Travel

No Line on the Horizon
Open Water Dive SCUBA Certification
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
9-11 November 2025

"I know a girl who’s like the sea
I watch her changing every day for me
Oh yeah
Oh waha waha wahoo
One day she’s still, the next she swells
You can hear the universe in her sea shells
Oh yeah
Oh waha waha wahoo-oo
No, no line on the horizon, no, no line"
No Line on the Horizon
Lyrics: Bono and The Edge

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"I've worked with plenty of ‘sharks,’ but that was something else."
Mattopia Jones' comment to the Mattopia Times
while wasting away again at Margaritaville in St. Thomas;
the intrepid explorer encountered a blacktip shark during his first post-certification dive

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What a year. What a strange, challenging, difficult, remarkable, transformative year.

Moment of Surrender (New Year: Pneumonia)

In January, I returned home from another sunny, adventurous vacation in Southeast Asia. But home was stuck in the icy clenches of a polar vortex. It was a perfect storm of circumstances that led to my falling under the spell of a vicious case of pneumonia.

I dropped 18 pounds. I’m not built for that kind of dramatic, sudden weight loss.

My primary care physician disappeared; he didn’t return my phone calls. Months later I found out he closed his office at the end of 2024 without notifying at least some of his patients.

Ultimately, I had to drag myself over to a nearby urgent care center where I got the diagnosis.

I was put on not one but two antibiotics and an inhaler (unfortunately, not the kind fueled by Elijah Hewson; I was saddled with the Albuterol variety) .

At night, walking up the stairs to the bedroom, I’d be winded and I’d need to take a puff on that inhaler.

In the morning, after going back down the stairs, I’d need to take a pit stop and sit in the living room for a few minutes before brewing the morning java. It was a shock to the system for a guy accustomed to – in the absence of anything else to do – taking long, multi-mile walks, being in the moment while pondering life’s vicissitudes along the way.

Then it all cleared out.

And the rebuilding began.

Most of the lost weight was added back. But much better quality.

It’s been a year of no pain, no gain.

Lots of pain.

Lots of gain.

The reward: never been better.

Now it’s November and I’m in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, relaxing at Coki Beach. I’ve completed my training dives and I’m now PADI certified for open water SCUBA diving.

As part of all of this – in going from pneumonia to SCUBA – I’ve cultivated a whole new appreciation for two of life’s most basic concepts: breathing as a skill and the mind as a powerful force. Both need to be controlled. Both support buoyancy when managed properly.

Dear reader, mentally insert your own personal or business metaphor, simile or what have you here.

Mystical (Magnificent) Mekong

I look back on New Year’s Eve 2024 and two events that set me up for this unexpected year.

I took a cruise on the mighty Mekong River in Luang Prabang, Laos. I can’t help but drift into the realm of the mystical by referring to the combination of that cruise followed by a carved-wood Buddha blessing ceremony conducted by a Buddhist monk in a Luang Prabang temple on New Year’s Day as a turning point in my life. The cruise was so very well done and complete with the final sunset of the year. All I’ll say is an innocent, fun year-end ceremony on that cruise set me up for this year.

As unpleasant as most of the year has been, it’s been the kind of year I needed to endure before I can get to where I need to go.

I’m talking about the mystical. I’m talking about something bigger than me. This isn’t a boogeyman, bad juju story. This is about something positively transformative.

A small portion of the blessing ceremony in Luang Prabang. This Buddha would become central to the Mattopia Jones chapter Shakedown in the Luang Prabang Airport.

Something happened out there on the mighty Mekong that set me up for this year of dramatic adjustments. It sounds like some sort of oxymoron, but dramatic adjustments they be.

In this year wherein feelings of abandonment and betrayal have been accompanied by other losses and setbacks, I’m looking out now at the waters of St. Thomas.

There’s no line on the horizon.

Dead weight’s been dumped, literally and figuratively.

That includes duplicitous people and toxic work environments. (And that missing doctor, to boot.) Heck, I was even laid off from my day job less than 72 hours before my flight out to St. Thomas.

As this year draws to a close, I can’t help but see it as the end of a miserable chapter. The end of the dark before the dawn.

Midnight is when the day begins.

