Paul's Page

Hello everyone,

I think that some of you know but I would bet that a lot of you don’t so I thought I would write about it for a short bit.

Just recently I started teaching my first PADI Open Water Scuba class since getting instructor certified this past spring in Las Vegas/California. This class I am teaching a total of 6 people 3 of which are in group “A” and 3 of which are in group “B” to keep the water sessions small and to accomodate scheduling conflicts.

So far I have had three class room sessions, in our hotel actually, all of which went remarkably well and the friends/students I have all did really well. They even did very good with the dive charts which I was really happy about.

I have done three days of pool sessions so far, two with group “A” which covered all 5 sessions and one day with group “B” which covered 2 sessions. For those that don’t know a pool session is where I get in the water with the students and actually practically teach them the skills of diving, there are 5 total pool session that each student has to do. I have been combining some sessions together in order to get the class done in the amount of time we have before we leave this city and so we can make trips to better diving on our days off.

Today I took the group “A” and one from group “B” to the ocean for their first two Open Water dives. IT WENT FANTASTIC. I can’t be more enthusiastic for my students. The first true Open Water dive in this course is mearly a tour of the environment where I don’t do any skills with people and only show them around. Our first dive today went great. We had the students pretty appropriately weighted and everyone got to the bottom smoothly and without issue. After that we just went for a tour and it was a lot of fun. All of the students had GOOD boyuancy control (this is something that is VERY RARE) and we actually had a nice dive. There were some things to see, nothing great, but more than you see in a pool. Everyone came up after the dive with smiles.

After a short surface interval to change tanks and talk about the skills the students would have to do on the second dive we re-entered the water for our second dive. Again we got to the bottom and settled in on a nice spot of sand. Arguably one of the hardest skills in this class is the flooding and eventual removal of the mask. Today we did a partial flood and a full flood of each person’s mask and everyone did FANTASTIC. The person from group “B” who was joining us who had problems with these skills in the pool actually ROCKED them perfectly. They even managed to inhale a little bit of water during the skill and still stayed calm, coughed through it, cleared the mask and went on to do the next full flooding of the mask without hesitation, I was very proud. All of the other skills that were performed went extremely smooth. After we finished the skills portion of this dive we did another short tour where we were hoping to see the clown fish someone spotted on the first dive but he had moved on or was hiding

When we got to the surface we did a couple of optional skills and got out of the water at right around noon. This was great because everyone was able to get back to the dive shop, get the gear cleaned up, and off to the hotel in order to make it to work on time.

It was a good day. Upcoming I have another pool session with group “B” people on Sunday, I have another open Water Dive on Monday with the group “A” people from a boat after which they will be finished, then two beach dives with the group “B” people on Thursday and on the following Monday another boat dive but with the group “B” people and they will be finished.

I have to throw out a HUGE THANKS SO MUCH to my DiveMaster Yannick Chapados who has been helping me out throughout all of the pool and open water sessions. Without him I wouldn’t have been doing near as well. The other good thing about Yannick is that he has a small underwater camera that he brought to some of the later pool sessions and will be bringing to the boat dives. So hopefully starting tomorrow I will be putting those pictures up on my web site for people to see.

Hope everyone is doing well.
ttys

Hello Everyone,

A while I ago I logged onto the Lance Armstrong Foundation website to find out some information for a friend who was battling Cancer. Today I got an email from the Foundation again about Lance’s Army

It’s time people to get on board and stop this and influence our government in a good direction.

ttys
Paul

Well in Chicago the clock just ticked over to the year 2007. I just woke up after going to sleep about 7 hours ago after leaving our party and coming back here to process and upload the pictures that were taken this night.

I want to wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe new 2007. Profitable wouldn’t hurt as well but I figure why push my luck in the first sentence.

Hope you are all well and that you get home safely on Amature night 2006-2007.

Happy New Year.
Paul

Well Good Morning everyone,

Right not it is about 7:30am here in Dubai and it is Christmas morning. If I was back in the US I should be finishing up the evening’s activities and getting ready for bed. Instead I am missing my second Christmas away from my family. Don’t get me wrong I am happy about where I am and what I am doing but I have to admit on this day and last night I’d rather be no other place than with my family. Guess I’ll just have to make due with my adopted family of Quidam.

Since I’m actually off today, haven’t been since I pretty much arrived, maybe I’ll actually make it to one of the malls today to do some Christmas shopping. What does this mean, presents will be arriving late, Sorry.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and are with the ones they want to be.
Missing everyone a whole hell of a lot.

Paul

Hello Everyone,

For now this is just a quick post to let people know that I have arrived safe and sound here in Dubai where I am joining up with my show. More later I promise, I know I’ve said it before but really there are a lot of things to write about lately.

Still don’t have a SIM card for my phone yet so try that idea.

ttys
Paul

A birdy to me, a bird to me, a birdy dear me, a birdy to me.

Yep I’m another year older today. Thankfully this year I’m not alone because my brother Andrew is in town and we’re going to dinner tonight.

I hope everyone has a nice day I’m going to try.

ttys

Hello Everyone,

Lots to tell you all and that will happen in another post but for now I’m in Washington DC for a month and a half before I will fly to Dubai (google it if you don’t know where it is) and continue with Quidam.

Enjoy the pictures.

Paul

Hello,

Sorry it’s been a while. The transfer and the beginning of this city has been busy and tedious. This has been a good city so far, we are in nice apartments and we are actually pretty close to the zoo. I put new pictures up onto the website tonight. A bunch from the zoo and a couple of pictures when I was at Steve and Ann’s for a couple of hours between Cincinnati and here.

