AMERICAN PHAROAH**

I've fallen under the spell of American Pharoah. The computer advises me that it doesn't recognize that spelling of Pharaoh and for my information and edification has underlined Pharoah in bright red, the color of a ripe cayenne pepper.

Pharoah has proven his courage in a desperate finish at the Kentucky Derby, as a mudder at Pimlico and as a Champion with his stunning victory at the mile and a half graveyard of Triple Crown contenders, The Belmont.  He has been the subject of professional doubt, but his performances have given his detractors reason to reconsider.   He is not invincible, he may yet have a bad day at the races, but for now let's celebrate and enjoy him.  He won't be ours for that much longer.

The  Haskell  Invitational at Monmouth Park (8/2/15) , hard by the Jersey shore, could have been a trap race, a race where an under prepared or tired champion might dull the luster of his recent achievements.  Just 57 days removed from his stunning victory at the mile and a half Belmont, one could almost anticipate a letdown, perhaps a meltdown.  Even Secretariat lost two races after winning the Triple Crown.

Trainer Bob Baffert, who truly seems to be humbled by American Pharoah's ability, said that the horse was a little amped in the paddock and he knew the pace would be fast.  And the speed came with the ringing of a bell and the clanging of an opening starting gate.  Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith's horse, Competitive Edge, racing two turns for the first time, broke smartly and took the lead as expected with American Pharoah stalking him about a length behind and Mr Jordan, another speed horse, just behind him.

Bob Baffert and American Pharoah

The first quarter was run in 23.1 and the half in 46 seconds flat.  Mr Jordan, unable to stand the pace, fell back rapidly, finishing last, while American Pharoah inched closer to the leader.  Watching the replay of the race one can see that Pharoah simply is not working as hard as Competitive Edge and that the moment, the denouement, would come very soon.  Half way through the far turn, never raising his whip hand, jockey Victor Espinoza, who had held American Pharoah in check to that point, simply let the great horse go.  Dropping Competitive Edge by five lengths with just a few of his elegant ground eating strides, Espinoza hand-rode American Pharoah to an easy 2-1/4 length victory, just a tick slower than the track record for a mile and one-eighth, ahead of fast closing long-shot, Keen Ice and third place finisher Upstart.

American Pharoah at speed

The margin of victory is deceiving because Expinoza, riding high in the saddle, was clearly saving his horse for the rigors of what must surely come, The Breeder's Cup Classic. So dominant was his performance that American Pharoah became only the tenth horse in history to run a mile and an eighth in less than 1:48 - and did it while being pulled up.

Jockey Victor Espinoza  and America's Horse

The Asbury Park Press headline put it best: Total Domination: American Pharoah wows everybody in the Haskell.  The article's author, Steven Falk, quotes jockey Victor Espinoza, "He (American Pharoah) is always a champion.  That's why he won the Triple Crown and (Sunday) he showed it again."

History will remember the misspelling of Pharoah as little more than an interesting factoid, an aberration, perhaps a mood lightening giggle in the high stakes game of thoroughbred breeding and racing.  His racing career will end in October and he will be shipped to Coolmore Ashford Stud in Kentucky, where a bevy of willing and some unwilling maidens await his pleasure and the racing community will stand in line to spend its cash on his first crop of foals.

It will be a sad thing to watch him be led away, The cheering will fade and the throngs will move on to the next greatest thing.  In that moment he will begin a kind of falling away.  There will be those who will compare him to Citation or Seattle Slew, even Secretariat, but American Pharoah can only be compared to those who raced against him, then followed him across a finish line.

Copyright August 6, 2015 by Loren Schumacher
All photos in the public domain
**Another version of this story appeared in HorseCollaborative.com 8/7/15

And So The Story Goes

I bought my  horse, Stormy, for $850.00 when she was just four years old.  $850.00,  not a lot of money for a registered paint horse with a nice, but not spectacular pedigree.

Her owners thought that because she was small she'd make an ideal horse for their teenage daughters, neither of whom had any experience with horses.  How wrong they were. Threatening and generally uncooperative, she buffaloed everyone from father to youngest daughter.  She was a black and white terror who convinced everyone to leave her alone, preferably with plenty of hay and grain.  Stormy soon became available for purchase at a good price.

