I was bit overzealous when I started this podcast in the Fall of 2017 and didn't include a trailer, so figured now is as good of a time as any.

About the Host: Gail Lovelace Menasco

I've always been a bit of an adventurer, but my first true adventure didn't start until I was a teenager. I worked at a Smoothie King in Nashville, Tennessee and my boss one day asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I thought about it, and looked at him and said, "I want to be on the bottom of the ocean surrounded by sharks." He was silent and nodded.

A few weeks later, I asked him if I could pick up more shifts after school. He said I could, but I needed to keep my grades up. He then said if I made all A's, he would do something very special for me.

I studied hard and showed him my report card. A few weeks later, he called me and told me he wanted to pay for my Open Water SCUBA certification. I was beyond elated and started taking private SCUBA classes after work, starting at 10 PM.

The Adventure Begins: The Graveyard of the atlantic

After getting my certification, I was hanging out at the local dive shop and spotted a flier for a trip to swim Sand Tiger Sharks in the Graveyard of the Atlantic... essentially on ship wrecks off the coast of North Carolina.

I needed more SCUBA certifications, my advanced and Nitrox, and started working on those certifications on my own. I started paying for the trip, $10 here, $20 there until the trip was paid off. I was going to North Carolina as Junior in High School to swim with sharks on shipwrecks.

I had actually planned this trip behind my mom's back, but came clean about the trip a week before and after a lot of deliberating, she let me go.

Before I knew, it, I was in North Carolina, with a group of middle aged men, and got to dive my first shipwreck and swim with the sharks.

Gail Swimming with Sand Tiger Shark in North Carolina - Junior in High School

More Adventures

In college, I found skydiving. I became a certified skydiver and jumped over 400 times around the United States. I loved jumping off anything I could including hot air balloons, helicopters and valued experiences. I met amazing people skydiving, many who are no longer here, including my friend, Marius who made this video of a jump we did together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-UBvdMFfrE&list=FLl_kvDm8JrN0HwcZGVUfMMg&index=4

Gail's 25th Birthday Jump with a Good Friend

Finding Love

In 2010, I met the love of my life, Luke. Right after I met him, I left him to go swim with Great Whites and came back and soon we were dating. Luke has CP (Cerebral Palsy) and I wanted to share my adventures with him.

In 2012 I took him to Malaysia and he ended up finishing up his Scuba diving certification out there and dove one of the best dive sites in the world, Sipadan.

Gail and Luke at Kapalai Dive Resort

The Goal, Dive with Schooling Hammerheads

Luke had known that I had a goal of diving with schooling hammerheads since I was a girl. On my 30th birthday, (a few months after giving birth to our daughter) he gave me a card that said he had opened up a bank account for me labeled 'Cocos Island' and that we would be putting a little money in it each month, knowing that I would go dive with schooling hammerheads one day.

Cocos Island is one of the top places to go to see schooling hammerheads and it's not cheap to go,