I’m still up in the air as far as jobs are concerned. I didn’t get another job that I had applied for in Las Vegas but it led to possibly another one so that isn’t such a bad thing. I’m also still waiting to hear about the job here on tour and whether or not I’ll be heading overseas again. I’ll let you all know if I make any decisions.

There isn’t a whole lot else going on right now. I need to pack early send some things home this city because if I end up going to Dubai apparently the UAE is rather strict about DVD’s. They apparently consider kissing to be pornography and will confiscate DVD’s with that on them. So even things like “The Little Mermaid” could be confiscated kind of a different society I imagine.

I hope everyone is doing well, ttys.

Hello everyone,

If you noticed I put up a post a little while ago saying that I put a number of pictures up in the gallery last night. I thought I would actually let you know what those pictures are about and do some general rambling.

Newport Aquarium
So a couple of weeks ago I joined the Chinese girls and another artist or two and we went to local aquarium. The pictures are okay and I was trying a new camera lens that I had purchased. This lens even has an image stabilizer built in so it is supposed to allow me to take pictures that are more in focus at a lower light level or at a longer zoom distance depending upon how I’m using it. Of course after I bought this lens, I got it from a friend on tour who was upgrading, I went right out and bought a port for my underwater housing so I could shoot with the camera underwater also

Bengals – Packers
A preseason Monday night football game was held here in town between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Green Bay Packers and we scored a number of tickets to go see the game. Through contacts of the Cirque we managed to score tickets about 20 odd rows up on the 50 yard line so about 30 of us went to see the game as many were gambling on it, which is great, although if you also want to gamble online you should try the lucky tiger casino as this site have many options for this. It was a good game in the fact that the Bengals really kicked their butts so we were really having a good time. The weather that night wasn’t that great and the game actually was suspended for a short time due to lightning in the area. At this point we ended up leaving but a couple of people ended up staying, not me, and got to go right down to the edge of the field. I wish I had stayed because then I could have gotten a lot of good pictures of the players and cheerleaders.

Dry Suit
Yep I finally felt good enough and was able to arrange the time off to get and found an instructuor to teach me my dry suit specialty. We drove about an hour and a half to Blue Springs and did two easy dives. Diving in a dry suit is definitely going to take me a while to get really used to and comfortable with but it will be a good thing for those colder water dives I some times do. I’m still looking at buying a dry suit for myself and hopefully I’ll get that done in the future because the one I ended up renting for the class could only be considered a mostly dry suit. This is because the suit wasn’t custom fit to me and had a couple of minor leaks. Really not a big deal and didn’t affect either of the dives. Because this was the first time in a dry suit I’m sorry to say that there aren’t any underwater pictures in this group.

Cowan Lake
My friend Stirling Shelton, someon I know from graduate school, lives in Cincinnati where the tour is at right now. The other day Stirling was on site and one of the artists I’ve gone fishing with before approached me while we were walking around and asked me if I wanted to go fishing on the Monday of our double dark. I of course said yeah I wanted to go and that is when Stirling said he would also. At first we were going to wading in a river for smallmouth bass but then Stirling later in the day sent me an email with a link to a local lake, Cowan Lake. For $110 we could rent a “Fisherman’s special” boat from the marina on the lake and have a good day of fishing. Monday morning I woke up and was ready to go but I couldn’t find the artist that was supposed to join us. I called him and called him and Tristan never woke up. Finally I went and beat on his door and he woke up enough to tell me he wasn’t going to go. So I went and picked up Stirling and we went to the local Bass Pro Shops spent a bunch of money, my fishing gear isn’t on tour with me, and then headed to the lake. We got to the lake and it was a nice little lake and Stirling and I set off to catch lots of fish. The rule of the boat was that every fish that was caught had to have it’s picture taken. You can see in the Cowan Lake gallery how we did. Please don’t forget that a bad day fishing is still better than a good day at work

Mammoth Caves
On the second day of our double dark, this past Tuesday, I took the 4 Chinese girls and the two translators to Mammoth Caves National Park. It was kind of a longish drive for us, about 3 hours, to get there and the weather wasn’t cooperating all that well because it was raining/sprinkling most of the day but it didn’t matter that much once we got into the caves because for the most part they were dry caves. I of course being a spelunker had a wonderful time and I think that the girls did as well, at least that is what the translators said they did We ended up doing two guided tours while we were there and also went and saw the historic entrance to the cave. I think that I got some good pictures and I’m sorry if there are some in there that aren’t in focus or clean. Last night as I was uploading I didn’t take the time to sort through them. In any case enjoy them, cave pictures are hard to take because shadows get eliminated with the flash and things tend to look flat but some came out okay.

Getting ready to leave Cincinnati
Well this might be one of the last posts while I’m here in Cincy unless something exciting happens between now and Sunday when we start tearing the show down to head to St. Louis, our next stop.

I will be home for a day on the 19th of September. Basically I don’t have to work the third day of teardown this city and because I didn’t like how the tour was going to transfer me from here to there I booked a ticket to fly to Chicago eary in the morning and to St. Louis late, 10:20pm, at night. I’m excited because I’m hoping to see my family and especially my nieces for the day before heading to St. Louis.

I have also applied for another job and had a second interview for it the other day. This one is for a new show in Las Vegas in the Luxor hotel. I’m waiting to hear something but I have been told I’m definitely on the short list. I still haven’t had a chance to interview for the job here on tour but I’m hopnig to do that as well soon.

I should really get to work. I hope everyone is doing well. ttys

Last night I uploaded a bunch of pictures, check them out.