h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Rolls Royce Silver Cloud - A3723824
Author: Phred - Go bind your sons to exile - U1293358

Just for fun this entry is submitted.

Maybe I put this in the wrong place (discuss this entry) - but I'll repeat it here.

Good reporting (if it is factual). You are taking the reader by the hand on a dive with you, sharing your sense-impressions with him or her. With a bit of work and some good photos this piece could enter a newspaper or a magazine. To become a (fictional) short story it needs some more work.

The story could go both ways - but you have to make a choice.

I have never dived. I almost have now

tartaronne

Strangely, I might actually have some photos of this car and the freighter Owens stashed away. But thanks for your kind words.

That would be something to see. The photo, I mean.

I've just watched The Motorcycle Diary (if that is the title in English). Made me a bit retrospective about the politics of my youth - and set my sights a bit harder on fullfilling one or two of my dreams: Travelling with the Transiberian Railroad from Europe to China, or travelling along the coastline of Scandinavia or, a recent one, going through the middle of Europe from Estonia to Turkey, through all the former Eastern European countries at a leisure, across the Balkan and up through the 'new' countries there, and then back to Denmark through Austria and the part of Germany, I've never seen.

I'd like to see that movie too (The motorcycle diaries)..what is your primary language? Your dreams sound very good to me.

Regalled with tales from the briney depths, first by my brother and now you too. I may not have the opportunity to dive, but I can still live it vicariously in this fashion and that's fine enough for me

As reference, they haven't a Rolls but instead a life size stuffed Santa to great the divers. And being the vacatin spot of the prohabition and depression era gangsters, there are plenty on cement coffins and double lumps that are just right to have encased a pair of feet littering the surrounding lakes. Grusome to be sure, but certainly exciting to see .

Spynxxx

Chicago of course! right? Someday I'll dive the Great Lakes...but the Truk Lagoon is my real dream...I flew with an old major who sunk Japanese ships with his B-24 in the huge truk lagoon...hundreds<?> of ships and Japanese Zeros covered with thick corals.

http://www.pacificislandtravel.com/micronesia/cruises/truk_diving.html

tartaronne,

It's a factual story..I lack imagination to create fiction.

Imagine swimming at 80 feet with 15 foot visibility. A two foot striped remora suddenly attaches itself to your butt from behind with suckers on it's head...your first thought is surprise and identification...your second thought is to wonder what large thing is in the water nearby that has been carrying the remora.

Seconds later you learn the answer...

What's a remora? My dictionary doesn't say.

I really enjoyed the tv-broadcasts of Jacques Cousteau's travels underwater when I was young. I'd have to know much more about the lifeforms in the different seas before I dare to throw myself into deep water. But I can understand the fascination of diving and being an observer in quite another world.

My primary language is Danish - then English, German, (Latin), French, Italian.

Oh, I forgot to say.

I'm a journalist, so I'm a bit fussy about communication. What one actually wants to communicate to who in which form - and why. .

Again, I think you are are good reporter - and with a bit of work your could write articles to make people interested in diving.

Very impressive collection of languages.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/r1/remora.asp

http://www.oceanlight.com/html/remora_sp.html

Remora attach themselves to sharks, large rays, turtles, whales and hitch rides...I have some nice shots of two on a large sea-turtle.

We are only 5,5 mio Danes so we have to learn other languages. Of course Scandinavians understand each other - with a bit of practice and an open mind.

hey Phred...

I remember reading and enjoying this when you first posted it.

Just read and enjoyed it again. Then spent 10 minutes thinking back on those great episodes of Sea Hunt - me holding my breath along with (our hero) Mike Nelson as he got in and out of underwater trouble week after week.

Thanks for the memories!


m

MD,

Willful stupidity and blind luck...a heady mixture....Na zdrowie and
Bunden i vejret eller resten i håret

Good read . I do like the silent, unspoken, unwritten but definitely there, glare in the direction of 'Alan' the diving 'buddy'. Neat touch that .


When shazz was producing , she was able to add photos to articles. I don't think the new Post team can handle images yet but I assume they will do again at some point.


Did you ever see Alan again?
Waz

>>Bunden i vejret eller resten i håret <<



Wherever did you find that You know what it litterally means?

http://www.awa.dk/glosary/slainte.htm

I think it means "bottoms up or the rest in your hair"

I enjoy H2G2 partly for the opportunity to communicate with people in Isreal, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, Scotland, Wales, Ohio, Poland, England, Texas...and now a Dane...so this chart really comes in handy.

Yes, I did see Alan once again. I live in a fairly large city so it is not necessarily to be expected that this would happen. Our city (Tampa) built a new, large and well designed aquarium facility by the cruise ship port. On a visit, I saw Alan suited up and cleaning the glass walls there. He was a diver volunteer. He didn't see me. The sensation of running completely out of air after completing an exhalation while dropping like a stone due to extreme negative buoyancy is not one I'm ever going to willingly repeat. He did ask me after the dive where I went. I told him about the correct air valve loosening procedure..."righty-tighty, lefty-loosey". I didn't tell him about penetrating the wreck. He could easily have killed me, but he was always well intentioned.

What I learned from Alan was to take two breaths from the regulator, before jumping in, while watching the air pressure gauge...if the air valve is actually off the needle drops about 1,000 PSI per breath.

Don't know if it's better or worse to be killed by someone well intentioned... You know, you like to feel your life has some sort of meaning, purpose. Being accidently well meaningly bumped off, 'ooops', kind of undercuts that.

Lloyd Bridges played the Deputy Sheriff opposite Gary Cooper in the stunning 1952 western, "High Noon". I learned then that "A mans got to do what a mans got to do"....how simple, how elegant...

Bridges was quoted as saying he could play Hamlet better than Richard Burton, do Othello better than Jose Ferrier but of course no-one was ever going to offer him these roles now. "The public seems to think of me as being under water" he said. On another occasion he said "If we could just get some way to do Hamlet underwater, I'd be happy."

But wasn't Hamlet a melancholy Dane?.."There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."