Fourth Dive Class

Technically, I'm writing this entry from the grave. I died in the pool last night! For being dead, all things considered, I feel pretty good (and this is after riding 20 miles on the bike this morning). Let me start from the beginning, before I get to my demise.

Last night's lecture was the one I was expecting last week. For the record, this is the second time in my education history where I've been a week ahead of schedule! Yeah, it's an accident, but hey, it counts (although by admitting this, I'm probably on slacker probation)! The lecture was primarily set around understanding the dive tables. Other then adding about fifty acronyms, the concept is straight forward. My favorite part though, just like college, after they teach you, then you find out that almost nobody uses this old method anymore. Part of me understands why conceptually it's important to understand what is going on, but my logic side says "that's just dumb, teach us what's relevant now". No, I didn't slit my wrists at his point, hence dying. Dive computers do all the work now, I suppose knowing the tables are a good thing, besides if the dive computers run Windows, they might blue screen in the deep blue.

Now my favorite part, the pool work. The first drills were kind of a repeat of week two, but this time we had our tanks on. We practiced two types of water entries, "walk the plank" and "leap of faith". My favorite drill of the night was the next one. We had to give all of our masks to the instructor, then swim one lap (on SCUBA) around the pool with our left hand on the bottom of the pool and our right hand on the wall. After we did our lap, then we had to swim to the middle of the shallow end, find our mask out of all the masks on the bottom, clear it and return to the surface. By luck of the draw I went first, good because I didn't have to worry about running into anybody, bad because I had a 1/9 chance of finding my mask (2 people didn't show this week). They really need to clean that pool, my left hand felt like it was rubbing against sandpaper the whole time with the amount of sand on the bottom. I didn't get my mask first on my first guess, I ended up clearing the one I found, then with nice clear vision, it was easy to find my mask. The second to last drill was removing all of our SCUBA gear, floating it on the surface, then swimming away from it and finally returning to it and putting it all back on. Not exactly sure what that accomplished, but it's nice to know I can dress and undress in the ocean if I have to.

The last drill of the night was buddy breathing. Equipment problems are very rare from what I can tell with diving, but it's always best to be prepared for the worse. Each diver has a backup regulator, but if your tank goes empty, then a second regulator isn't going to do you any good. First, we learned the signals to inform your buddy that you are in some deep sh*t. Next was practicing the steps of handing your buddy your backup regulator, checking that they are okay, then heading to the surface...where your buddy is obligated to buy you a beer. That wasn't included for some reason in the steps, but I think that should be law. Three feet from your buddy, this was very easy to do.

The instructor then decided to make it more "real world". One buddy had to swim the length of the pool as fast as they could. The other buddy waited in the shallow end. On the way back from the lap, the swimmer pulled his regulator as soon as he hit the shallow end of the pool, gave the signals for "I'm in deep sh*t", at that point the buddy could start swimming towards the swimmer and attempt to save the person. I thought this would be no problem, what did I get for thinking this, death! I swam first, what seems like a few simple tasks is anything but. I was more concerned about getting that last deep breath of air as I crossed into the shallow end and was way too slow signaling my buddy, hence we didn't close the distance we needed to. By the time I got the regulator from him, I was out of air along with being gassed from swimming so fast and I had to surface to get some real air. Nothing was said by the instructor, I know I wasn't the only one either, but I consider that a death on my part.

I thought that was a great example. It seemed so simple in theory, yet when it was happening real time it was a completely different story and it's easy to see how mistakes can be made in a panic situation like that. I absolutely learned two lessons from this drill, your buddy distance has to be kept to a minimum and you need to practice with your buddy. It's somewhat strange to work with people you don't know. I know if my real buddy (Becca) had been teamed up with me, I would have been saved, but it still drives home the point of practice for everything and there can't be any 50ft side adventures away from your buddy to check out that cool fish, just like the underlying theme of Top Gun, never leave your wingman.

I learned a lesson, it took me dying to believe it though. Now just let my hit that respawn key and I'm back ;)