No and no.  I used to work for the federal government.  These days, I still
get paid by them, but I don't work nearly as hard.  I've been able to retire
for more than 4 years and probably will retire in the next two or three.

I'm a native south Floridian still living in south Florida.  I probably
could dive daily, but between work and all my other interests, there's just
not enough time.  I've been swimming longer than I can remember, literally .
Over the years, I've been a lifeguard, water safety instructor, competitive
water skier, active snow skier, competitive dirt bike racer (enduro) and
motorcycle drag racer.  I made the championships three years in a row, but
never finished above the quarter finals.  These days, I split my time
between work, a kayak, an ATV and three power boats that I dive and fish
from.  I reload a lot and shoot some.

I dove more when I was younger than I do now.  I started diving in 1962
after a day of pool training from a YMCA instructor.  Unfortunately, no
card.  It would be cool to have one that old.  When my friends and I got our
driver's licenses, around 1966, we dove a lot.  Mostly shallow stuff.  I got
my first certification, NAUI SCUBA, in 1969, when it started to get hard to
get air fills without some kind of card.  I still have that card and get a
kick out of using it.  I dove for a long time with no training beyond that.
I was cave diving in central Florida in the mid to late 60s, before I had
heard of cave or cavern courses, perhaps before they existed.  Something
like 15 years ago, I got to be friends with an SSI instructor.  Through him,
I earned additional cards through Master Diver.  I don't have the gift of
teaching and have no interest in working hard enough to be good at it.  I
took a nitrox sometime around 1999 for pretty much the same reason as I took
the first NAUI course.  I needed the card for gas.  I'm considering a trimix
course for the same reason.  There's enough information available these days
that an interested diver can pretty much teach himself the academic part of
any training.  It's good experience at more advanced levels that's hardest
for most divers to get and I'm lucky enough to have an abundance of friends
interested in the same limited level of technical diving that attracts me.

I'd have to review my logs to know for an somewhat accurate count, but I
probably do somewhere around 50 dives a year, mostly to depths in the 60 to
80 foot range, occasionally to the 140 foot range and rarely  to 170 or
more.  Its a few dives to that 170 or more range that have me considering
trimix.  My experience is more the result of a lot of years of fairly active
diving rather than a few years of being very active.

Having said that, I have to go now.  Magilla, Limey Dave and I are doing a
beach dive this morning.

Lee