When I bought Stormy she came with plenty of emotional baggage and the weight of a story or two that may or may not have been true.  For instance, her name: Stormy Monday.  Her breeder, a client and friend of my wife Carol,  swears that on Monday, April 3, 2000, the day Stormy was born, sliding easily into this world, there was a thunderstorm.  Weather records indicate .64 inches of rain with the day's high temperature reaching 63 degrees,  a warm day for early April in southwestern Ohio, where it is normally wet and bone chillingly cold in the spring.  With over a half inch of rain there could well have been a storm, but nothing I've found says yes or no.

Fox Now, her mother,  and Stormy not long after she was foaled.  You can see how muscular Stormy was at birth.  I've always thought that Fox looked a little irritated in this picture.

Fox, Stormy and Carol's friend, Kelly.  Kelly appears a little concerned that Fox might be an overly protective mother.

I called my wife's friend, Kelly, Stormy's breeder.  That was just a figure of speech that let me get on with the next tale, because Kelly told this story, and if true, Stormy is just another of life's quirky accidents.

It seems that Kelly's horse, Joe (Box C Black Leo Joe),  had just been snipped, gelded if you will, about the time Stormy's dam, Fox Now, came into season.  Joe, standing over sixteen hands and always a stud, allegedly jumped a four foot horse fence and impregnated Fox Now.  Possible, I suppose, because even a half loaded pistol is still a lethal weapon and stranger things have happened in the horse world.

Joe, Stormy's sire, bluff charges the camera

The horses in the background are Kelly's dun horse, Dusty, then Callie, and my horse at the time, Wyatt.  Wyatt and I were still trying to work out our differences and Stormy was still in the future.

This is such a great photo.  If you begged and pleaded, these three would never have lined up just this way nor this perfectly.  This picture was taken just two months after we bought the horses.  You can see how small and immature Callie was.  Dusty and Callie paired up and after a physical debate in which she gave as good as she got, Wyatt and Joe partnered.

Carol and I took Stormy back to Kelly's to board and to test drive her for a few days. Kelly thought it might be a great idea to reintroduce Stormy to her sire, Joe.  She convinced me to put both Stormy and Joe into her round pen.  What could go wrong?

Joe, the nightmare stud horse appeared.  To Joe, Stormy was just another horse to be whipped into shape, subjugated and added to the herd.   He did not appear to recognize her, his only thought was to break her and break her he did. 

He snaked his neck and bared his teeth and then, sniffing the air, he chuffed and screamed a cold, chilling stallion scream and cutting off Stormy's retreat, bit her savagely just to the left of her withers. Her hair was peeled back and Stormy's pink skin showed a bite just deep enough to reveal a raised welt where the separations between Joe's front teeth were.

Young, terrified and inexperienced, Stormy, her own screams piercing the coming night, tried to run from Joe, but there was too little room in the round pen to maneuver and Joe's attacks were bold and savage.  Her white hair fell in tufts to the ground like the milk weed seed's feathery parachute.  She kicked again and again, her rear hoofs slashing the vacant air until she was too tired to run or fight anymore. Something in her began to give way and she slowed, resigned I suppose to die.   Stormy had done all she could do against the bigger and more experienced horse.

How we separated Stormy and Joe I simply do not remember.  But I do remember a trembling sweat-soaked little horse pressing its head close to mine.  I must have been unconscious or just stupid to have let this happen.  I wish this story were not true, but it is, too true.

These were just moments in her very young life.  Stormy will always be Stormy, she wears the name well and most would have given up on her, sold her and moved on.  But my devotion to her and her trust in me is our bond and she is my forever horse.

A Modern Horseman: Part 2 of 2

In part two of A Modern Horseman, Helge speaks his mind about a variety of subjects including his philosophy.

"My grandfather was a part-time horse trader in Kentucky and he bought me my first horse, a little stud pony named Coco.  I was just two years old.  There is a tape recording of me saying I love to ride Coco. It was one of the first things I learned to say.

I got my first paying job at a sale barn when I was five years old.  I'd get $1.00 for riding ponies into the ring.  Riding them into the sales ring helped the seller get a higher price for a pony.

My grandfather, and others, did lots of things that were wrong in the ways in which they interacted with horses.  Stallions were sometimes gelded with a pocket knife on the auction house floor.  I've seen my grandfather bite or twist a horse's ear as a kind of twitch until someone could get on and ride the buck out of them.

Because of some of the things that have been done to horses, using drugs to dope a horse in order to sell them, I have never made selling horses a part of my business.  I will recommend a horse or give someone my opinion, but I won't take money for selling a horse.

