With Strike's proven expertise in scuba, scuba history, scuba
equipment, and scuba Tall Tales <tm>, it has just occurred to me
that the CRUISE SHIP industry has a perfect job opportunity for
Strike -- as a "Guest Lecturer".

There were at least half a dozen different "Lecturers" on the
Pacific Princess cruise (with almost two weeks at sea) to occupy
the hours during the day with nothing much to do.

These "Lecturers" lectured in all kinds of topics, from estate
planning to ... one Robert Marks (who was supposed to have been
the biggest finder of sunken GOLD), more so than Mel Fisher,
lecturing (actually mostly bull-shitting) on treasure hunting,
wreck diving, deep diving, history of scuba equipments, etc.,
etc., etc.

I attended his LAST lecture, which was on the history of "deep
diving".  He covered most of the stuff we had discussed in Scuba-
SE on the history of equipment, etc.  Some of HIS "historical"
facts were suspect, but I wasn't sure if he was correct or not.

But when he got to "depth world record of open-circuit air scuba",
and said Neil Watson held the record of 650+ feet in 1968, I KNEW
he was full of it.  :-)   So, at the end of the lecture, I told
him that Gret Gilliam had the record in the 1980s, and Dan Manion
had the record in 1994, and none of them was anywhere NEAR 600
feet ... it turned out he never HEARD of Bret Gilliam or Dan
Manion -- and he was there lecturing about the "deep air"
subject!

So I immediately went to the internet and found a webpage that
gave Neil Watson's 1968 record as 437 feet.  :-)  Robert Marks
was off by only about 200 feet!

Anyone here know much about Robert Marks?  He was actually selling
gold coins on the ship too.  :-)

At any rate, these Lecturers apparently get their free berth PLUS
some pay (depending on their qualifications and agent I suppose).
The working TIME is flexible -- as flexible as there are cruise
ship itineraries, and the job is transient and non-permanent.

I am considering writing to the cruise ship to be a SCUBA lecturer
myself.  :-)  I am sure I have facts as well as bull shit and can
lecture as well as any of them -- perhaps with the exception of
Strike.   :-)

THAT's why I am posting this.  To suggest to Strike to get a
Lecturing job on some cruises with DIVING, and we can have a
cruising NEDfest, and everybody can ROTFLTAO about Mika.  :-)

Just flown here (LAX) from Fort Lauderdale, via ATL, waiting at
the President's Club for the red-eye flight back to Newark to ATL
tomorrow morning.  :-))

This will be an epic journey of over 24 hours of flight to get
from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta.

Da Feeesh.