Swimming with Fishes in Tampa Bay, Florida October 13th, 2009
In 1999 I moved to the incredible city of Los Angeles. I knew many visual artists, some of the most famous painters of this time, through working with them as an artists’ model at the Scottsdale Artist School in Scottsdale, Arizona. So I was hired quickly at about 30 different places in LA. My first day at one of the schools in the Valley, I met a guy named Dave. Dave was from Orlando, Florida and he designed roller coaster rides for Disneyland in Orlando. He had come to LA for the summer, in order to take as many life drawing classes as he could. He wanted to go back to Florida and become an animator for Disney, he was done with the wild rides and wanted to make feature animated films. We became friends and at the end of the summer, as he was planning to go back home, we made plans for me to come visit him in Orlando.
So a few months later I flew out, only to be hustled into his car as he had a road trip planned. He said that is entire life was spent in Orlando but that he had never been to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa Bay. So he had booked us a room at one of the best Tampa hotels and bought tickets to the Aquarium online. So I was off again. The drive wasn’t bad. It was interesting actually, to drive through the swampy regions of Florida. It was a climate I’d never felt before–incredibly humid, and landscaping that I’d never seen before. We drove for a few hours and by the time we ended up in Tampa, I was exhausted. We headed to the rooms for a quick nap before heading out to dinner.
The next morning we were at the Aquarium where I was in for another surprise. Dave had signed us up for the scuba dive lessons offered there. The lessons are brief and don’t involve scuba certification. We were in a few short hours, swimming in a coral reef among the fishes of the Florida Aquarium. The coral in the Aquarium is more like an art gallery, with simulations of the Key West reef, Dry Tortugas. More than two thousands different species of marine life was swimming along with us, including sea turtles and moray eels. It was a fantastic time. The perfect way to visit the state of Florida for first time.
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