Ah...Mexico! My vacation officially starts today even though we've been here for 5 days now! I've spent the last 3 full days studying and diving, doing something that I never really thought that I would do- getting my dive certification! It put a damper on my drinking agenda and my night hours but totally fulfilling! So far I've made 4 ocean dives spending a little over 3 hours on the bottom! What a cool, other world! I wish I had an underwater camera! The book studies sucked- not difficult, just a lot of information thrown at you in between dives, dinners at the resort, etc. Lots to remember and multiple written tests to go along with it. (4 main tests of 10 questions and then a 50 question final exam). Of course the tests are setup so that if you fail by a certain number then you can't dive, need to study more, and then take additional tests. I didn't really want to do that so somehow I stumbled through
and managed to get 47 of 50 right! woot! I'm taking today off and staying off the bottom but I believe Mark, Dave and Eric and I are doing a night dive tomorrow- it's supposed to be pretty spectacular as that's when things like Octopus come out. To date I've seen a million fish, a couple of sea turtles, rays, lobster, moray eels, and copulating flounders. So cool!
We're staying at the
Aventura Spa Resort in Riviera Maya Mexico. The resort is very nice, service impeccable, food.... eh, booze.. lovely and accomodations and spa are fantastic! As far as I'm concerned, any place that has bottles of liquor mounted to your bedroom wall, delivers 24 hour room service, champagne and bottles of bailey's to your room is just fine with me. Of course, its all included so hey- I'm fine with abusing the system! Well, enough sitting in the
room- time for me to head out to the gym and then maybe a stop in the hydrotherapy spa. Life's tough right? Hmm, do I have the champagne and orange juice or the mudslide on the way over to the gym? Decisions, decisions, decisions..... :)
Here's a link to the dive shop and the god folks over there!
Dive Aventuras
Finally! I'm just about done with my tractor time for the year. It's starting to get cold out and sitting on a tractor in a nice breeze with temps somewhere between 35 and 45 is not my ideal cup of tea. I've measured and marked and remeasured and remarked a million times to find enough space for the vines that were ordered. I begrudgingly called one of the vine suppliers to ask if we could change our order and they were happy to do so. Doing so would have meant me being defeated by our space limitations and I'm a stubborn bastard! I have officially managed to till enough space for 1,000 Vidal Blanc vines and 1,400 Viognier vines!! The next step will be working on getting the deer fence marked and installed. I'm going to try and follow as much of the existing fence line and possibly use the original barbed wire posts so I can preserve as much of the interior property as possible. The only issue with this is that there is a ton of undergrowth on the perimeter, old rusted barbed wire and a number of trees that will need to be trimmed. Looks like I have my winter work cut out! As we marked out the fence lines, we found a space that could be used as a vegetable garden without having to do a separate garden area on the property. We can enclose it within the vineyard fence. Ahh, life is good when things are easy! Speaking of easy! I want to thank Jim over at Hartwood Winery for his generous offer of free 
Blue-X grow tubes. He had posted on the Virginia Vineyard Association website about having some grow tubes that he wanted to get rid of. We took a nice 45 minute drive out to the vineyard and low and behold- grow tubes!!! I do believe there are a few more than the "couple hundred" that he had listed! I'll head back out this week and pick up the rest. It's a great drive and Jim's a fantastic person to talk to so grow tubes or not, it'll be a good day! Now if I could just find another couple thousand of free tubes! ha!
