Well, I did it. I am now a PADI Certified Open Water Diver. My permanent card will have a picture of a shark on it. And now I know I can only dive to 130 feet, but that is still deeper than my pool.
Now I can plan my own dives. I stopped at the shop and bought some 2lb soft weights just in case I had floaty issues. And this time the dive was scheduled for a reasonable 10am. No way Dennis was going to feign sleeping while I loaded the heavy stuff in the car.
We dove on Saturday morning and I found a hermit crab and some starfish and blue claw crabs and baby flounder. I even took my mask off and stuck my tongue out at the dive master and took a couple of pictures with the underwater camera. We will see if they turn out. We took a spin under the railroad bridge and all around and then went to lunch.
On the way home I stopped at the shop to have my tank refilled and as I pulled up there was an explosion and smoke came out of every door and window of the shop. Before I could get to the door the dive tech came out of the smoke like in a Bruce Willis movie. Now I would have to get my tank filled somewhere else cause I had decided to meet some local divers at Dutch Springs on Sunday. I was taking along one of the other students divers I took the class with just in case the people I was meeting were axe murderers or something. I figured in an emergency there was a 50/50 chance they would get him first.
As it turned out they were great people and at the end of every dive they even brought me back.
Dutch Springs is a spring fed quarry that is for scuba diving (they have sunk all kinds of things to dive around like a firetruck, helicopter, bus, airplane, cars, etc) and then it has an Aqua Park for non-divers that has rafts and floats and water slides and stuff.
It was an interesting day. I brought doughnuts for breakfast but the 2 hour trip took me 4 hours using the navigation system in Dennis truck. (Does anyone remember the trip report to Hooters? Apparently it doesn‘t like me) So I missed breakfast.
Then we did 2 dives so I had to put on “The Wetsuit” twice!
The first dive we went along this quarry wall and checked out all the sights. My buoyancy issues caused me some distress when I suddenly popped up in the middle of the Aqua Park like the creature from the black lagoon. I said “Scuse me, never mind” and quietly sunk back down and started swimming before one of them came off the slide and fell on my head.
Getting out was tuff. One of the other divers had to carry my weight belt or I wasn’t going anywhere. Then I remembered that we had walked downhill (about 50 yards) to get here. I hoped to get back up the hill before the second dive, I needed some more air in my tank.
I was the only girl in the group of 7 divers. While I was “slow” getting into “the wetsuit” for the second dive, they were discussing how there was only one female diver who actually did justice to a wetsuit. I said “Excuse me!!! And I don’t?” I don’t take 40 minutes getting into a wetsuit for nothing ya know. All those other women divers just slap one on in 3 minutes and off they go without even looking in the mirror, that’s the problem.
On the second dive we were going to the firetruck. I was following my buddy and looking around, he had bright blue fins and I made sure I kept them in sight out of the corner of my eye.
Suddenly, we were in shallow water and my buddy stood up. So I did too… and then I screamed and scared the beejeezes out of some total stranger with bright blue fins I had followed home. And now I was lost……. Again.
So I swam in a circle for a while, and you know what? THEY CAME BACK AND FOUND ME. HA! They could have gone back to the campsite, packed up and left without any forwarding address but they didn’t.
We then went on to the firetruck which was kinda cool and then we played with the local fishies. Steve the fish will have a great time here, I will bring him next time I come. They picked up rocks and found these little crayfish and fed them to the bass that were swimming around and one of the guys caught a baby bass in his mask. It was half flooded with water and this little bass was swimming back and forth in it.
The trip back was uneventful but I still had to get back up the hill and into my car before the park closed at 5 and it was 3 oclock already! One of the guys carried my weight belt again and I made it.
They said they would keep me and I could come back.
I’m a diver now and I have dive buddies!! Imagine that.