Cody

Cody is a Puerto Rican Beach Retriever now living in Bay Village, Ohio. He was fostered by friends in Puerto Rico and rescued by Amy and Miguel and the kids in Ohio.

He's a great little dog, friendly, lovable, and good with the kids.

He has a lot more retriever in him than we expected. Ho points birds and other things. At first we thought he was really shy of water. Then we tookk him to a park down the road and he discovered a POND! Oh, my, He too right to it.

I think he's found a home.

Stompin' grounds

We took the kids to the beach this afternoon. Let me tell you - a Lake Erie beach is absolutely NOTHING like our beach at home. Okay, it's something like it: there is sand and there is water. And weird little wind-chop waves. But that's where the resemblance ends.

Bay Village is between the two lakeshore towns where Elaine grew up and went to high school. She and her family and friends used to hang out on this beach but she said it was much different then. The rocky walls have been put in since she was a kid and help keep the sand on the beach from washing away. Sometimes they would go to the beach and there wouldn't be any beach. The sand would have all washed away.

The afternoon we went was chilly and windy. The red "no swimming" flags were out because of a strong rip current.Apparently, these are pretty common along this coast.

A bit overwhelmed

We went to Cleveland's famous Westside Market today. We both were raised going to markets like this, either this same one or Findley Street Market in Cincinnati so we're not strangers. But we don't have anything like this in PR. There are fruit and veggie "markets" but they are individual roadside stands not concentrated in one place.

So much and so much variety in one place was a bit overwhelming.

Hangin' with the grans

So here's the story: our daughter Amy called us in PR and said, "Miguel and I didn't get a honeymoon. We have a friend who has a house in Tortola we can use. Will you watch the kids?"

Watch the kids in Tortola? Hell yes! You'll never even know we're there!

No, not in Tortola.

So you're bringing them to PR. We'll meet you in San Juan, pick 'em up and take them back to Ola Lola's :Puerto Rican Summer Camp.

No. New house, new town, first week of school. You're watching them here.

So Amy and Miguel are in Tortola; we're in Cleveland.

Oh, well! It's a more than a week with the grans!

Meet Antennarius multiocellatus

Commonly known as the Longlure Frogfish, this may be the ugliest cute - or maybe cutest ugly - fish you'll ever see. We found this guy on a recent dive near here.

Come down and dive with us. Maybe you'll get to see one too.

Night dive

Scuba diving at night is a whole different animal! There is the obvious - it's dark and your field of vision is limited to the width of the beam of your dive light, like your field of vision when driving at night is limited to the width of your headlight beams. Among other things, this narrow field of vision forces you to look closely for the smaller things.

Things look different at night when you hit them with a dive light. During the day the water absorbs light, starting with the reds and yellows. During daytime dives the red sponges in the picture above look blah, kind of greyish-brown. Because dive lights or flash units are more nearly full-spectrum and add those colors back and they pop!

There are different things to see at night. We hardly ever see basket starfish (related to the brittle starfish) during the day. If we do notice one, it looks like a grey or brown lump perched on the edge of a sponge. At night they open up like radar antennae to feed. According to the entry in Wikipedia, Basket starfish can live for up to 35 years and weight as much as 11 pounds.

Even fish that we commonly see during the day, like this parrotfish, look and act differently at night. Again, with the full-spectrum light, we get to see it's true colors. And parrotfish sleep at night. The create a protective mucus-like "shell" around themselves. We try not to disturb them because if they wake up and break their "shell," they won't sleep the rest of the night.

The first time I ever heard whales singing underwater was on a night dive. Three of us stopped swimming and for a moment stopped breathing to listen. It was incredible, truly breath-taking.

Can you tell? I really like night dives.

There are more photos from this dive on our Flickr page. Check 'em out.

and more mermaids...

Lovin' it! We introduced another group of mermaids - Rosa, Christina and Victoria and their daughters - to snorkeling at Wishing Well.

We're getting good at this!