The 7up dive….Point Defiance, Tacoma Washington. On Saturday may 13 th Ward and I traveled to Washington state to attend the 4 th annual North west Dive News Treasure Hunt and trade show. It’s held at point Defiance Park in Tacoma every year and is a chance for manufacturers, dive shops, charter companies and other dive industry opportunists to speak to a thousand or so people. It is also the place to go if you wanna win all kinds of cool stuff at the treasure hunt. This ain’t no wimpy treasure hunt with a few pieces of dive gear as prizes. Rick Stratton of NWDN magazine helped raise 84 prizes including trips to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Mexico, Complete dry suit packages, digital cameras and 24 dive charters with companies like ours. The weather was great for us this year as about 75 people lined up near our booth for the free diving briefing and lecture by the Canadian association of free divers. The rules were simple, two divers enter together get a golf ball (one per diver) and exit the water together and sign in your golf ball #. It was the same for the SCUBA portion that came later. I call it the “7 up” dive because when your in the water with about 300 divers, there is so much air in the water it seems like your swimming in pop. There was even a treasure chest with $1000 bucks in cash to add to the fun, which was donated by PADI, NAUI and SSI (SSI didn’t even show up though which brought on a mixed chorus of laughter and boo’s from the crowd ). Its nice to see that things are constant in my life, I didn’t win a damn thing as usual. But at least this year I didn’t give away the grand prize by accident to a complete stranger like last year. I got paired up with a diver who was, shall we say challenged?? I went back down and gave him a golf ball so he wouldn’t feel left out. I’ll be damned if he didn’t win the two weeks in Fiji. *#@!?&!!! I didn’t feel like the most frustrated diver there this year, that award went to all four members of the Canadian free divers that were in attendance. In a hilarious twist of fate they all won tank holders. A local manufacturer gave away 20 of them, Rick reached into the draw box pulling a clump of name tickets including the four bewildered mono-finners. All in all it was a fun day for the divers and their families. I even got a chance to see some old friends I worked with years ago at the Diving Locker. The dive itself is very plain, lots of star fish though… I recommend diving it at one particular day of the year when the bottom hatches prize winning numbered golf balls: May 13, 2007. “Breathe Continuously” Dan Sidney Dive n Surf |