Author Archives: Drew Marlar

For the past 20 years or so I’ve spent my Christmas morning with Julia Child and David Sedaris. Julia and I started spending a lot of time together after I bought her Baking With Julia cookbook in the late 90s and discovered her amazing recipe for Pecan Sticky Buns. These are a three day affairContinue reading “Christmas with Julia and David”

New York has a trash problem. It always has but during the pandemic things seem a lot worse. I think it is a combination of increased take out food, reduced sanitation budgets and just general 2020 funk. It’s been a tough year and it is showing along the beautiful streets and avenues of this lovelyContinue reading “Me and My Trashy New York Friends”

“Do you have a car?” This is a question that New Yorkers ask each other all the time and it makes me so happy. It is asked with absolutely zero judgment. It’s just a simple question but it isn’t something that I can remember ever being asked before. If you live just about anywhere elseContinue reading “I Bike New York”

One of my favorite movie scenes is from Along Came Polly when naked SCUBA Claude awkwardly invites the nervous honeymooners to an underwater party. He declares himself the unofficial SCUBA king of St. Barts and wants to show them the beautiful coral reefs underneath is sailboat. His big sailboat. Lisa, played by Debra Messing, isContinue reading “So Tell Me For True – Are You Guys For SCUBA?”

Bray Wyatt a/k/a “The Fiend” is a WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) favorite and he coined the phrase “Yowie Wowie.” He explained it as follows: “You ever have something so amazing happen to you that you couldn’t control what came out of your mouth next? Yowie Wowie!” I can’t think of a better way to describeContinue reading “Yowie Wowie – a Brand New OWSI”

If you ask anyone that has done some dive training they will tell you that you have to be prepared to get yelled at. A lot. I’ve had to learn to leave my ego at the shore for every dive training class that I’ve attended. It definitely varies in degree depending on the instructor butContinue reading “Leave Your Ego on Shore”

Today was our first classroom day and it was an intense one. We started off with a two hour timed dive theory exam that included a bunch of calculations. The questions are designed to test whether you understand the basics of the physics of diving. It’s helpful because it makes you think about the scienceContinue reading “My Land and Sea”

I arrived in Monterey yesterday to start my dive instructor training and got my first taste of diving the California coast today. We hit Monastery Beach with a few dive buddies and it blew my mind. The reefs and kelp beds are stunning. Neon creatures are packed everywhere you look and the cold water andContinue reading “Magical Neon Underwater Forests and a Paper Dragon”

We got up early this morning to catch the sunrise in this beautiful valley we spent the night in. The stars were amazing when I poked my head out of the tent at 5 AM before the sun started to warm the skies. It was just at freezing when we got up and there wasContinue reading “Valley Sunrise”

This hike is all about Taco. I was pretty nervous about today since I’ve never hiked him above 10,000 feet and I watched him so carefully. We took nice long breaks every few miles and as we climbed into the higher elevations I made sure that he wasn’t exhibiting any signs of elevation sickness. HeContinue reading “A Dog’s Hike”