in Belize, both in Ambergris Caye and in Placencia. I also checked out Roatan, one of my other favorite Caribbean countries. I ended up trying to make pro and con lists for each place -- although I have to admit anything on the "con" list is pretty inconsequential really, I mean what really could be bad about living somewhere tropical???

Ambergris Caye I have been to before. It is lovely and based upon my research and the people I have talked to who either live there, go there often, or who have family who live there or visit often, it has a huge ex-pat community, many of the conveniences of home and beautiful diving. I looked at several condos for rent. They were within my budget (although not as low priced as I had hoped) and on first glance seemed perfect. The more I thought about it though, they are very Americanized, very much like a condo complex you'd find anywhere in the US. Is that really what I wanted? I'm not so sure.

I communicated with a leasing agent in Belize about a couple of places but we didn't communicate well, they seemed a little slow to respond to my questions. They were on Belize time.

I really have a feeling that everything happens for a reason and this felt like some type of sign that it just wasn't right.

I started looking a little more at Placencia which I have never been to but have researched and talked to several who have been there or live there. It is in the south of Belize, on the mainland, a little more laid back than Ambergris, a little less expensive and a  little less Americanized. But again, I haven't seen the place personally so I'm not completely ready to commit before getting there.

Roatan is really beautiful and much less expensive (based upon my own research) than Belize. But it is also a much poorer country and I think that those places I might want to live would require me likely to have access to or own a vehicle. I was hoping to get away from having a car.

I finally decided that the universe was telling me to just go, look for myself and make my decision once there. I can do that. So I'm going, will stay at a resort or short term rental for 2-4 weeks while I find the perfect place to live. Most places require a 6 month lease, easy.

Okay, so that decision made now what about my stuff. Almost every place I have looked at to rent comes fully furnished. Well thats good because I can't imagine how I would get furniture there or even buy more once I arrived. Remember, this whole thing is a seat of my pants operation so I'm really not prepared to furnish an entire apartment/condo.

Confession #1, I have almost zero emotional attachment to any of the stuff I own. I mean, certainly to photos and things of my kids and my family, some things that belonged to my mother and father before their passing, but generally I don't care about the "stuff" that filled my apartment and that I have moved repeatedly from one place to another. The stuff I care the most about that was there was my books, photographs and memorabilia of my kids childhood, the art I owned -- much of it produced by family and friends -- and the things i needed to do what I love, my computer, my underwater camera equipment and my dive equipment.

The thought of storing everything else in a storage unit depressed me. A monthly bill for stuff I didn't care much about and would really do me, or anyone else, no good seemed stupid. But I did still have a few things i couldn't throw away and it is almost everyone's favorite time of year -- tax season -- so I had to think about what would i do with the few things i really did need to keep.

Confession #2, I have this idea that every few months I might make a trip back to the US to visit friends and family and in fact I know of one dive trip which will require me to be in Florida to leave. Now that Florida trip is the middle of summer so no worries there but what if I came back in January and it was 0 degrees?!? I'm not taking heavy winter clothes with me to Belize but I might need them for a visit back. I finally decided one box or suitcase in Tennessee with some warmer stuff, and one in California. When all was said and done I had a couple boxes of paperwork etc. that I couldn't dispose of and a couple boxes of books that I didn't want to dispose of. So I finally decided on a very tiny storage unit (more like  a storage closet) for those things and my one box of clothes to be kept in Tennessee.

Okay, basic decisions made but what about all the rest. Like I said no emotional attachment to any of it so I got rid of it all. Sold or gave away just about everything I own. If this whole plan were to fail (and I don't plan on that happening), I'll just have to start over again. But did I care about the couch I had in my apartment? Not at all. So away it all went. Some I gave to people because I would rather have given it to someone for free who could use it rather than donate it where it would be sold to someone. Other things i gave to charity for the tax write off. And other stuff I just gave to whoever could take it and maybe pass it on to someone else in need.