My dad had horses when he was in Norway.  The Germans occupied his town when he was a young boy, and when they left, my dad bought one of the horses the Germans left behind.  It was deaf, because the Nazis punctured their eardrums so they couldn't hear the cannon fire.

My mother, though, had no interest in horses, but they gave me a sense of freedom and adventure.  I liked being on their backs and moving fast. It was exhilarating.

In the seventh grade we had to write a report that told where we pictured ourselves in ten years.  I wrote that I wanted to move to Colorado and breed Appaloosa horses.  Even then I had an idea about what I wanted to do with my life.

I trained a full-blooded two year old zebra stallion.  The zebra was not completely wild because the owner had had it since it was a baby.  But you couldn't pick up its feet or lead it.  The owner asked if I could train it and I said, "I honestly don't know."  So I got on the internet and did some research and most of what I read said it couldn't be done.  But there were some trainers who had done some things, so I gave it a try.

Zebras are not like horses, because there is a lot more fight than flight to them.  It was hard to get it to move away from you.  It would turn toward you and be aggressive and want to fight you.  I used the same principles I use with a horse, but it just took a lot longer.  I tried to make everything simpler.
Because it was small, my son, Houston, would ride it on trails.  We even broke it to drive a cart.

The characteristics of a horse's breed make them suited for different disciplines.  I got into trouble when I made a speech at the University of Kentucky.  A woman asked me how to slow down her off-the-track-thoroughbred.  I said you have to be realistic about your breed, yes it can be done,  but they are bred to be athletic, to run fast.  Transitions will help a lot, up and down, smaller circles, but you have to be realistic about your breed.  If you wanted a slower loping horse, you might consider a quarter horse.  Three hands went up right away.  They were defensive about their OTTBs, saying that they were great.

I ride a Tennessee Walking Horse and I have taught her to turn on her hind quarters and spin around a bit, but she is not going to do it as well as a quarter horse, she's just not built that way.

With a hotter breed like an Arab you have to be a little more active rider, because things are happening faster.  You have to slow yourself down and act deliberately because the smallest action from you causes a big reaction from them.  You should be conscious of your body actions on the ground and in the saddle so that your are not over-stimulating the horse.  On the other hand, a quarter horse will need more stimulation.

Helge's favorite picture.  Teaching Callie to canter.

Owners not spending enough time reviewing what's been taught previously can be a bit of a problem, but I am realistic and recognize that people's lives today leave limited time for them to spend with their horses: it's not that they are not trying.  Because of that I try to keep things simple and give them the key components and make it uncomplicated.  If you make things too complex, too stretched out, too involved, people never get to the next step.  You have to make it so that people feel like they are accomplishing something.

I first became aware of Richard Winters the year he won Road To The Horse at Murfreesboro, Tennessee (now held in Lexington, Kentucky).  I liked him because everything is really straightforward, there is no voodoo involved.  He makes it easy for the audience to understand.

He invited me to California, to the Thatcher School.  I didn't take a horse so I rode some training horses.  He'd give me jobs, and put me to work, another area of philosophy we agree on.  You need to give a horse a job.  A horse doesn't have to have a job catching a cow or running on a race track, you can come up with things, you just have to be a little creative.  Opening a gate for example.

(I asked Helge for his thoughts on some of the more prominent natural horseman.  He stuck to the positives when discussing each one of the trainers.)

Richard Winters: great teacher, breaks things down and makes it easy for the horse and rider to understand.  Awesome rider.

Clinton Anderson: I like that he says what he thinks and what he means.  You know where he is, he's straightforward.  Three days in a row is the best for training.

Chris Cox: He cares about and respects the horse.  He doesn't talk to horses and doesn't feel it accomplishes much.  The only time I talk is when someone is watching in order to illustrate what I am saying to the horse with my body language, otherwise I don't talk to the horse.  That doesn't mean that a horse can't get something from the soothing tone of your voice, it's just not something I've felt a need to do.  Horses can learn verbal cues from the inflection in your voice.  I use, "Whoa," that's about it.

Helge leading Wyatt with me aboard.  This was the very first time Wyatt had been ridden.

To me natural horsemanship is about learning to communicate with the horse in a manner that makes sense to the horse.  If you can find what makes the horse tick, what is important in their world and their language and apply it to training methods - I think that's what natural horsemanship is.

