Not exactly sure where to start, so it might as well be day
one. It all began in Austin, Texas where
Ashley and I met doing our Divemaster course with a company called Dive World. One Saturday morning we were at St. Edwards
University’s swimming pool on the south side of Austin assisting our instructor
with some open water students as well as a rescue diver student. We both showed up not really knowing what to
expect nor what we would be doing. Our
instructor put us in charge of doing some buoyancy control skills with the
rescue diver at the deep end of the pool while he would be at the other end
with his open water students. So we quickly
introduced ourselves to each other, as well as the student, and headed to the
other end of the pool. For me this was
the first time doing anything like this in an “instructor” position of any
sort, and soon after I found out it was the same situation for Ashley. So neither of us had a clue of what we should
actually be doing nor how to do it, but of course didn’t want to come off as being incapable
of doing this seemingly simple task to our instructor. Long(er) story short, we had a good time
making this student think we knew what we were doing and looking back not
really teaching him jack shit. Sorry
buddy! Sometime during the shenanigans
we had a chance to briefly share why we were taking the Divemaster and what we
hoped to do with it. As it turns out we
had a very similar goal, traveling by a means of diving. We exchanged emails (no not numbers, I don’t
know why…), emailed a couple times, decided we needed to go have a drink and
have a chat, and I managed to trick her into liking me enough to see me
again.
For those of you that may not know one of us that well, or
perhaps neither of us, let me tell you a bit about us. Like the true gentleman I am, ladies
first! Ashley was born in 1985 in
Austin, Texas and grew up in Georgetown, Texas.
Georgetown is a northeast suburb of Austin. She went to college at Texas State
University in San Marcos, Texas where she received a degree in Mass
Communications with an emphasis in Public Relations. What the really means, I have no idea. After graduating she worked for a software
company in Austin as a Marketing Manager for 4 ½ years, all the way up until a
couple weeks before we started our adventure.
Ashley is definitely a mamma’s girl and genuinely cares about her
family. Her family lives in or around
Georgetown still. For being quite the
homebody, Ashley definitely has the travel bug.
She has been to Cozumel, Mexico around ten times, traveled around Europe
while studying abroad as well as other trips with friends, and up and down both
coasts of the United State. Inspired by her mom, grandpa and uncle (whom are
all scuba divers), she did her first ever dive in March of 2002 in Lake Travis,
a lake just outside of Austin. Most of
her dives have been in Cozumel.
As for myself… I was
born in Ottumwa, Iowa, also in 1985. I
grew up in a smallish town (population 10,000) called Fairfield, Iowa. I went to college at the University of Iowa
in Iowa City, graduating in 2008 with a degree in computer science. Unfortunately for me, at about the time I
graduated I had come to the realization that sitting inside in a cubicle
looking at a computer screen all day was not for me. I served and managed a nice Japanese
restaurant near Iowa City for a few years before deciding I needed to see more
than Iowa. I moved to Austin, Texas
about the same time as my older sister and her husband did as well. I managed an indoor soccer facility for a
couple of years, and then worked with my brother-in-law doing some Forex
intraday trading as well as a couple of other projects. I have an amazing family consisting of an
older brother and sister, a younger sister, and incredible parents. As long as I can remember, I have loved
traveling. Most of my traveling has been
in the United States, but I have been to some real nice places in the States. I consider myself a bit of an adrenaline
junky… I like snowboarding, wakeboarding, wakesurfing, windsurfing, sailing
(more intense than you might think), and many other things. In particular, anything in, on, under, or
around water I can get down with, which of course includes scuba diving. My dad is a certified diver and talked me
into dong my open water diver in Cozumel in 2002, and I have loved it ever
since. I’ve been diving in some crappy
lakes in the Midwest US, Hawaii, Cayman Islands, Lake Travis by Austin, and a
whole bunch in Mexico.
So what is it that we are doing? Before leaving Austin we decided we first off
had had enough of what we were currently doing, and wanted go somewhere to get
our Open Water Scuba Instructor certification.
We figured we could use this job as a crutch to help us sustain our
traveling. So basically go somewhere and
work as an instructor for six months to a year and save up some money, and then
move on to the next place. We see this
not only as a great opportunity to do some diving in some incredible places,
but also to see more than the average tourist sees while on their week-long
vacation. We want to experience what the
locals are like, what they eat, what they do for fun, what the culture is like
in general.
In order to make all of this a reality was going to take
some work. We talked about it and
decided leaving everything behind was something we seriously wanted to do. Neither of us was in a financial situation
where we were comfortable throwing down minimum $3k cash a piece, so I looked
into affordable ways to get your instructors certification. I discovered an internship program which we
were told consisted of working as a Divemaster at an all-inclusive resort
somewhere in the Caribbean for six months with no pay in exchange for a FREE
instructor’s certification. It sounded
like a good choice so at the beginning of June 2012 we jointly applied for the
internship. We asked to go at the
beginning of November due to my younger sister Megan’s wedding at the end of
October. Eventually, they told us we
could be accepted, but only if we came sometime in July. Well July was only a week away at the time of
this happening… It wasn’t exactly how we
had pictured it going, but talked to some people and decided if it was
something we were serious about doing we should go ahead and do it. So we accepted and started the process of selling
our lives away. We became a Craigslist
addicts, selling as many of our belongings as we could for as much as we could
get. With only a suitcase of clothes,
our dive gear, and a few boxes to leave behind with our parents, we had
successfully bartered away most everything else that had made us who we
were. Together, we were now ready to set
sail and have the experience of a lifetime.
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