The Cult of the Cool Mac: Made with 100% USDA real meat!

You may have noticed that there haven't been many site updates recently. I have been travelling a lot and when I haven't been traveling, I've had major projects to distract me.

One of the things that I have been doing while away is getting my scuba certification. (Scuba is one of those acronyms that you don't have to capitalize. It stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.)

I have meant to get my open water scuba certification for a long time and I jumped when I saw the opportunity. I'm still not certified, but I should be by this time next week.

Here's the bit of information that I want to preserve for the Googling-masses. It's a REALLY big problem for some divers. I am used to using a mask and snorkel for skin-diving and never experienced it before, but I also never stayed under for more than a couple of minutes at a time. It turns out that the seal between a diver's mask and his face becomes a little more important when he's submerged for 40 minutes. And I have a beard with a moustache.

Moustaches and diving don't mix well. The silicone skirt on the mask just can't make a tight seal with hair in the way. After about a half hour, my mask would start to fog from moisture trickling in. It wouldn't take long from that point on for my mask to start flooding and I'd have to clear it every couple of minutes until returning to the surface.

I asked a lot of people for advice and heard a lot of stories about using petroleum jelly to create a better seal, equalizing differently to get the mask snug under my nose, ditching my treasured Cressi-sub "Big Eyes" mask for one with lower volume (and lesser peripheral vision) or using a different de-fogger in the mask. None of it worked and I was getting worried that I'd have to shave my 'stash off. Then I found someone else who dived with a 'stash. A glimpse of him was enough to tell me what to do. It was so simple and obvious that I got really pissed off for not thinking of it, myself. Trim the 'stash about a quarter of an inch down from the nose. It's nearly undetectable and it ensures a good seal. No fog. No problemo.

Once I knew what to look for, I found lots of mention of this solution online. Even so, one more mention makes it that much more likely that someone will find help. And hey, it's a big deal. Between diving and keeping my 'stash, the moustache wins.