When Andy Siebert moved from South Florida to the Sacramento area in 1990 as he was approaching age 50, it was only at the urging of his wife, Lynn, who promised him a SCUBA store if the opportunity ever arose. In 1996, the opportunity presented itself, and Andy became the owner / operator of Scuba World Sacramento, Inc., a PADI dive store on Madison Avenue. With the same bravado necessary to open a dive shop when many people are contemplating retirement, Andy and Lynn recently tripled the size of their store and will be celebrating with steep discounts and special offers on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, June 1, 2, and 3.

Andy was SCUBA certified just out of high school at a local YMCA in Michigan. "I was 19 at the time, but I didn't take up the sport seriously until I was 42," said Andy. Lynn admits that the lure of opening his own shop was a bribe to get him to Sacramento so that she could look after her aging parents. There are not many instructors, let alone SCUBA store owners, who continue to actively teach classes. But Andy does. On any given weekend, you will find him in the classroom at the shop, in a pool or at the Coast Guard Jetty in Monterey Bay introducing new divers to or assisting new divers in developing new skills in what many consider to be an extreme sport. To Andy, who has logged over 3,000 dives, it is life. "Because of my age, I will never be able to travel to outer space," said Andy. "SCUBA diving offers me the opportunity to visit an alien environment and to explore one of the only two remaining frontiers." And explore, he does. Lynn is the driving force behind SCUBA World travel. Coordinating dive trips to locales as local as Monterey and as exotic as Tahiti, Fiji, Galapagos Islands and Indonesia, Lynn is in her element when planning trips. "We've got it going on - whether you are a snorkeler, like me, a beginning diver or an advanced diver looking for the thrill of the dive," said Lynn. "Our trips offer up the unexpected." Andy is the first to attest to that fact. One of his most memorable experiences was diving with a whale shark over 40 feet long on a trip to the Galapagos Islands just two years ago. And he will tell you that his traveling dive team - the divers who accompany him on any given trip - have stories to tell, as well. On a recent trip to Tahiti, Andy opted out of a dive due to sinus problems. On the way back from that particular dive his dive team happened on a mother humpback whale and her calf. They were invited to swim with the mammals by the divemaster. It was an experience, Andy said, that they will never forget. Nor will he, even though he missed it.

Diving. An extreme sport reserved for the young? Or an opportunity for all ages to explore a foreign environment? Ask Andy. For more information, call 916-332-8294 or go online to www.scubaworldsacto.com.