Training the Best

So I figured while I wait for training to go 30,000ft above sea level to start, I would get some training for 120 feet below sea level.

I've always wanted to go SCUBA diving, ever since my Aunt Edee and Uncle Rod brought back picture of their diving trips to Bon Air when I was still in elementary school. The fish, the water, the adventure of it all appealed to me. Unfortunately, growing up in Charlotte doesn't do much to nurture a budding SCUBA passion. There were some dive shops, and I remember talking my father into taking me into one when I was in my early teenage years, but even if I had the money to take the classes, there aren't exactly prime diving locales in the area. Lakes Norman and Wylie are so murky you wouldn't be able to see your hand extended in front of your face and the ocean off of the coast (5 hours away) isn't much clearer.

So I signed up for lessons to the tune of $170 for three nights of instruction and a weekend of diving. You have to buy your own mask, snorkel, flippers, and wetsuit booties, which cost me another $300. No big deal, I can use this stuff for snorkeling if I never dive again. That's not likely though, I think I'm hooked.

There is a lot of classroom instruction before you even hit the water in the pool; lots of learning about pressure, physiological effects on the body, safety, etc. After two nights of classroom instruction, we hit the pool.

We did a lot of seemingly silly exercises then finally strapped on the gear and started to breathe underwater. A friend told me that my first breath underwater would be really weird and he was right. Your mask blocks your vision in the periphery so when you breathe in underwater your mind stumbles for a minute to figure out why you are not sucking in water, but cool dry air. You can't see the regulator so it doesn't immediately click where this air is coming from. Once I got the basic skills down I was like a kid with a new toy. The other students stood around and talked between exercises, I dove back underwater and swam around. At the end of the night, at about ten o'clock at night, the other students were eager to get out and get something to eat, I wanted to swim some more.

Saturday we drove to Morris Springs, a freshwater spring several miles inland. The water was crystal clear, the visibility was better than fifty feet. It was, however, 68 degrees. That wetsuit was much appreciated. Our first dive was comical; we all struggled to maintain our buoyancy and bounced back and forth as a result of our efforts.

One of the hardest skills to master in diving is neutral buoyancy. In an effort to hover in the water, you control your breathing and inflate and deflate your buoyancy control vest. The problem is that as your ascent the air in your vest expands and vice versa, so changes have to be small or you will find yourself rocketing towards the surface or crashing to the bottom. This could be dangerous in deeper waters, but we were only in 15' of water so no harm done. The four of us in the class spent our first dive writhing around in the water, struggling to maintain neutral buoyancy, struggling to maintain a horizontal body position, just struggling. My dive buddy was almost ready to quit after that dive. I wasn't encouraged by my performance but I wasn't ready to quit, no way.

Much like anything new we got progressively better as we spent more time in the water. I felt pretty good by the time we finished our second dive on Saturday.

Sunday's dive was a beach dive. We went out to Pensacola beach, waded into the water, and swam out to our dive position. It's pretty easy when you are wearing an air filled vest and fins, but still tiring.

We descended to the bottom in about twenty feet of water and found ourselves in a murky mess. We had landed in a silt field and had stirred it up. I could see my dive buddy because we were shoulder to shoulder, but that's about all I could see. We actually had to hold hands in a line with our instructor leading us out of the muck.

Once out of the mess I finally got to enjoy diving. I had learned the skills well enough to be comfortable in the water and looked around at the world around me. There wasn't much more than the remnants of an old fishing pier and some fish but it was exciting to be in this new world. I especially had fun with the three dimensional movement of the underwater world, doing some headstands over my buddy and doing some flips just for fun. Way cool.

// posted by Josh @ 9/19/2005 08:58:00 PM