In 1993 my wife and I were out in Seattle Washington, to attend her cousin’s wedding and also to spend a week in Olympic National Park to do some hiking and off trail backwoods camping.
I had heard such great things about scuba diving in the Pacific Northwest, that I was determined to do some diving in Puget Sound while we were there. So I brought my gear with me, including my full cold water wetsuit, since I knew the water there was even colder than the ocean waters off New England. I soon found a dive shop to rent me tanks and weights, and also got some info on a great place to go shore diving.
Right there in Seattle, there was a shore dive site called Edmonds Underwater Park, complete with an easily followed marked underwater trail, that formed a loop. I dived it the first full day we were in Seattle, and I had a great time, getting in two dives there that day.
In fact, I enjoyed it so much, that I wanted to dive the underwater park again the following morning, which was the day of the wedding. As soon as my wife heard of my plans, she was skeptical, and she thought it was a bad idea, because she was afraid it would make us late for her cousin’s wedding. I assured her that my diving in the morning, would not make us late for a wedding that didn’t start until 1 pm. She still didn’t like the idea, but I went ahead and went diving that morning anyway, because I was convinced that I could make it back in plenty of time, to get us to the wedding on time.
The dive went flawlessly, with an hour of bottom time at 40 feet deep, and again I had a great time diving the underwater park. As soon as I got out of the water, I packed up all my gear very quickly and loaded it into my rental car, and I was off…
Until I hit the traffic jam… It wasn’t in the timing of my dive plan at all, and totally unexpected. I was now sweating blood, thinking that my wife and I might be late for the wedding after all, and I knew that my wife would be furious with me! A truly desperate man, I found a Seattle cop and begged him for directions for an alternate route to get me back to where my wife and I were staying. He came through for me big time, and I got back to the motel at noon – a full hour later than I had planned for, and giving me only one hour to shower and change for the wedding, and get my wife and I to the church on time!
My wife was already furious with me as soon as I got in the door, but I insisted to her that we still had time, and we would not be late! I showered and got dressed in world record time, and by 12:25 pm we were both in the car and on the way to the church.
Thirty five minutes should have been enough time to get us to the church, except that my wife’s cousin’s hand written directions sucked, and caused me to get lost. My wife now had steam coming out of her ears, and she stared at me with a look that could kill, and hissed “Chris, if you make us late for this wedding, I will NEVER forget it!!!” And I knew that she meant it…
I immediately went into that hyper-alert physical and mental state that some people go into, when faced with a life threatening crisis, because I knew that the future of MY marriage might be hanging in the balance, and the outcome of my married life was now seriously threatened by being late for this wedding!
My first move, was to immediately pull over to this cafe with a big sign that said “Espresso & Hot Dogs” I kid you not! As soon as I ran inside, I saw another cop sitting at the cafe counter, and I begged him for directions to the church. I must have looked like a truly desperate man, because he looked back at me and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Are you alright?” I answered, “Oh, I’m just fine! Until my wife murders me for making her late for her cousin’s wedding!” The cop, who had just finished eating his hot dog, got up and said “Follow me.”
And then, he did the most amazing thing… He got in his cruiser, told me to get in my car, and again he said “Follow me.” So we did… He turned on his flashing blue lights and we followed him straight to the church, arriving only 8 minutes before the wedding began. Before the cop pulled away, I enthusiastically thanked him, and all he said in reply, was “Don’t ever say, that a cop never did anything nice for you!” and then he was gone.
My wife and I were sitting down in the pew, as the organ began to play… We had made it to my wife’s cousin’s wedding on time, and MY marriage was saved!
I thought that I’d include a few wedding photos here.
This is NOT a picture of my wife’s cousin and his new bride. While Neale and his wife are a fine looking couple, I just couldn’t resist throwing this one in, because now that’s a wedding dress!
This did NOT happen at the wedding we attended! However, it sure would have livened things up if it did! :-)
On a more serious note, the following is a video of a dive at Edmonds Underwater Park, very similar to the dives I experienced there.
