I have to admit that lava was pretty much the high point of the Italy trip. But there were some other pretty cool things. And then there were the random things. One day by the pool in Sicily was a little bit of both. Cool and random.

Random first.

I spent a lot of my time in Sicily sitting by the pool. Reading, working on the blog or just sitting. One day, I was engrossed in getting a post done when some action at the pool caught my attention:

Scuba lessons in the pool. I guess they have to learn somewhere and the big scary ocean isn’t the best place for a newbie to go under for the first time. But two things really caught my eye.

One - the guy on the side of the pool, gesticulating wildly. Teacher? Cheerleader? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the teacher to be in the pool with them? I guess I don’t have a lot of confidence in an scuba instructor who doesn’t have the breathing apparatus on. Does he really know how it works?

Two - The camera crew. I agree, people scuba diving in a pool is unusual. It was salt water, but come on. Is there really anything interesting on the bottom? I can see the bottom, without actually getting in the water.

I don’t know what they were doing, but one of the pool critters (of which there seemed to be more and more every day that we were there) thought they were great fun.

Trust me here, the little girl is riding on the back of one of the scuba divers. Either that or using her arm floaties to help pull him to safety. I’m betting on the latter.

Pretty soon, the scuba divers were out of the pool and on there way to the next site. Maybe an aquarium in town?

Anyway, I stayed by the pool, because where there is one random event, there tend to be a few more to follow it up. I wasn’t disappointed. Again, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.

What is that? It kind of looks like a palm frond, but I think it is a boat. It sailed up out of no where and all of a sudden several boats from the hotel raced out to meet it. For the next 40 minutes or so, it raced back and forth in front of the hotel beach, practicing tacking I think.

It was really cool. One of the conference goers said that it looked like an old Americas’ Cup race boat. Maybe the Italy team was practicing for the upcoming race? (Disclaimer here: I don’t know jack about sailing. Is “tacking” the the right word for turning? Are there teams in the Americas’ Cup that aren’t associated with either of the Americas? I make it up as I go along.)

When they were in the middle of a turn, the crew on the boat would go mad cranking this hand crank:

You can kind of see them in a row, hand pedaling away. I think a friend called it a coffee grinder, but I don’t remember.

I took lots of pictures, because it was so very cool. This I think is the best one of the lot:

It needs a little cropping, but what picture doesn’t?

Some people would say that watching the boat out there would make them want to take up sailing, but from what I saw, it was a lot of work for the crew. I wouldn’t mind riding on the boat, but up near the front. Not at the back where they might need help turning something.