I wanted to take Scuba diving in college when I found out the course was offered as a gym credit. However, after I looked at the cost involved I realized I couldn’t afford to do it while I was in college. Two years after I graduated I took the course at RIT to get scuba certified through PADI. The instructor was an ex- Navy seal instructor who taught a class for more rigorous than what PADI required.

I only dove one other time between the time I got certified and when I moved to Hawaii about 10 years later. I rented a house on the beach on the North Shore of Oahu when I first moved to Hawaii. There were two army captains living in the house in front of us and one or two in the house beside us. They were all scuba divers.

I’ll tell the story about how I started diving with those guys another time. As it turned out all my friends in Hawaii were avid scuba diver’s, many of them were rescue divers or Dive masters. One of them was a guy name Ray who is a course Director. Course directors are the level that certifies instructors. Ray became a good friend after diving with him several times. He had to move and was left with a 2 to 3 week gap in between moving out of one place and into his next. He made an offer to me that if he could sleep at my house for that time he would give me the instructor course for free.

I would have let him crash at my place for a few weeks without the instructor course but I thought why not.  After getting OWSI (Open Water Scuba Instructor) certified with PADI I began to do  freelance instruction for two of the Dive shop on the North Shore of Oahu in the little town of Haleiwa where I lived.

At this time I was also the Director of photography for a The Sugar Cane Shack acooking show that aired on OC-16 in Honolulu. The three of us that did the cooking show went to Las Vegas to a conference for selling Content to TV organizations. I met a guy there named Tom whose wife was from Hawaii.  They lived in San Diego. Tom was selfish employed and his wife worked remotely from home as a computer tech. He told me they go to Hawaii to see Lonnie‘s parents frequently. We hit it off and I offered to take him driving the next time he came to Hawaii.

The conditions were best to do a Deep wrekc dive when Tom was available but he hadn’t been diving in a long time and he was nervous about doing a deep dive. I reassured him it would be fine. I explained, “It’s just the two of us so if for any reason he didn’t want to go through with it we could stop at any time.”  I also explained that once you get down to 30 feet and go deeper it’s almost  unnoticeable. After we completed the dive Tom was thoroughly impressed with the way I explained the process I thought he would go through. He said I was right about everything and he was really glad he did it.

Tom said, “You’re too good at this to be working for other people.” He said pick a name and send me some photos I’m going to build you a website. I got my instructor course for free and I got my Dive with Dave website built for free.

Sometimes it’s just too easy to see God at work.