Green Lake & Alki

The other day, I believe it was a Thursday, I made my way on down to Issaquah and made a down payment on my dry suit.
After that, I took 90 on over to Seattle, but still had some time to kill;
maybe a couple of hours.
So I had lunch at that Pho place on Aurora and 72nd, then drove on down to Green Lake.
I was just going to take a picture or two of the Space Needle, but then I just ended up taking a stoll around the whole lake.
The sunny side was fine, but it was a bit too cold for just a t-shirt and jeans on the shady side of the lake.
Nonetheless, it was still a nice walk.


Then on Wednesday, I finally got back to Alki since I took that DIR class.
After seeing Manuel's new place on Capitol Hill, we walked to Broadway and had lunch there at a place called Ali Baba's. We had some tasty beef/lamb gyros with Vitmos berry soda.
I'd go again.

Once I left there, I headed out to Alki, and once again I had some time to kill, so I took some pictures.
This time, however, I ventured over to the westside of Alki to get a better look at the Olympic mountains. It was a chilly, but clear day. When on the very tip of Alki, you could look to the west and see the Olympics, or look to the right and see the Cascades. If you found the right location, you could also look south and see Mount Rainier.

So I took a bunch of photos to kill time before Cory showed up.
After taking way too many pictures of the Olympics and the ferrys that passed by them,
I headed back to Cove 2 and found a harbour seal lounging on the lower pier using a boat to break the cold wind.
Scored a few pictures of that guy, then found Gimpy scoping the place for food.

Cory finally arrived and after donning all my gear, we made the plunge.
My hands were full. In my left hand, I had a light. In my right was my camera.
Apparently though, that's good for me because it keeps me from using my hands while scubaing.

So I took a ton of pictures. A lot of them unfortunately came out blurry.
I need to figure out how people take such beautiful underwater pictures.
I'm assuming it has something to do with a large amount of light that exudes from a very expensive flash attachment.
There's a diver that goes almost every wednesday night who takes pictures and has even used them for making calendars.
I've met her once before, but we never talked. I'll have to get on that.

Either way, here are mine.
I finally got a picture of what I set out for: a sea cucumber.
I also got a bonus with a baby octopus and jellyfish.
And again I remembered what else I want a picture of:
One of those halibut, like the one I saw on my previous dive with Cory before the class.

Oh. I guess I'll let you in on some of the stats:

Water temperature: 50 degrees F
Max depth: 114 feet (new record!)
Average depth: 62 feet
Time down: 41 minutes

I think that's all the vitals.
Man, there's some large fish and starfish down there.
5 foot long fish almost make me shit myself.
It's a good thing we're under so much pressure 100 feet down...

Can't wait til next wednesday...
I may have my drysuit!