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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.
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.
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.
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, hence the long-term bank account. It wouldn’t be the right trip for him, because the currents there would be too strong, but I had his blessing to still go out and adventure even as a mom.
A few years later in 2017, I was offered a cheap space on a dive liveaboard to the Galapagos, also known for schooling hammerheads. I used the money in our Cocos savings account for that trip instead and knew I would see my hammerheads soon.
How the POdcast Began
At that time, I wanted to start a podcast, and it hit me, “Experiences You Should Have”. I value experiences… always have. I don’t care so much about where I’m going, but want to go to that one place for the experience.
Knowing I would be diving very remote islands of the Galapagos. Wolf and Darwin arch was an 18-hour boat ride from the main islands of Galapagos.
I knew that the people on this boat, diving this remote area of the Galapagos, to swim with schooling hammerheads, valued experiences. These were my kind of people.
I bought some microphones and planned to interview these divers, who I didn’t know yet, on the boat… and I did. That’s how Experiences You Should Have Podcast was born.
Check out the Video Below of our dive trip to the galapagos
Note on Accessibililty
Finding accessible travel adventures is important to me. Yes, I went and dove the Galapagos without my husband and child, but I want to find unique adventures around the world that we can do together… that doesn’t involve a cruise ship or Disney World (sorry, Disney is not my thing).
While not all of the experiences on the podcast are accessible, I find out the right experiences to add to our bucketlist. Including:
- Self Drive Safari in South Africa
- Swim with Humpback Whales
- Raft the Grand Canyon
- Skydive Everest
- Kayak Greenland