I am very skeptical about most horse rescues. There are a few good ones.  A lot of times they get beginners or people who don't know anything and put them with horses that don't know anything.  By working out of this particular rescue (where we met) I've gained a lot of clients, but at the same time I've seen people just getting into horses who shouldn't have green unbroke horses, people who should get broke horses that they can take out on a trail and ride.  Wyatt (my first horse) was pretty much like a mustang, a pretty much untouched PMU baby from Canada and it was not a good situation for you to be put in.

I put Helge on the spot and told him that I thought that he had never particularly liked my horse Stormy.  He assured me that was not the case and analyzed both of my horses.

Stormy: I think she has some quirks that make her a little difficult.  Stormy is willful, but fairly smart. She was able to out think and out-maneuver you in the beginning.  You've gotten a lot better about that.

Callie: She has naturally good confirmation and build with the ability to perform riding gaits and maneuvers very easily.  She has more of the physical attributes to be a good riding horse, I think, than Stormy.

I believe in pushing your zone.  Zones are like a bullseye and in the center is a ring where everyone is comfortable with what they are doing.  You may be comfortable riding in a round pen, but trotting in a pasture makes you uncomfortable.  Galloping your horse along a river bank and up a mountain may be in your panic zone.  That's the outer ring of the bullseye.  Most learning takes place in that uncomfortable zone.  You can't learn where you are completely comfortable, but there is no growth if you are afraid.

I haven't seen too much fear on your (meaning me) part, frustration in that the horse is not listening, but not fear.  Many people are so afraid that they are going to get hurt that they stop thinking and panic sets in.  You were an athlete, a baseball player, so riding a horse probably came pretty naturally to you.

If you ask a horse to stop and you make a fist with your hands and the horse keeps walking, they can run into your hands and your hands become an iron post.  I don't worry about how hard the bit is touching the horse's mouth because they are pulling against themselves.  I am not worried about the horse's mouth because my hands are still.  But the moment they come off of it there is a release there and it is in the release that the horse learns.  You can hold as hard as you need to, but hold, don't pull.

I think that people who do natural horsemanship, that's the one thing they get hung up on.  They are trying to be so light and so gentle that they give when the horse pulls on them.  If the horse pulls again, they give again.  They are not doing the horse any justice trying to be light.  As a result they are becoming mediocre because they are holding on to the horse all of the time."

A Modern Horseman: Part 1 of 2

I think of cowboys and horse trainers as men who are small in stature, light weight and bandy-legged from years spent in the saddle.  Helge, on the other hand, is a big man, perhaps six feet two or three and two hundred twenty pounds or more.  His hands are large with thick fingers that deny the deftness with which he manages a horse's reins.  He walks with the weight of long hours and the rigors of years spent working with horses.

Whenever his truck pulls into our  pasture we joke about the late afternoon heat, exchange horsey small talk and then set about making my horses and me better than we are.  It has been that way for many years now.

I had read in a weekly paper, Farm Week (now Farm World I believe), that a local trainer had successfully trained a zebra.  The zebra possesses a wild and untamed heart that makes them nearly impossible to train, so my curiosity was aroused.  I planned to ask around, hoping someone might know how to reach him.  The person I was searching for was Helge and it turned out that he was more or less the resident clinician at the horse rescue where I bought my first horse, a mare, that I called Wyatt.

Wyatt, like my horse, Callie, was a Canadian PMU mare, and neither more than likely had ever been touched by a human hand until they were forced into a squeeze chute, given several shots and prodded onto a stock trailer for a nineteen hour ride to Lebanon, Ohio.

Helge and Wyatt wearing my favorite saddle, a Marciante.

Wyatt wanted nothing to do with humans and when stalled for the first time, she turned her rump toward me, a sign of absolute disrespect and no doubt a little fear.  Within just a few minutes of introducing himself, Helge waded into her stall and after some shuffling of feet and tossing of her head and mane, Wyatt wore her first halter and was being lead to a new life.

Was it magic?  Is Helge a "Horse Whisperer?"  No, he is a modern horseman with a solid understanding of what goes on between a horse's ears and he's willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the desired result.  More importantly, he continues to learn.  Helge has spent some time working with Stacy Westfall and has been mentored by the likes of Richard Winters, both of whom are past winners of the Road To The Horse.  Because of his prominent contacts you might think that Helge is pointing toward a national stage; nothing could be further from the truth.  Why not? Because it would interfere with his life as a family man.  Wife Holly, sons Houston and Holt, are all involved in the business of horse as was Helge's daughter, Hannah, until her marriage.

