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2004-02-13 :: SCUBA Class
About a month ago, Amy and I finalized our plans to go see our
friends Tim and Cambria in the Caribbean for a week in March (see
pics from our previous visit).
This time our friend Pete
is going to join us (or rather, we'll be joining Pete, as it was his
idea to do this during his spring break from law school). In any case,
we all decided that it would be cool to try some SCUBA diving while
we're down there. Since Pete and I don't know how to dive, we both
enrolled in SCUBA training classes (Amy also took a one night
refresher course). So.. for two nights a week for the last three
weeks, I've been driving over to Dublin for training at a place called
Cap'n Aqua's.
While repetitive at times, the class has been pretty interesting so
far. On Monday nights, we have classroom meetings, where the instructor
basically explains SCUBA stuff and then tells us diving stories of dumb
things he's seen people do. On Wednesdays, we go over to this outdoor
Olympic-sized pool, put on all our gear, and practice in the
water. I should point out that it is February, and that while the pool
is heated, you've still got to get into and out of the wet suit
outdoors (and wet). Too bad I didn't bring a camera- we all looked
kind of cool afterwards, walking around in our wetsuits with steam
wafting off of us. Anyways, it's been interesting, but honestly, I'll
be glad when the class is over. It's tough taking a class after 9
hours of work, especially when you have to pay attention to things
that your life might depend on.
This weekend we're doing the last part of the class: an open water
dive. I've been dreading this dive a bit for a couple of
reasons. Mainly it's because the dive will be in Monterey, where they
say the water is cold, cloudy, and loaded with kelp. Kelp bothers me a
bit, just because out dive instructor has told us that every year they
have to fish a couple of dead divers out of the kelp forest (I should
point out that most of these divers panicked, and didn't do basic
emergency procedures, like ditching their weight belts). Like most of
the California coastline, Monterey can also have strong underwater
currents that pull you away from your buddies in a hurry. Oh yeah, and
then there are the normal things to worry about with SCUBA diving,
like how you're strapping your oxygen supply to your back, and that
you don't live for long without it.
Anyways, the drive to Monterey got underway at around 9pm tonight
(Amy had to work late and I had to pick up gear from the dive
shop). It was raining in Livermore when we left. There's nothing like
a good two hour drive in the rain at night to make you contemplate all
the worries that you have for the next day. Worry worry worry..
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2004-02-14 :: Open Water Dives
Today, my scuba class did its first set of open water dives at
Monterey. The day started off pretty hectic. I managed to
misestimate how much time it would take to get up, find breakfast, and
make it down to the beach in time for our 11am meeting. My nervousness
about being late was purely invented, though- my dive class is pretty
casual, and if anything, the dive master wondered why we had showed up
on time. I had plenty of time to think about this myself, because we
spent the next half hour or so by our gear in the parking lot, waiting
for our class's turn to get into the water.

Bright flippers make it easier for them to find the body
Ooof. So, one of the things that sucks about scuba diving is
putting on all the equipment when you're not in the water. Being that
I'm about as buoyant as Pamela Anderson, I've got to wear a weight belt with
about 30-35 pounds in it. Throw in a full wet suit, fins, and an
aluminum air tank, and you've got one heap of heaviness to carry to
the water. My clumsiness was also increased because it was the first
time I had to wear a hood and gloves in the water. I waddled into the
waves, praying that I wouldn't get knocked over and steam rolled by the
surf.
As I was walking in, I remember thinking "hmm, you know, the water
isn't as cold as I thought it would be." Then, I put my face into the
water so I could see my feet as I was putting my fins on. My next two
thoughts were "Holy crap" and "I must not have pulled the chin part of
my hood all the way up" as the coldness shot through my face. The
shock made it that much harder to tighten my fin straps, get oriented,
and over to my dive master. The hood also made it very difficult to
understand what anyone was saying. When the rest of the class started
to submerge, I figured I should do the same. Easier said than done,
though-even with the 30 pound weight belt, I had to constantly kick to
stay down. Oof. Fortunately, the instructor had some additional
weights with him that he could load me up with. He stuffed the right
side of my vest with a sack of weight. This kept me down, although it
also made me pitch to one side when I swam. Ooof. We did a few basic
skills tests, and then followed the instructor on a tour of the
water.

I think these guys lost their car keys or something
There wasn't all that much to see in the bay that day. The water's
visibility was only about 10 feet, so we all scrambled to stay close
to the instructor. The fish weren't that big, but there were tons of
colorful starfish. Our instructor also found a well-camouflaged crab,
and this, flabby thing he said was a Spanish Dancer. It's hard to
describe the dancer, it sort of looked like an uncooked filet of meat
that flapped away when our instructor touched it with a
starfish. Odd.
The day's second dive went much better than the first for me. This
time I went in with more confidence and got situated in the water a
lot faster. We did some more skill tests and another tour of the
bay. I paid a little more attention to my breathing, and was able to
control my depth better just by taking larger or smaller breaths as I
needed them. Pretty cool. At the end of the day, our dive master
revealed that he had only used half a tank, while the rest of us had
cleaned out two tanks (plus he had gone on one more dive than us that
day). He also told us that while he was 300 pounds, he only needed 20
pounds of weight to keep him down. I guess there's a lot you can do to
get yourself conditioned to staying underwater.

