Name: Rob "Scubadog" Wade
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 15 Oct 3248
Place of Birth: In the black, somewhere between Synuefai NC-J B14-0 and California Sector BA-A E6
Height: 5'7" / 1.7018m
Weight: 160lbs / 72.6kg
Hair: Brown, thinning
Eyes: Brown
Build: Average-to-athletic

In the Before Time, one of the favorite past-times for about 1% of Earth's population was scuba diving.  Back when it was relatively safe to do so.  As people expanded out into the 'verse, a percent of that percent realized many other planets afforded them rather unique opportunities to continue enjoying that activity.  I come from a seriously long line of those types.  My parents were explorers, but they didn't just do it to make a pretty decent bit selling cartography--they did it for the sheer thrill of finding newer and more unique places to try some variation on scuba diving.  You might think that just simply popping out the ship hatch and knocking out a spacewalk would be about the same thing...but you'd be wrong.  And so, like my parents before me, I find myself willing to "dive" just about anywhere, with anybody...hence the nickname.

My parents were on one of their frequent work-and-play journeys when my mother figured out I was going to arrive a bit ahead of schedule.  Explorers on their own in small ships learn very quickly how to be completely self-sufficient.  With a very modest, yet well stocked, medical bay, dear old mom and dad brought me into the 'verse with nary an hiccup.  Well, except for one small thing.  During the excitement of actually bringing me on the scene, father neglected drop out of hyperspace and also neglected to configure the ship's controls so that when it dropped down into supercruise at the next jump point.  The result?  Their little craft dropped out of FSD, then plowed full supercruise into the star's coronasphere.  The ship's computer did react to that and yanked the ship down to thrusters only.  But the damage was already done.  With the FSD out of commission, it would be over a year before we touched down on a planet with enough breathable atmo to exact repairs on the hull and the FSD.  It was another four months of scrounging with the SRV to gather the materials needed for the repairs.

Fast-forward several years.  My parents had both passed in another tragic--and fatal--example of not paying attention to detail.  Heck of a thing to be sitting in class at university and receive a wave that your only living family has perished, with little more than a broken, faint "mayday" bouncing off of a nav beacon.  They left me just enough money to afford a Sidewinder.  Rather than dwell and become bitter, I simply resorted to the one thing I knew.  Exploring.

So, here I am, many years later, in the Colonia bubble after finally making enough to get my Diamondback Explorer for the trek.  And, doggonit, if I didn't almost not make it because doing the exact same thing my parents did--not paying attention.  The DBE is a hearty little ship, but no ship can withstand stupid.  I limped to Colonia with 30% hull left, cracks in the cockpit, a dead AFMS and most of my modules damaged below 50% or done completely.  But the gorram DBE held it together just long enough.  It's been refurbished and upgraded now, of course (well, as much as you can out around Colonia).  And I still take my beloved and trusty Ceti Fox out every so often.  But the credits I made off of all the cartography from the journey allowed me to expand my fleet quite a bit.  Most of my ships are variations on exploration-minded...some more defensible than others.  But now that the Thargoids have shown up, I figured it would only be a matter of time before they take mind to visiting us all the way out here.  

But, who knows.  I'm getting the itch again.  I think another really long trip into the black is long overdue.  I may miss out on all the excitement if it does make its way to Colonia.  Who knows what I may come back to.  If I come back at all.  With all the doom and gloom these days, I may catch a wave that it's all cinders and I decide to land on the surface of a star.  Or, to borrow from one of my favorite go-to Before Times mini-series, of course, this could simply be another sign of my tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety.  But, heck, I've earned it.

See you in the black!