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So, here is a little back story. My wife and I are coming up on our 10 year anniversary. She informed me last year that for our 10 year anniversary, she wanted us to take a trip to "somewhere tropical" as we had never been on such a vacation together. She wanted Hawaii, but I wasn't very keen on that idea. So, I told her that if she wanted to go somewhere like that she should start saving the $. I didn't think she would pull it off, but she started socking money away and picking up extra shifts at the hospital and early this year she informed me that she thinks she has enough saved up. I kinda laughed and said "yeah sure honey", Thinking she didn't have any idea what a vacation like that costs. She said, "well, I have almost $5000 saved, so lets go see the travel agent". I was very surprised and delighted and agreed. After consulting the travel agent, we decided on going to Jamaica instead of Hawaii for a number of reasons. Moving forward with our trip plans, we started researching activities at the resorts that we will be staying at. One was scuba diving, and I have always been intrigued by watching divers and such on the TV, and have always wanted to learn to dive, I just never had the time or necessity for it. Well, after reviewing the resorts policies, we could go there and spend a day taking a class there to get "resort certified" and dive once for free, or we could go ahead and get PADI certified and dive as much as we want while we are on vacation. We discussed the choices, and chose to go ahead and get the proper training at a local dive shop, to be better prepared for it and not "waste" a day of our trip getting a resort certification that would be useless after we left. We have been taking the classes over the last several weeks and buying our equipment. Wow, I was surprised by how much the startup cost of this hobby is, but the good news is that we should be good to go with all of this gear for decades to come. Anyway, we took our last class yesterday evening and are going Tuesday to a local quarry with our dive instructor for our "checkout" dives to complete our certification. Here are some pictures they took of us during pool training at their dive shop facility. http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-22_zpse748ba21.jpg http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-21_zps059b5f16.jpg http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-14_zps6f818987.jpg http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-13_zps5b8747a9.jpg http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-10_zpsef545743.jpg http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-8_zpsedaf97b5.jpg http://i601.photobucket.com/albums/tt93/BC_99/Scuba%20Pics/Scuba_Caulder-2_zpsc8f3a0c3.jpg So, that's some of our training pictures, I should have some more from our dives on Tuesday to share, as well. So, does anyone else here scuba dive? Any advice or experiences you'd like to share? Thoughts or comments? Thanks for reading and sharing in advance. BC_99