Horses are a tough business and Helge owns the pain and damage that they can inflict,  He recently dislocated his right shoulder and he has a regularly scheduled appointment for a massage to work out the kinks, the tired muscles, the bruises and injuries that are slower to heal with every passing year. Several years ago my horse, Stormy, kicked Helge and his horse, Thunder, peeling the hide from her rump and delivering a heavy blow to his left knee.  Stormy surrounds herself with a finite hula-hoop of space into which no other horse may enter without her retaliation.  Helge winced, but there were no harsh words, no rebuke.  It was a painful reminder of his profession's dangers.

In our high tech society he is an anachronism, a throwback to another time perhaps, but to the horses and students he teaches and councils, he is the right person for our time.

When I first started working Stormy in the round pen, she began rearing and pawing the air in my direction.  While she's not a big horse she is pretty imposing when balanced on her hind legs. Frankly, I was intimidated and called Helge to ask his advice.  He had no advice, he just said, "I'm on my way, she can't be allowed to get away with this."

He arrived within forty-five minutes or so and immediately began longing Stormy.  To her way of thinking, rearing made me stop interrupting her pleasant afternoon, so it should work with this fellow as well.  As soon as she reared he whacked her hard on the chest with my stiff cue stick.  She reared again and was stung once more with the cue stick.  After a couple of repeat performances she circled the round pen quietly and willingly.  (Let me make it clear that hitting a horse is not a part of Helge's training philosophy, but rather an effective means to defuse a potentially dangerous situation.) Unfortunately she was not so cooperative with me and I had to follow Helge's example by smacking her hard across the chest.

Without straying too far from Helge's story, I can tell you that in a herd setting, horses dispense justice or correction quickly and sometimes painfully.  Flickering ears can become a kick or a bite, nudges become pushes and sometimes, if the message isn't taken to heart, what passes for warfare can take place.  Correcting Stormy with a cue stick was an extension of normal herd behavior.  She was told that her behavior was unacceptable.  She has never held a grudge and she has never reared again. Helge wouldn't accept any payment for his time, not even gas money.

Two years ago I interviewed Helge and what follows in Part Two are some of Helge's thoughts in his own words.

Take Just A Moment To Remember Them

May 25, 2015, Memorial Day

Since our own Civil War in the 1860's, more than 1,250,000 men and women, immigrants and natural born citizens of the United States of America have died so that my wife and I might have this one brief moment of peace and beauty on our farm.  And we should never forget the wounded, the maimed and the forever changed, whose names do not appear on the rolls of those killed in battle, but are casualties just the same.

Except by reflecting on our freedom, we can never, never do honor to their sacrifice.  They would be proud of the moments they have given you and me, and we should take just a moment to remember them.

Copyright, May 26, 2015 by Loren R. Schumacher

Photo, Copyright, May 25, 2015 by Carol A. Lang

It's Callie's Turn One More Time

Thomas McGuane in his book "Some Horses*," quotes a friend of his from Oklahoma, "God made a perfect world but he would like one chance to redesign the horse."  Further, McGuane says, "Certainly, some work could be done with the feet, hocks, suspensory tendons, navicular bones, all of which seem far too delicate for the speed and weight of the horse,  And too often, the fifty feet of unsupported intestine acquires a simple loop and kills the horse,  If the horse were a Ford, the species would vanish beneath lawsuits engendered by consumer-protection laws."

Now I don't know Thomas McGuane or his Oklahoma buddy, but I do know that horse, and she's mine!  Callie is the horse, like some humans, to whom everything happens, and unlike most humans, she suffers without complaint.

When she came to us she had a hideous scar on her right front shoulder that looked to be the product of a vicious bite.  Just a slight correction by another horse, perhaps.  There's the straight-line scar on her left side that runs nearly the length of her belly.  Might be from barbed wire fencing.  Then there is the wire fence scar above her left hind hoof, a reminder not to roll too close to our pasture fence.

There have been several trips by our vet to check minor eye injuries, you know, a piece of hay or dust and her eyes close and water like the Trevi Fountain.  And of course, her navicular and deep flexor tendon problems.  All suffered in silence by my beautiful girl.

While we were on vacation, the young woman who takes care of them for us emailed and mentioned that Callie had welts or hives that seemed to come and go.  We told her that Callie was no doubt suffering from mosquito bites and she, Irene, shouldn't worry about them.  We told Irene to make sure she sprayed Callie with fly spray a couple of times a day.

But we weren't prepared for this:

Callie's hide had bubbled up like paint exposed to high heat.

