RunningBeans: February 2008

My inaugural post on this blog will explain an incident from last year. Three days from now will mark the one year anniversary of losing Jamie's wedding ring. Here is the story I wrote about it at the time, a little peek into the not so distant, yet still painful to think about, past.

Feb. 17th 2007
Jamie and I were surfing on Saturday when she noticed her wedding ring was still on her finger. I should have just told her to keep it there but insisted that she hand it to me and I would put it in a safer key pouch on my wet suit. In the middle of the floating transaction we fumbled and lost both the ring and our car key in about chest deep water during a low low tide. I couldn’t believe that I was that stupid to have Jamie had me the ring in the ocean while we were both on surf boards. We couldn’t even get to cell phones to call her parents to bring down goggles to search the very murky water, as they were locked in our car. When the ring dropped I stood up and tried to stay in one place to mark the location, while Jamie ran around the beach asking everyone for a phone to use to call her parents.

An hour or so later there were four of us with masks on, diving around the area looking for the ring. No luck. The water was only chest high, but very murky and the waves seemed to be working against us as they crashed unceasingly over our heads.

Monday, Jamie and I returned with a rented under water metal detector (Only with the internet can you find such things) and me with scuba gear to try and find the ring. A few hits on the metal detector, but again it was low tide, murky water with maybe two inches of visibility and no sun. We were discouraged as we thought that even if it hadn’t been washed to Tijuana by now, with these conditions it would be impossible to find.

This afternoon Jamie’s dad, Kevin, and I suited up with scuba gear once again. This time it was at high tide, with sunshine and almost no waves. We paddled out for about 100 yards to where we had aligned the search area days before using a few palm trees and buildings as an X and Y axis. There was a surface current that we were fighting but after dropping below the surface and reaching the bottom 10-12 feet below we could avoid being drifted around. The visibility was about five feet today. After getting to the bottom and turning on the metal detector I got a hit in less than 10 seconds and wondered if it was too good to be true. I proceeded to wave the detector around in other places a little to make sure it was working and that I wasn't picking up any interference from rocks with trace iron content. The metal detector made no other sounds at all in the other areas. So I then waved it back to the first tested area, and sure enough I got a hit again, right in same area Jamie and I had a hit a few days before. I waved at Kevin and he dug a little with a sifting tool and it uncovered something shiny. I grabbed it and it was her ring. I was shocked, it was found in less than two minutes of going under. (Had I tested looked for it on the first hit, it would have taken us 20 seconds) Kevin later said that he thought it was the ring of someone else, that he was in disbelief that it was Jamie’s and that we found it so fast. I was so happy, but underwater you can only express emotion with weird hand signals. Kevin motioned to go up. I motioned to look around a bit for the lost key. We looked and found it within inches of the ring. Amazing. We paddled back in totally excited, making jokes and pushing each other over in the waves. Well the telling jokes part is true.

A park ranger that talked to us before we went in came over and asked if we had any luck, he wondered why we were only under for a few minutes. I showed him the ring and he couldn’t believe we found it, expressing how foolish he thought we were being at first.

Jamie’s face when she saw it again was exactly opposite of what it was when we lost it. She was as amazed as us. Talk about answered prayers.