I had hoped to pack one suitcase with all my dive equipment, one suitcase with my clothes then take my usual two carry-ons and that was it. I pared down all my clothes and my dive stuff and I still couldn't do it. So I'm now going with three suitcases of 50 pounds each and two carry-ons. Let's not talk about the weight of the carry-ons. And that is quite a site, me trying to wrangle that luggage through the airport  and onto shuttle buses etc, it is not a pretty sight.

But in the end it is everything I would need to live in the caribbean. There were still a few pieces of dive equipment I couldn't fit in my bag (either due to room or weight) so I have another suitcase packed and stored with a friend for either my next trip home I'll take it back with me, or when someone comes to visit I'll pay for the extra piece of baggage and have them bring it with them.

Well maybe it's not quite that bad but that's how it feels.

The airlines LOVE me.

Planning for the Big Adventure

I've been thinking about this for a while, this idea to just up and move and now I'm actually doing it. But let me back up a bit, for those that don't know how I got "here", planning to go "there".

I retired from a career in law enforcement in California in 2008. Following my daughter who had moved to Tennessee the year before I up and moved to Nashville. A good move, for both my mental, emotional and physical health and definitely for my monetary health.

I've long dreamt of becoming a writer. You know, a real one, with published books and all that. Once retired I had to begun to ask, what was stopping me (besides that awful internal critic who kept reminding me I could NEVER be a writer). So I attended a writer's workshop and started writing a memoir, about my career mostly and my life. And I kept on writing and dragging that internal critic around with me.

I had learned to Scuba Dive when I was in my early 20's in California, my dad had wanted someone to take Scuba lessons with him and it seemed like a good idea to me. I liked the "idea" of scuba diving but in that 53 degree water in Monterey I was not having a very good time. I was cold, the visibility didn't look at all like those tropical postcards I had always seen and did I mention, I was cold. So I had the card that said I was certified and never dove. Then in about 2006 I had the opportunity to try again. I did and although I had more of a desire and I was obviously more mature than I was in my early 20's, the water was still 53 degrees in Monterey and I was still cold. But I had to admit, I really did think it seemed like it would be fun if I could get warmer and see more.

As each year passes I find myself hating winter more and more. It looks pretty in pictures but other than that you can keep it. And the idea to move where winter wasn't an issue kept running through my brain. In 2012 I finally actually wrote a bucket list and on it I listed wanting to finish my book I was writing, diving more and I listed some of the places I longed to go and mostly wanting to move to somewhere tropical .... no more winter.

I am happy to say, I finished a first draft of the book, it is nowhere near done, in fact I may rewrite the entire thing but I did write a first draft. I continue to work on editing and I am now excited about writing fiction as well. I got to attend a writer's workshop in Montana near the entrance to Glacier National Park, it was a stunning locale and it re-energized my writing brain.

I have been fortunate enough to travel to some amazing places in the world to dive including the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Cozumel, Belize, Roatan, Truk Lagoon in Micronesia, Hawaii, Australia (only one short shore dive but I'm not complaining, I still spent 3 weeks in Oz), and I just returned from Fiji.

In August of 2012 I became a scuba diving instructor and I have also started taking underwater photographs.

Finally about 18 months ago I decided I was ready, I wanted to move to somewhere warm, tropical, where I could dive and write and take pictures. My plan was to move in June of 2013. As June approached I decided I wasn't really ready, where would I go, what would I do, how could I .......

I put it off and extended my apartment lease for 7 months. But I sat myself down and had a long talk with me and finally decided, if not now, when? And I made my life mantra the Richard Burroughs quote, "Leap, and the net will appear".

The other quote I am living by is the one that titles this blog, by George Addair ....  "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear."

My lease is actually up this week. But I'm already out. In fact, I have left Tennessee in my rear view mirror and I am in California for a short stay. I'm walking through the fear to the other side, I"m leaping and hoping for the net to appear, and I'm doing it all just flying by the seat of my pants. This blog is part of that journey, a diary of the adventure, the good, the bad, the scary and the exciting and some other stuff, like my writing, my pictures and the things I am most passionate about.

I'm hoping you will join me, keep me in your best thoughts for good weather, fun, adventure, beautiful pictures, great dives and some day maybe a book tour with my published work! And wherever I land, I hope you'll be with me, either through this blog or come visit, we'll go for a dive!