| Glenn Seaborg |
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Tim Bakken
acrylic on canvas
47" x 54"
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for the same amount of money
that any dive shop will charge to teach you to calculate residual nitrogen and let you jump in the pacific ocean once or twice the los angeles county underwater instructors association will give you an action packed summer you will never forget doing up to fifty dives in the most diverse most shitty conditions imaginable tim bakken never actually took the advanced diver program (adp) —he could, of course, teach it— but in the summer of 1993 a guy named don dapkus did and he introduced me to the usc-electrical-engineering-wreck-diving-mafia of which tim was a, or the charter member at summer’s end the electrical engineers and i went to florida to take the first two courses in cave diver training they said to me “you really get it — for an artist anyway” because there were a few minutes between the day’s end and the beginning of the next |
tim and don decided that we simply had to complete a technical nitrox course while we were at it i haven’t been quite able to keep up with tim & don’s world wide wreck & cave exploration program but tim and i do manage to get down to san diego once a year for our legendary “wreckfest” i have known a number of wreck divers (the one who certified me died in an ill-conceived excursion) and read about some of the greats some may have spent a bit more time in the water than tim (he is, after all still finishing that ph.d. thesis at usc —something about hi frequency filtering and the future of telecommunications) but i think none could be any more at home any more at one with the water than tim calculating mixed gas ratios buddy breathing in some floridian karst or guiding his boston whaler squared away to the gps coordinates of a sunken jet there is no finer diver than captain tim |
| Wreck Diver |
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7 May 00
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