When I finally got a good look at Callie the next morning my first thought was, "Call the vet." 

 Instead, I sent our vet this photo and the following conversations in text followed.

Me:  Came home from vacation to find Callie covered in what appears to be hives.  Caretaker said they are not as bad as they were.(?)  Callie seems not to be bothered by them.  Is there anything I should do?  Are you seeing this elsewhere?  Looks like an allergic reaction to me.

Dr. Mc:  Definitely is allergic reaction that we don't want to ignore.  I would suggest antihistamines asap.  I can have the office get ready if you want to pick up.  If left prolonged could lead to an exaggerated systemic reaction etc.

Me:  Ok on the antihistamines.  I will p/u after 3 today.

Dr. Mc:  I will also leave a small packet of cortisone granules to get a jump on it.  Should resolve rather efficiently.

When I picked up the antihistamines the syringe was marked in ML, but the prescriptions was for 5 CC's twice per day.  I was confused, but Wikipedia cleared things up right away.  Silly me, CC's and ML's are the same.  Can I get a science class do-over please?

The antihistamine was prescribed for two doses for five days, but on the fifth day the hives reappeared.  Being Sunday, I felt pretty bad about bothering the vet, but another text brought the same immediate response.  Take the second cortisone packet and continue with two 5 ML doses a day.

Callie's hives seem better and she looks like my horse again, but I still have my fingers crossed that the allergic reaction is under control.  Still, I don't know what caused Callie's reaction and that's what bothers me most.

* Some Horses essays by Thomas McGuane, copyright 2013 and published first in hardback by Lyons Press in 1999

Copyright by Loren R. Schumacher May 18, 2015

Photo by the author, Copyright May 18, 2015

Divers, Sharks, Chickens and Sunset Horses

Carol and I, like most of you, work like dogs to earn a few days vacation each year,and a trip to Paradise, Grand Cayman, seemed the right place to decompress.  We're fortunate to have come here to the island several times and while the weather has been iffy, it is still a beautiful, restful and peaceful place. 

We have been diving on the windward, east side, where the seas roll and tumble into deep boat-pitching troughs that have produced rock-me-in-your arms surge and a bit of sea sickness in me.  Most of the dives have a 100' profile for 40 minutes and then back to the boat and on board...if you can.

The west side along Seven Mile Beach is more commercial and tourist driven, but diving with
the Don Foster Dive operation is as good as it can get. 

Carol and me with a green turtle.

The reef on the west side is a little used up in places but still beautiful.  Best of all, the dive ops have done a great job keeping the predator Lion Fish at bay.  We understand that they have taken over the Bahamian reefs and as a result, the tropical fish population has declined.  The local predators don't yet see the Lion Fish as prey to be taken.  Too bad, we have always loved diving there.

Enough talk.  Most of the following pictures were taken by our friend, Howard Farr, with his GoPro camera, some by Carol and me.

A great shot of a Nurse Shark with Carol watching closely.  Nurse sharks are usually found on the bottom and are not normally aggressive,



Sunset on Baker's Beach.  Just Carol, me and our guide and camera man, Mike.

.

Diamond in front and me on Lady.  She was a head tossing, nose to tail trail horse, but she's still a horse.

Did I tell you that life is always an uphill battle?

Georgetown, Grand Cayman is famous for its feral chickens and this rooster is one of them.  The pictures were taken at the Bates Family park on the island's west side.

This fellow is beautiful.





They used to call her Bubbles.

We're doing a safety stop on our last dive at 20' for 3 minutes.  That's the boat above my right shoulder.

On the dive pictured above, Carol and I both blew our dive profile of 60' for 50 minutes, which is never a good thing, because of nitrogen accumulation in the joints which can lead to a potentially fatal condition called the "bends."   But we saw a glimpse of two reef sharks darting in and out of the blue water over the reef's edge.  Well, most people run from sharks, but divers usually swim toward them as we did to a max depth of 81'  Battleship gray, sinuous, and lethal these girls (I have never seen a male shark) swam directly at us, so we were able to study them very closely.  It was a curious experience because one of them was being led by four tiny silver fish just in front of its snout and trailed by another larger fish (not a pilot fish), dark in color, which I did not recognize.  I can only think that they existed in some sort of symbiotic relationship.  It is always a surreal and beautiful experience to be in the presence of sharks.

Just a couple of more days and then back to the REAL world.

So long for now, from Paradise.