Death is the great unknown, a fact that if viewed objectively by anyone who enjoys adventure would seem to be a final-days positive, a climax of exploration to cap life’s end with a curious optimism, if not actual excitement. But—as…
So I lied a little…
The military was supposed to teach me never to “put myself on report,” not to admit to an error: if an act were truly an egregious offense, you would be caught. Otherwise, getting away with something was fair game. More…
My girl
From the “don’t take life too seriously” department. Dedicated to wreck divers everywhere of all generations. (Warning: if you lack a sense of humor, in my rarely humble opinion, you are not a true wreck diver and should read no…
Savage simplicity
Growing up for six years in Athens, Greece allowed me to spend a lot of time underwater long before first strapping on a dive tank. Free diving and spear fishing were starkly honest expressions of young adventures in body and…
Tilting at Windmills: Limitations of the professional aviation safety model in sport diving
In 1985 I joined the Navy. After a 14 week stint at Aviation Officer Candidate School (“An Officer and a Gentleman”), I began pilot training. Military life was a different world in all sorts of ways (I still fold my…
Ghosts of the corridor
To be unseen, everywhere an outsider, at home only with ghosts abandoned long ago in the deepest recesses of secret holds. Time is the difference, bringing closer the once imagined, but now understood to be real spirits that prowl the…
Running in sand
Run fast; try to pass quickly, nimbly, but in the recurring multi-dimensional purgatory of the ailment, of my ailment, it is not possible to clear feet of the drag of thousands of emotionless grains of thought, each cognitive morsel bogging…
A book with a soul; the writing of Setting the Hook
Self-publishing was not my first choice for Setting the Hook, a Diver’s Return to the Andrea Doria; not by a long shot. I was fortunate to have had my first nonfiction book, Angles of Attack, an A-6 Intruder Pilot’s War,…