My Scuba Diving Adventure

I'm a firm believer in thinking that you can learn or benefit from almost any experience or situation.  And if you aren't willing to try something new, then you will never know what you are missing out on.

 

When my son lost his wallet, I told him that maybe this will help him to learn to keep better track of things. When my daughter had to re-do an assignment, I said that she will benefit more from the experience that way.  When my husband did not get a job that he wanted, I told him that he probably had a better job waiting for him.

      
So, that is the attitude that I decided to stick with during a weekend of scuba diving lessons last January...

 

To get a basic scuba diving license, the class consisted of two main parts.

The first part was taught Friday night through Sunday afternoon at an indoor pool. Since it was January in North Dakota, that made pretty good sense to my husband and I.

 

The second part includes four outdoor swims at Minnesota lakes, which for obvious reasons are scheduled at the opposite time of the year.

Our instructor Dwayne, like any instructor, had a very specific set of skills and lessons that he needed to teach us.

 The first scuba lesson began early Friday evening at the base pool. It was called “how to help the teacher carry the scuba tanks and all the rest of the gear into the pool area.” 

 

In Dwayne’s defense, he did say that we could choose not to help, but then he also added that he might also forget to sign our class certificates if we chose not to.  Probably needless to say, we all (cheerfully) lugged the equipment into the building.

What I learned from that lesson was that yes, you can get frostbite very quickly when bare skin touches freezing metal - that has been outside-  in North Dakota -in the dead of winter.

 

 Here are some other things that I had learned by the time our classes had finished up:

If you put accidentally put someone else’s air tank on and that air tank is twice as heavy as yours, you can’t just "let it go and try to work with it".  (It's not exactly like quicksand, but basically the same concept).

Also, along that line, when someone hands you a duffle bag and says to you “Here’s your bag,” don’t just say “Hey, thanks for the help” and go about putting the gear on.  You still say “Hey, thanks for the help,” but as soon as that person has turned around, you get your beady little eyes focused on the name tag on that bag and make sure that it actually has your name on it. 

FYI: another sign that you may have someone else’s gear is when the fins that fit the night before won’t stay on your feet today, no matter how tightly you strap them on. Duh!  (Again, not exactly the same thing, but same concept).

One of the many skills that Dwayne taught us that weekend was how to float on the bottom of the pool on our fin tips - officially called the "fin pivot."  There are several things that help you accomplish this and one of those things is the weight belt around your waist. 

The amount of weight needed on your belt is determined at the beginning of your scuba diving classes and is based on your weight.  The goal is to have the correct amount of weight on the belt to help you to go down deeper in the water when you want to - and to stay there for awhile if you choose to do so. 

So here's what I took from my fin pivot lesson: if everyone but you is beautifully fin floating on the bottom of the pool and you are spending the entire time just trying to GET to the bottom of the pool, you might want to have that weight belt thing checked out. (If I had been in the above video, you would not have seen more than the bottom of my feet desperately kicking, as I tried to get down to the bottom of the pool to fin float with the rest of my class...)

Another task that we had to be able to do was to hook several different hoses up properly to several different pieces of equipment.  A few of my fellow class mates did it like they had been doing it their whole life, but to me, that tank and all those hoses might just as well have been Medusa with a thousand snakes coming out of her head. It was just that overwhelming to me.   

We also had to know the name of every piece of equipment and what  purpose it served.  I am not usually the dumb kid in class, but that just seemed like a lot of information to learn so quickly.   Not counting the diving  gloves, there are still 25 pieces of equipment that you have to learn on the spot.   Maybe I shouldn’t complain.  We did have the previous four days to read over 300 pages of material with this information in it.  (No sarcasm here…)

      

Now, Dwayne was a very nice person, but I think that since he had been teaching this class for so many years, he took a lot of things for granted. 

 For instance, he would announce a new drill, quickly rattle off the numerous steps for the activity, then expect that we follow through with it – with fewer than 10,000 questions being asked first! 

Come on!  If I am going underwater and have to rely on artificial means in order to breathe, you had better believe that I am going to have some very detailed and specific questions!

 By the time the first step for a new skill came out of this guy’s mouth, I already had a hundred questions. How was I supposed to concentrate on any of the following steps when I was still trying to wrap my head around the first one???

From this, I learned that my husband may have been right all these years – apparently I read just a tad too much between the lines.

Another lesson from Dwane: while you are under water, you can NEVER hold your breath and you need to breath very slowly and deliberately at ALL TIMES.  That is one tough lesson for someone, OK- me- who does almost everything fast, including talking and breathing.  I learned that the expression “Old habits die hard” is really not just an expression.

 

 Something else that occurred to me later is that this weekend should have been a money-making endeavor for me. The way I figure it, that lifeguard who had a front row and center seat to see my live comedy act all weekend should have had to pay at least something for all of the very apparent entertainment he got out of it!

What else did I learn from my adventure?  I found out that no matter where you are or what you are doing, people find a way of letting you know what they are thinking.

For instance, even eight feet under the water, completely geared up, with only his eyes showing, I knew exactly what my husband was thinking when he did this (see picture below) to me several times over the course of the weekend:

Yes, he was shaking his head and rolling his eyes at me -  under the water!!! 

(I am still trying to convince myself that this is one of those things that we will be heartily laughing about years later...)

 

 Anyway, my point in telling you about my scuba diving experience is certainly not to discourage you from trying this, or any other new adventure.  In fact, I am glad that I took the class.

My point is actually one of encouragement. 

 After my scuba diving experience, with all of its trials and embarrassing moments, if I can look at the bright side and can come up with more pluses than minuses, then I am pretty darn sure that you can do the same with absolutely ANY –(and I mean ANY!) new endeavor that you try!