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All About Awoosh |
I believe that life is full of awoosh.
In diving terms it goes something like this: You have a bit of an awoosh when you stick a regulator in your mouth and breathe underwater for the very first time.
And then you have a bigger one the first time you drop below the surface of the ocean, and partake of a life that is so vastly, so magically, so marvelously different from the one you live on the turf above, that time spent there seems almost surreal.
You for sure have an awoosh the first time a hammerhead shark comes sauntering past you on a reef.
And another on your first rollicking current dive, finding yourself flying, at the whim of the water that moves you.
An awoosh is a flock of manta rays swarming above, buffeting you with the turbulence from their great wings.
It’s finding yourself, you who were once upon a time a closet claustrophobic, diving in caverns beneath the Mexican jungle. And loving every second of it.
It’s dancing with sea lions in the Sea of Cortez, off the Northern Channel Islands of California, in British Columbia and in the Galapagos.
It's swimming alongside a massive whaleshark, and meeting her eye to eye. It's also getting whacked by her tail.
It is a huge exhalation of breath. It’s an epiphany. It is a dive into the unknown.
It’s taking a camera into your hands and trying to capture indescribable life and beauty. It’s taking some of those pictures and setting them to music and adding some information, in the hopes of somehow sharing that experience with others in an entertaining way.
It’s previewing a couple of those shows to a large internet scuba diving audience (Scubadiving.com), who gave them glowing reviews. That bit of encouragement fueled the confidence to venture on into the sticky web of the internet – that is to put up a site to host the shows. It’s buying a domain name and some software, and learning how to write html, and spending untold hours creating slideshows and writing stories and managing digital image files, and then finally putting it out there. Now that is one colossal awoosh :^)
This wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago, for many reasons. Carpe diem.
Awoosh.com was born of a desire to share information and experience with others in a non-commercial format.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Doc Vikingo, who really is a good guy, and who continues to kindly contribute his very useful tips and wealth of information, in many venues, to the benefit of divers worldwide. Also thanks to my good buddies Papa, Sapien and Chris, for letting me be "just one of the guyz" (even in a shipwreck in Turks & Caicos ;^) and for continuously contributing their fantastic work to the world.
These are guys who all have hard-earned careers, and, although they are enormously talented with their underwater imagery/travel writing, could probably not generate enough income from freelance in the small-market dive world to support their wanton and voracious dive and travel habits ;^) So they, like me, do it as a gift, from the heart, with no editorial restrictions to limit them. Chris' site, Underwater Planet, is superb. Doc, Sapien, Papa and Mike's stuff is also excellent, but not collected for them in any one place on the web, so I offered to share and archive it for them here on awoosh.
Thanks too to LarryL of Allenhost for supplying prodigious bandwith so that multimedia slideshows and videos can be widely shared, and for contributing a great article about our group expedition to the far reaches of the Great Barrier Reef in late 2005.
All of us strongly support education and enlightenment; it is our hope that our stuff will be shared for that purpose.
And while I am gushing along, last but not least, a huge heartfelt thank you to my buddy-for-life D, and our sweet peas, for supporting this strange journey in every way.
I would also like to thank the many folks who have visited this site since 2003 and who have written to tell me that you enjoyed my stuff. Your kind feedback continues to stoke the creative fire.
If you enjoy this site, please pass on a link to your buddies. I will endeavor to put up new stuff as often as I can find the time.
Thanks for visiting.
Judy G
PS Please do not use/duplicate any of the material you find on this site, or on other great sites that are linked, without the creator's express permission. Contact info for each contributor is in their directory.