61 is nothing to fear

For my birthday last year, my sister-in-law sent me a card that said, "Just because you're 60 doesn't mean you are too old to do all the fun things in life." Inside, it read, "61 is too old. You have one year to do everything."

Cute. With a message like that weighing on my mind for a year I knew we couldn't do dinner-and-a-movie on my 61st birthday, assuming I should live so long. So when the 61st rolled around earlier this month, I did the only sane thing an elderly codger could do.

I went scuba diving. I joined a group from my dive shop, and we ran up to the Rainbow River, just north of Dunnellon, Florida. I haven't been "wet" since last November. My buddy hadn't been diving for a year and a half, so we made a good pair. We spent the first 20 minutes remembering how to achieve neutral buoyancy, which is the state you want to be in. I'd get "heavy," bump the river bottom, give my vest a puff of air, and ascend like a balloon. We were in 20 feet, so getting an embolism wasn't a major threat, but it was embarrassing. I'd get back down, look around for my buddy, and find him up at the surface. We went up and down like a pair of yo-yos until we began to get the hang of it again.

The real fun of diving is seeing the fish. I never was big on fresh water fishing but I saw several that would look fine on a dinner plate. We saw a huge gar. I missed seeing a huge turtle. The limestone river bottom has small openings from which water flows, and other openings from which bubbles escape. The grasses bend with the flow but give about 18 inches of dense cover for fish and other critters. This is a great place to cool off on a hot day, with a snorkel or dive gear, and a great place to go kayaking - my next toy after I splurge on an underwater camera.