Breathe

While incapacitated by pneumonia, my go-to pastime was to basically rip myself a new one. It's all I could do while lying there: pick myself apart. That's where this mystical aspect comes into play. In order to get to where I need to be, I needed to confront some unresolved conflicts - conflicts dating back years, conflicts and other baggage weighing me down. I had to unload things that were holding me back, that were impeding my progress.

There’s an expression in technology regarding data: GIGO – Garbage In, Garbage Out. It’s striking how that applies to life in general, though, and so many people fail to recognize it. Instead, while the garbage they take in might be sugar coated, it still simply leads to putting forth more garbage.

The future will happen no matter what, but this is one way it’s made better. Dump the garbage. I had to go through this and pneumonia was the catalyst.

Not easy. But, of all things, the motto of 87North, one of the production companies behind the John Wick movies, comes to mind: "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." Actually, it’s a quote attributed to George Addair, but it’s entertaining to think of it in the context of the world of Wick.

Getting this SCUBA certification was harder than I expected. In the interest of full disclosure, I was booted from the first confined water class I attended because the (very poor, in my opinion) instructor was moving faster than I was able to accommodate as I tried to adapt to this new world of breathing underwater. He seemed to be content to watch me drown.

Seriously.

None of the people I spoke with – friends, colleagues, my barber – shared any difficulties in the process. Perhaps because so much of what I had to overcome was inside me.

At that point, I realized I was the very thing I despised: I was the obstacle to my own progress.

My breathing.

My mind.

After I successfully completed the confined water course, I had to take a minute and sit at the edge of the pool. It was a simple moment to appreciate the accomplishment and the obstacles overcome.

And to take a deep breath.

The immortal words of Capt. Jack Sparrow come to mind: "Complications arose, ensued, were overcome."

And, tying this all back to GIGO, Shirley Manson of the rock band Garbage has it right: "The trick is to keep breathing."

Getting here – to St. Thomas and completing those certification dives – required facing my fears and confronting my inner demons. (C’mon now. We all have ’em.)

Going through the online learning, nothing seemed too worrisome. It wasn’t until I was at the pool, in the water, strapped into SCUBA gear for the very first time when things "got real." Having been rescheduled for the confined course with a different – and infinitely more patient – instructor it became a weekend full of thinking to myself, "I can’t do that."

And then I’d do it.

I lost count of how many times I told my instructor I didn’t think I’d be able to do this, that or the other thing.

Then I did them.

I simply had to get out of my own way.

Fears of the mind dragged kicking and screaming into the light and burnt to a crisp like vampires.

Demons slain in chlorine and salt water.

Not the first time.

Won’t be the last.

Many of SCUBA’s challenges reside solely in the mind. And so it is for so much of life.

Now, with this new certification, my world has gotten significantly bigger and a heckuva lot more exciting.

There’s every reason in the world to head into 2026 with renewed optimism.

Breathe deep.

Elevate mind.

Walk on.

My first post-certification dive, in St. Thomas and with a guide all the way down to 73 feet. The memorial markers are for Andre Webber and Pam Balash-Webber; they owned a diving club in St. Thomas. Their lives sound incredible, filled with highlights. For example, Andre toured the world with illusionist David Copperfield and Pam was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

Get on Your (Wet) Boots

The Oceanic+ app transforms my iPhone 17 Pro Max into a dive computer and the Oceanic dive housing lets me safely take the iPhone to new depths.

My first post-certification dive was for 41:29 and a depth of 73 feet; those are stats I'm quite happy with.

Oceanic+ Depth screen from Dives 5 & 6.

Oceanic+ Decompression screen from Dives 5 & 6.

Oceanic+ Temperature screen from Dives 5 & 6.

Oceanic+ Ascent screen from Dives 5 & 6.

No Line on the Horizon: New Year U2026

This whole article is one big U2 reference. It’s written to the music that inspires this mind while making the breathing exhilarating and it’s steeped in the influences of that band.

U2’s song No Line on the Horizon became my anthem for this journey and the same-titled album became the soundtrack.

"No. No line on the horizon. No. No line."

That said, let’s close out this "startling," "unusual" (or is it "strange"?) year with one of my all-time favorite quotes.

"Here’s to the future! The only limits are the limits of your imagination. You’ve got to dream up the kind of world you want to live in. You’ve got to dream out loud, in high volume."
– Bono

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Next business topic: Epic Universe and the latest in wand magic from Ollivanders – and why a major competitor, Madame Cosme Acajor, needs to catch-up with modern wizarding times.

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