On a less serious note, (or maybe not…) this is a video of a woman with an amazing talent!
After 21 years of being married exclusively to each other, my wife and I have been discussing the possibility of making our marriage “open ended”. If you can do what this woman does, and look as good as she does while doing it, well then I’d like to hear from you! ;-)
P.S. Just kidding! My wife and I have NO intentions of making our marriage open ended, and we will always be married exclusively to each other! So even if you can look hot while free diving down to 50 feet deep and holding your breath for over a minute, I’ll just have to admire you from afar…
Word Play 
That is a truly incredible tale and destroys the myth that men cannot ask for directions! Fab! c
A truly desperate situation calls for desperate measures, which under far less severe circumstances, would never be considered! ;-) Thanks for enjoying my tale and thanks for stopping by! :-)
Too funny! Yes, Seattle is well-known for traffic problems. I go up there nearly every summer for business and usually take a few extra days for myself. Your video is beautiful! I just never imagined such color in the Puget. I went whale watching up in the San Juans just last July. Here is my video from the trip – had a nice few captures of an Orca coming out of the water, and nice tail flip at the end. Plus a lot of other sea life in the first part. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwoYsGSszCM
For embedding youtube vid’s in wordpress… easy as can be. Just take the URL and insert it in the shortcode . Yes, the start and end brackets are supposed to be there. So for your video, it would be:
Thanks Michelle! Scuba diving in the Pacific Northwest can be quite amazing. There’s lots more color, a greater variety of life, and fish and other critters are often much bigger than what we see in New England waters. Thanks for including your whale watching video – it’s very well done and the views of the Orcas and other sea creatures are very impressive. I’d love to see that for myself. And thanks again for all the help with embedding youtube videos.
Okay, I can see that the shortcode did not show up correctly. Hmmmm… lemme think on how to do this since html is usable in the comment box…..
Okay, going to try the start/end “thingy’s” (I am very very bad with terminology) that is used in CSS which indicates a comment and not a code. So here (hopefully) is your embed code for your video – just do NOT include the /* and */
/* */
This is a wordpress “shortcode”. Now you may also use the embed code supplied by youtube. Click on “Share” button, then the “embed” button and your embed code will appear. You may choose the size you wish. Copy the code which appears, then you have to paste it into your new post window, but make sure you choose the “HTML” tab in the top right corner of your editor (not the “Visual”. After you paste in the embed code, you can then switch back to visual if you wish. What you’ll see then is a big yellow box (then video actually doesn’t show when in edit, but it will when you preview and publish). Hope this helps. Well.. .I hope this all shows up in the comment correctly.
Nope the end bracket isn’t showing in the shortcode. Okay, going to email you.
Thanks so much for all your help, Michelle! :-) As you can see, I got it to work and I really appreciate you taking the time and effort to teach me how. It’s not everyday that I can say that I’m somewhat smarter or least a little bit more knowledgeable than the day before, and now thanks to you, I am. :-)
I knew you could do it! Heehee… it’s easy. There are tons of tutorials out there, just google
wordpress.comand whatever you want to look for, i.e. embedding videos, and you’ll have a wide range of stuff to choose from. I prefer using youtube tutorials myself.Chris, Chris, Chris – will you never learn? :) Wives have this uncanny way of knowing there will be excessive traffic, etc. when you want to go do something you barely have enough time for. How many years have we planned events for our families & gotten everyone there on time? AND wives have very, very, very looooooooooonnnnnnng memories, so if you had been late you would have been in very big trouble. What luck you found 2 cops on the same day who had time to help you out!
Your comment on women having long memories was right on the mark! Far more than her immediate anger at the time, what really filled me with dread, was having that flash of realization, that if we were late for this wedding because I went diving when she warned me not to… that this would become “a date which will live in infamy” for us, and never to be forgotten. Years later (if I was lucky) this date would be brought up and thrown in my face in future arguments, for both related and unrelated reasons in future conflicts between us. In that instant, I knew that this would be an indelible stain of blame that would never fade away. BUT… we still made it to the church on time, and that curse was averted!!!