Adventures Outside the Box

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Violence and Nudity, but not the Good Kind

The days whirl by in a kaleidoscope of scaly creatures, beer, V8 juice and camping, camping, camping. I hate camping but remain so off balance that I don't really notice it - I am protected from the crawling, oozing, stinging horror that is nature by a heady mixture of fatigue and stress. Meanwhile, I learn important new diving skills that PADI certification courses seemed to omit. I learn the importance of striking my dive buddies in the head with sea life, before they have the chance to do it first. I learn that diving with a hangover is less an atrocity and more a necessity on extended, inter-provincial dive trips, and I learn that the invigorating, blended scent of neoprene and ocean imbeds itself in every fibre of the clothing you wear under your drysuit, necessitating speedy changes into more sociable clothing between dives.

I strip down and take care of business on public beaches, swilling V8 juice and reeling around like Ed Grimly, in my underwear.

The residential neighbourhoods, public ferries, and open beaches of the West Coast become my personal change room. I undress on the decks of crowded ferries while families mill about me; I slip into something more comfortable in the middle of the street in plush, residential, waterfront neighbourhoods. I strip down and take care of business on public beaches, swilling V8 juice and reeling around like Ed Grimly, in my underwear. We camp by night, dive by day, and chase the whole thing down with generous quantities of unholy vegetable juice and heavily taxed beer. I become accustomed to being struck in the face with unhappy sea creatures. Skip gets stung on the lip by a jellyfish. Our progress is excellent.

Boats, Above and Below

We switch to boat diving for the back-end of the trip, signing on with a dive charter company that will run us out to good dive sites and bring us back when we're done. The increased efficiency allows more time for drinking. We dive past the one hundred foot mark at Steep Island, setting a new personal depth record for me, although not striking the dive-table violating depths that my friends are already accustomed to. We swim in inky darkness on the underside of overhanging sea cliffs. We hover over spiky fields of sea urchins, occasionally, accidentally, pushing each other into them. We emerge from the deep, race back across Discovery Passage, and reel around the parking lot in neoprene-clad shock as we throw back fresh cans of V8 juice, wincing and belching and seeking bars to go and wash the taste out of our mouths.

We dive the wreck of the HMCS Columbia, a sunken Canadian Navy ship. Stu and Skip experience the delicate stresses of a mini-epic inside the wreck, while Reece and I troll around above decks, peering down mortar tubes and upsetting Sea Scallops. We dive in ripping currents that send us hurtling down the sides of undersea walls, whipping around corners, over boulders and into swaying forests of kelp. Then we stagger around the BC Ferries parking lot, changing into our semi-clean camping clothes so that we can storm the Quadra Island pub. At RipTide's in Campbell River we mix beer and tequila shooters, get lit like a grease fire, and build a tower of full Guinness pints that abruptly casts a hush over half the bar when it reaches seven glasses tall. Stu's eyes are still bloodshot from the difficulties that transpired aboard the Columbia, but I won't elaborate.

In the morning we awaken, hung over and tired, to prepare for a final day of diving. Stu, who I am sharing a temporary residence with for the duration of our camping trip, sits wearily in the door of the tent, gathering his energy to assail the day. I wait patiently while he readies himself. Then Stu does something peculiar, maybe even just a touch worrisome.