July 4, 2019

I took four days off from my regular job to do a fireworks show and get some diving in.

This is my 12th year that I helped to set up a fireworks show at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach.

I decided many years ago to turn my teenage lust for M80’s and pipe bombs into something more productive, and legal.

This is show business, and anything really could go wrong; in previous shows, we’ve had many ground explosions, the show wasn’t wired correctly and the grand finale went off in the middle of the show, and a couple of years ago, we had started a small brush fire that the fire department quickly put out.

Now, the Fire Department has a map of all the addresses that surround the canyon, there are high pressure fire hoses marked with glow sticks surrounding the golf course and now they made us move further down range because of an unforgivable incident that happened last year.

Last year, unbeknownst to us at the time, a cataclysmic incident happened.

Apparently, a piece of mortar fell onto a homeowner’s imported Italian Marble patio and made a mark.

We had to move the mortars further down the fairway, more towards the middle of the golf course, where there is more distance between the mortars and the houses.

We also had to condense the show into three smaller rows and the grand finale; the cake displays were placed closer to the audience, which meant we needed two firing boards.

We were checking the wiring right up until 20 minutes before the show; the board has a “test” mode that verifies the connection, but doesn’t put enough juice through to set off the charge.

I was expecting the worse, considering the new set up, but the show fired almost perfectly.

Out of 600 plus rounds, we had three mortars that didn’t go off – that is a lot better than we ever expected.

The new Fire Marshall was happy, too; we may get some complaints of debris due to some shifts in wind, but no fires.

Here is the Fireworks Show from my GoPro on the firing board.

July 7, 2019

Now it was time to get back into the water.

I woke up early and headed down to Terranea Resort, arriving about 7 am.

Terranea Resort is 10 years old now; it hasn’t been easy, but they have embraced the divers over the years, with only a few misunderstandings.

I called the dive, the water pretty much looked like shit.

Maybe the recent earthquakes stirred up the ocean floor?

Thanks to President Trump, America just keeps winning.

More next week, I hope.

I’m on a roll; I wanted to get back into the water again.

Plus, I promised to bring some North Korean wine and mushrooms to barbecue for debriefing.

I’m returning to my old macho self – all I have to do now is get back to cage fighting, but I just have a feeling I will get my ass beaten down more so now, than before.

At least my beard isn’t coming in grey.

Anyway, I made it down to Terranea resort a little before 8 am.

It was very obvious that we were not going to go diving.

I met Reverend Al, Jeff, Nice Bob and a diver named Jiles.

Jeff and Reverend Al confirm my judgement.

Even the cove looked shitty.

The NSA looks for illegal aliens and terrorists off of our coast.

On the radio this morning, I had heard that there was a diving accident off of the oil rigs.

One diver apparently had an uncontrollable descent and disappeared, another diver got the bends and had to go to the hyperbaric chamber at Catalina.

Jiles apparently was on the trip, so I can give you a third or fourth hand account of what happened.

It was on the Pacific Star dive boat that was chartered from some Meet Up group.

Two buddy divers were diving off the Elly oil rig when one of the divers, who was in his 50’s, lost consciousness.

His buddy noticed that he did not have his regulator in his mouth and was descending rapidly.

The buddy chased him, trying to put the regulator in his mouth and make him buoyant.

The unconscious diver just kept sinking; at 170 feet the buddy couldn’t do anymore and did a rapid ascent to the surface to get help.

The buddy was flown by the Coast Guard to the Catalina hyperbaric chamber.

According to current local news, the Coast Guard had found the body of the other diver in more than 200 feet of water.

A toast to no diving!

We will try the North Korean debrief barbecue the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Local news regarding the diving tragedy is here:

Dead Body of Missing Diver Recovered Off the Coast of Long Beach

Update: Search for diver missing off Long Beach coast suspended on Sunday