"Now everyone, punch your neighbor"
The class broke up at around 3pm. Amy and I went back to drop some
of the gear off and get changed. We avoided the downtown part of
Monterey and cruised over to the south side (pebble beach?). Amy
showed me this nice resort where her dad comes every year for a math
conference. We walked down to the beach and watched a tai-chi class
practice by the water. A few surfers braved the rough waves (and were
pretty good). We then headed into town and found this amazing Mexican
restaurant.. Mmm.. maybe it was just that we hadn't had a real meal
all day, but the food was incredible. We ended the night early, super
tired from all the day's events.
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2004-02-15 :: The Old Nerd and the Sea
We returned to the pier this morning for some more open water
diving, after a solid night of sleep. The first dive today was the
trickiest of the whole course because we had to perform a few of the
more complicated skills. Once we got out into the water, we had to
take off both our buoyancy control vests (the thing the air tank is
attached to) and our weight belts, and then put them back on. I'd had
some trouble with this in the pool since I'm a bit clumsy, so I was
worried about doing these in the open water. Fortunately, we only had
to do these on the surface, and the water was pretty calm. It took a
lot of flopping around in the water, but I eventually got the vest and
belt back on and functioning.
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Later on in the dive, we had to practice a shared breathing
ascent. That's where you're underwater and you
"calmly" motion to your buddy that you need to borrow their spare air
hose and go up to the surface. Our diving instructor had a hard time
not smirking when he described the hand signal dialog that goes along
with the acquisition of a spare air regulator. He then admitted, "Ok,
so if I'm out of air and you're near me, you'll know I want to borrow
your spare regulator because I'll be clawing at your vest trying to
get it into my mouth." In any case, everything went fine when I had
to do the ascent with my buddy.

Making sure my spare regulator works
For the last dive on the trip, all I had to do was pick out a
course and go explore it with my dive buddy. At first, I thought
everything would be cool because my buddy said he didn't want to do
anything difficult. However, once we get in the water, he tells me
that he wants to go through the kelp forest and swim all the hell out
to this boat that's a long way away. After convincing him that we
should probably not get too far into the kelp, we set off. Before
long, we were through the kelp and at the maximum depth for the dive
(just 30ft). He signals me that he wants to go to the surface, so I
meet him there. Is there a problem? Nope, he just wants to talk about
how great wet suits are. Huh? He does this like three or four times
during our trip. Given that rising and sinking takes time and effort,
this was all kind of annoying.

The seals were not impressed
My dive buddy was also bad at navigation. I kept a close eye on our
position, direction, depth, and air supply ("I can't fight this
feeling"! or is that REO Speedwaggon?). Every time I'd try to get him
back on course (basically just a loop back to shore), he'd start
pulling towards deeper water. My air started getting close to the
limit that we were told to hit the beach with, so I made him come up,
so we could swim back to the beach on the surface. Crap. We were a
long way out for this kind of swimming, and as I realized, my legs
were already tired from two days of diving. It took a long time for us
to get back. At least I was the responsible one.

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Back on land, our diving instructor had a BBQ lunch waiting for
us. Mmmm.. I learned something else today- guys that are 300 pounds
and have their own BBQ rig probably know how to cook good food. We ate
it up while collectively scrambling to fill in our dive logs with all
the right numbers. It felt good to have completed the class. I'll admit that
I was nervous about the whole thing, but now that I've done it, I can
say that I feel relatively confident that I can keep my head during
a recreational dive.
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As we were leaving, I noticed that there was a diver out in the
water waving his arm over his head. Funny, I thought, that's like the
sign for help or something. At first I figured that it was just a guy
in one of the emergency rescue classes (we'd seen people practicing
mouth-to-mouth on the beach, earlier). Then this diver yells out "call
the coast guard". Crap. Dive instructors on the pier start scrambling
to the beach, as people in kayaks start rushing out to the guy. While
they're hauling him back, fire trucks and an ambulance show up and
rush down to the water's edge. The kayakers bring him back to the
EMTs, who immediately put him on oxygen. Eventually, the guy gets up
and is able to walk it off.
We joined the rest of the pier in watching all of this unfold. As
is typical of bystander crowds, we never found out what happened or
how serious things really were. One lady told us that she was a local,
and that this kind of thing seems to happen every other week down
here. Doah. Good thing I heard this after I did my dives. I dunno.. My
friend Gary from work said that when he did his open water dives at
Monterey, they were pulling a diver out when he was going in. When
Gary came out of the water, they were putting the diver in a body
bag. Yikes. Maybe we won't be doing so much diving in California.
Anyways, that pretty much ended the weekend. The only other thing
to report from the trip is that there is a town between San Jose and
Monterey called "El Bano". Even if there's no tilde over the n, you'd
think that they'd pick something different. Yep..
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