Seafood (both human and other varieties)

Last weekend I went diving for abalone.

It was me and a group of three other fellas. Were we experienced abalone divers? No. Did we really know what we were doing? No. Did we even know what an abalone looks like? No.

But what the heck. Nothing says "good times" like submersing yourself in the frigid Pacific on a rainy Saturday afternoon while fumbling around in 3 foot visibility waters for what is essentially a giant slug in a shell.

Actually, it was a lot of fun.

However, do you see this picture above? See how clear the water is? See the experienced diver nimbly plucking the elusive abalone off the rock? Yeah well, our day was nothing like that.

If you want to really know what it was like for us guys last weekend, just close your eyes (and keep them closed for the duration of this exercise), stick your hands out and thrash them about while being encased in like, 3 gazillion pounds of rubber, and then just to cap it all off, pour a bucket of ice water on your head.

THAT's what it was like.

Incredibly though we somehow managed to coerce six of those wily abalone out of their briny home, figured out how to remove the shell, and then......actually ate them. Tasted pretty good.

In any case, with all of that bravado of "plunging down into Davey Jones' locker to retrieve his bounty" aside it was kinda spooky at first though. I mean, it really was a dark and rainy day. We had to dive amongst these giant kelp beds in water that had the clarity of pea soup.

So of course, the only thing I could think about was sharks.

The coast of Northern California is notorious for Great Whites, and here I was swimming and floundering around in their waters like some neoprene appetizer. All of this done by choice. Ah, the things we do in the name of fun.

Anyway, we brought the abalone back to our wives and children who were waiting sensibly in the warm cabins we had rented. We felt like Hemingway's great white hunters returning back to the camp.

For all of our hardwork though, when we showed the abalone to our kids, they all briefly looked at them and simply screwed their faces in disgust and went back to bonking each other on the head with whatever object they were last playing with.

Ah...kids, someday they'll understand the call of the sea. Or the call to dubious, and somewhat goofy, adventure at a minimum.