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SCUBA DIVING! WOOO!
Nov. 10th, 2006 12:11 pmI had my first class in the pool last night. It was awesome. Right at the end, we'd been going up and down too much and I couldn't equalize my right ear so the teacher told me to go to the surface (the pool is 13 feet deep) and the others came up a minute or two later. We'd finished all the exercises and were just blowing bubble rings at that point anyway.
So I learned how to:
We did the 200m swim test, which was super easy because the pool was really small so we covered about a third of the distance just by pushing off the wall. And then we had to tread water for 10 minutes, except we could have our snorkels on and didn't actually have to keep our heads above water. I guess the point was to make sure we were comfortable breathing through the snorkels, not that we had the ability to tread water without any floatation (with the BCD, you can just establish positive buoyancy and float but we just had swim suits, masks and snorkels for the treadding water test). So we all just sort of floated and swam around.
This is going to be so awesome when we get to go to the ocean. That'll be a week on Saturday; we're going to Monterey for our open water dives. I have my Turbo Kick Box certification on the Sunday so I have to miss that day of diving but I can make it up soon after. I'm taking Thanksgiving week off work so maybe I could go some time that week.
So I know Mel and Laurie dive (and conveniently live in the same state as I do) - do any of you? Too bad I'm starting in winter, this probably isn't the greatest time for cold water diving because you get out and it's all chilly on the beach. I've been thinking about going to Hawaii some time this winter. Probably early next year. That'll be great. I'm not going to buy my own equipment yet, I'll just rent it for now. Until I'm sure I have time to go often enough that I'd be worth it. I do have my own mask, snorkel, fins, boots and gloves. And a 5mm wetsuit but that's not warm enough for Monterey.
In conclusion: woo! Diving!
So I learned how to:
- assemble and disassemble the equipment
- clear my mask when there's water in it
- equalize the air pressure in my ears
- take out the regulator and inflate the Buoyancy Control Device (BCD) by blowing into it...
- ...and then put the regulator back and continue breathing
- help a buddy who's out of air...
- ...and breathe from someone else's alternative air source in case I'm out of air
- and I learned a bunch of underwater hand signals like "watch me," "I have a problem," "go up," "I'm out of air" and "I'm OK."
We did the 200m swim test, which was super easy because the pool was really small so we covered about a third of the distance just by pushing off the wall. And then we had to tread water for 10 minutes, except we could have our snorkels on and didn't actually have to keep our heads above water. I guess the point was to make sure we were comfortable breathing through the snorkels, not that we had the ability to tread water without any floatation (with the BCD, you can just establish positive buoyancy and float but we just had swim suits, masks and snorkels for the treadding water test). So we all just sort of floated and swam around.
This is going to be so awesome when we get to go to the ocean. That'll be a week on Saturday; we're going to Monterey for our open water dives. I have my Turbo Kick Box certification on the Sunday so I have to miss that day of diving but I can make it up soon after. I'm taking Thanksgiving week off work so maybe I could go some time that week.
So I know Mel and Laurie dive (and conveniently live in the same state as I do) - do any of you? Too bad I'm starting in winter, this probably isn't the greatest time for cold water diving because you get out and it's all chilly on the beach. I've been thinking about going to Hawaii some time this winter. Probably early next year. That'll be great. I'm not going to buy my own equipment yet, I'll just rent it for now. Until I'm sure I have time to go often enough that I'd be worth it. I do have my own mask, snorkel, fins, boots and gloves. And a 5mm wetsuit but that's not warm enough for Monterey.
In conclusion: woo! Diving!
