Diving done, forms sent off

We passed our Advanced Open Water PADI class on Sunday.

That feels pretty good. We each had an issue or two during the training and both managed to work through the stress or problem. Heck, that's what training is for. Or as I like to say, Scuba training is all the ways you can die that you'll almost never run into in real life. But now you know how to handle them. I even had to assist a beginning diver with an out of air emergency. It actually surprised me. This young fella cruises up next to me at the 15 foot safety stop and signals that he's "out of air". It took me a heartbeat or two to figure out that he was out of air and wasn't fucking with me. So I shared air, finished the safety stop then ascended to the surface with the PADI handshake. (link left arms so the out of air person doesn't lose the air hose going up). At the top I asked him if he was really out of air. He showed me his pressure gauge, which was buried at Zero.

Two things you NEVER do in Scuba. You never hold your breath (lungs can explode from pressure changes) and you NEVER NEVER NEVER run out of air.

Wacko.

The last day became interesting because our class had 14 Open Water students, and we two Advanced Open Water Students. Plus the 2 Dive Masters. The interesting part happened because at Blue Hole they have a compressor to refill the used tanks from the Saturday dive.

It was broken.

So we had to go through all the tanks to find the ones with a decent amount of air left for whatever skills we needed to do. One of those skills was the deep dive which takes a fair amount of air due to the depth and pressure. That probably led to the young fella having problems as much as anything. On Sunday Crystal and I did some Buoyancy work, the deep dive, and the mask skills for our full face masks. We did fine with all of that.

Of course, that's partly because Crys did the deep dive kind of accidentally on Saturday night during the night dive. :D . It's easy to get disoriented on a night dive, and when her suit lost buoyancy and the depth increased a bit she ended up on the bottom for a minute or two. She handled it perfectly. Her response was thoughtful, measured and appropriate. I freaked out a little when I checked on my "buddy" and she'd dropped like a rock. :D It all turned out well. I ended up putting a little too much pressure on my ears in my hurry to get down to her since I wasn't sure how much air she had. That turned out fine as well.

We also ran through the classroom part of the enhanced air module. They'll mail us the test and then we'll be able to use Nitrox/EAN with higher oxygen contents to dive longer and more comfortably.

The full face masks worked out well though it took us both a good bit of the diving weekend to get them tuned to our faces and get used to using them. My other odd thing was getting used to the new BCD (the vest that has an air bladder, holds your tank, weights and everything else. Twice I dropped half my weights to the bottom of the damned pool and our instructor (Rex) had to retrieve them. That was a bit embarrassing.

Rex, by the way, was fantastic to work with. He was kind, patient, considerate and worked with our low experience levels to help us succeed. Good dude.

Santa Rosa, NM. A culinary delight

We've now had 4 meals out while in Santa Rosa, NM for Scuba school. 

We went to the Silver Moon Cafe the first night. The next day we ate at the Comet 2 drive-in for lunch and Diego's Pizza in Joseph's Bar for dinner. Today was at Joseph's Restaurant. As an aside, Joseph's bar which includes the separate business of Diego's Pizza is actually attached to the back of Joseph's Restaurant.

We met the Santa Rosa equivalent of Cheech and Chong at the pizza joint. They hang out at the bar and when we ordered a Veggie Pizza and it came out with sausage they loudly declared, "That's a dead order, bring it here". Then they feasted on free pizza. They also regaled us with tales and were fun to talk to. The bar looks pretty sketch, but the food and beer were good.

Joseph'sRestaurant had good food and won hands down for having the highest quality silverware in Santa Rosa thus far. We've had LOTS of mexican food, and it was all good. Each and every place had veggie chili both red and green. Friendly staff and quite helpful too.

The food has been a treat. We finished up our Advanced Open Water PADI scuba stuff today. We celebrated with a margarita and lunch.  Now we are chilling. I'm so sleepy I can't even describe it. We'll head home tomorrow, here's hoping for good weather.

and.......

I figured it out. They call it Blue Hole because when you dive in 61 degree water and get out to get naked in the parking lot in the dark and 45 degrees, your asshole turns blue

Good food and almost a little fun

Blue Hole, NM. Advanced Open Water PADI certification trip.

We went over for a look this morning, and thought we were meeting the class at 7, but the teach forgot to tell us it was at a hotel instead of the actual dive site. :D

So we took a couple pictures:








Then there was a fun board so we took a pic of Crystal




And she put her suit on so I had to take a pic of that. :D



Then we got into the "Hole" for a while. This morning we did Underwater Navigation and some work on Peak Performance Buoyancy. We took a break for a delicious lunch at The Comet 2 Drivein. Not really a drive in, but the food was great and the service was good too.

We go back tonight for the Night Dive, which won't take long. After that we'll try Joey's for dinner and a margarita. Tomorrow we'll drown doing mask skills for the full face mask, work on Buoyancy some more and do the "Deep" dive. In this case it's to 81' which altitude corrects for what would be 100' starting at sea level. We're at about 4400' of altitude here in Santa Rosa, NM.

Updates as conditions warrant. With any luck I won't drop my weights to the bottom of the pond again. That was a bit of a mess.

Advanced Open Water Scuba Training.

We find ourselves in Santa Rosa, New Mexico just off old Route 66. Santa Rosa is home to the Blue Hole. OK, not THE Blue Hole, that one is off the coast of Belize and is 400 feet deep, surrounded by a barrier reef and one of the worlds great wonders.

This Blue Hole is a deep clear spring at 61 degrees F. It's about 80 feet across at the top and 81 feet deep with a diameter of 130 feet at the bottom. It has been many things in the past but is now a winter scuba diving mecca for the west since it's warm enough while wearing a 7mm diving suit to do a bit of winter diving. That's why we're here, to get our Advanced Open Water certificate from Abyss Scuba under the PADI banner.

We are up and getting ready for class. 😃 Mostly just reviewing this morning’s two dives. Probably the full face one and buoyancy. Class is at 7 then we’ll go find some good coffee until around 9 when we’ll get dressed for diving. We’ll dive from about 9:30 tp 11:30, then have the middle of the day off until we go back for our night dive at 5:30. I’m figuring we’ll be outta there by 7 PM tonight. We’ll go back from 8 to 10 AM on Sunday then it’s at least 12 hours before we can go over a pass, so we’re still planning on driving home on Monday (Probably early, I think we’d both like to get home.)

(That was my message to Rich, who's watching our house this morning).

For the certificate you do 5 things. Deep dive and Underwater Navigation are required. We're also doing the class for our fancy full face diving masks. (yay, more mask skills) along with peak buoyancy and a night dive. The buoyancy will be really helpful and the night dive means we can go to the Caribbean and dive with the bioluminescent plankton and stuff. We'd both pretty much rather take a beating than do mask skills again but once done we'll have the premier masks you can dive with. :D

We're also getting the rest of our scuba stuff delivered and set up so we won't have to rent anything but tanks and/or a special suit from here on out. Abyss gave us a pretty good deal and it's nice to have a local shop to depend on.

OK, time to get my ass moving.

We did get a bit of snow over the last 3 days :D Worked out perfect though as I had all 3 days off. Three days ago we went out and split and hauled wood to the wood storage (we were a little tardy this year). We decided to unload when Crystal mentioned that the weather was calling for snow. That was perfect as we got 6 inches of light fluffy snow that night. The next day was sunny and gorgeous so I moved snow and we chilled out. Then it snowed lightly all day yesterday with us waking up to 4 more inches of a bit heavier snow. I fired up the snow blower and my 30 foot broom and moved snow, cleared the chicken run and swept the solar panels. Then the sun came out. :D Life is good.