A rift

Every so often I encounter a friendly teasing relationship with people. Most recently I have encountered this with my Tango teacher. At a small practice that he held he told me that he didn't know what he would do with me as a student, but he was happy with how much progress I made. Anytime I ask a question in class, or make a comment he'll die of laughter. Multiple times he's said I'm a comic.

To me this perception is fascinating, because in many cases in life I probably come across as a very serious person. In class settings I also have a lot of reverence for the teacher, and the process of teaching. I do appreciate light heartedness, and being able to make a joke though.

Earlier this year I went to Iceland with a few friends, who I had previously traveled to Hawaii with. On these trips one friend is incredibly organized, and manages to pack an itinerary with things to do. Although having multiple activities per day, and a tight schedule can compete against serendipity I engage the serendipity by going on the trip and not wondering too much about what we are doing.

A big part of my trip in Iceland consisted of sleeping in the back seat of the car. I didn't realize I was so tired. The motion of the car also has such a calming effect. On top of the fact that the people controlling the music put on true crime podcasts, and some other super boring podcasts that were the perfect backtrack for a snooze fest.

One of the planned events we did in Iceland was go to the Silfra. This is where you swim between tectonic plates. Somehow the biggest rift of the whole day was not the space in the Mid-Atlantic ridge, but my friendly disagreements with the tour guide.

The biggest memory is that my friends couldn't stop laughing at the dynamic between me and the guide. It started with putting on the dry suits. Dry suits are a pretty interesting concept, because you can essentially wear your clothes inside the dry suit. It's a really strange experience to be in your clothes and inside the water.
When I put on the dry suit I immediately stepped into water. I asked if there was supposed to be water there, and was looked at like a big dummy. The guide offered to swap out, and provide another dry suit. I was pretty confused, because if this dry suit had water in the foot what was going to guarantee that another suit didn't have water in it. Plus what did it matter my sock was already wet, how was a separate dry suit going to fix the problem my socks where already wet.

This confusion around the dry suit was the beginning of the bickering essentially. From that point forward the guide thought I was a silly person, my friends laughed anytime I said anything or shook their heads at me, and maybe I played into this role a little bit.

A huge appeal of the tectonic plates is that the water is super clear so the visibility is super good, and you can see really deep. I unfortunately wasn't wearing my glasses while I swam so the high visibility was canceled out with the low visibility of not having glasses. Dry suits are interesting because they provide you with buoyancy, so you don't even need to worry about floating. On the flip side if you did want to dive down it's quite difficult, because you have to release the valve to remove the air, and nonetheless when you are diving down you have to kick your feet above the water to help propel you downward. Despite trying many times I wasn't able to manage successfully.

The purpose of the dry suit is to keep you warm. I think when doing things in the cold it's always hard to be fully warm, and my extremities did cold. My face was cold, my hands were cold, although we did have gloves. I think my feet were fine. The whole journey is also quite brief, and some cold therapy can be good for you.

Anyway I'd say the last annoying bit of swimming in the water is that as part of the tour the guide needed to photograph us. I really couldn't hear or understand what she was saying. The area that we were swimming in was also really narrow. What's really striking is that when you look above the surface it seems like there is a lot of space, but when you look beneath the surface there's a lot of rocks below the water. From the surface it also doesn't look that deep, but once you look down it can get pretty deep. Anyway the tour guide was often yelling at me to look at the camera, and this was super confusing because it was an underwater camera and the angle of looking at the camera while being underwater with a buoyant suit is quite confusing.

Okay! I was maybe too chill about this trip, because I totally ignored the images that were taken by the tour guide. Also since I went to look things up I now remember that our tour guides name was Doris (like Dory from Finding Nemo, how could I forget).

I have to laugh at myself here, and understand that Doris has a right to think less of me. Even though these pictures are very identifying since the mask is so large I look like a total doofus.

For comparison here's a random guy who joined our group who did not have as much trouble as I did taking an underwater picture.

I struggled so much that the only way I could get my face into the frame was to tilt my head.

It took me half a year to take a look at these photos, but now I know where Doris is coming from. I wonder if Doris has incorporate a guide to getting your picture taken underwater or if it was just me who was confused.