BusterDive
December 4th, 2006, 01:40 PM
My preface is I got to dive, no matter what else happened I at least dove...
Sunday morning I get a call from one of the guys I was going to Rainbow river with, he got into an accident. Thankfully he was OK (if your reading this, our heart goes out to you). Probably not the best decision for us (me and another dive buddy that is) to go ahead with the dive because we've never been there before and had no knowledge of the terrain. But we REALLY wanted a dive, so off we went. After slight confusion surrounding where to park the retrieval car (yeah yeah, I know by the bridge), we were off to KP hole. I proudly pull out my shiny new DiveyakŪ and at least acted like I knew what I was doing and within a blistering 30 minutes we're off (by the way, the DiveyakŪ was surprisingly easy to get on and off of even with two loaded divers). As soon as my dive buddy was in the water I looked back to put up my brand new dive flag, it's gone, gift one to the river and lesson learned about securing gear for me. We continue anyway seeing as the DiveyakŪ has dive flags on both sides. So we dive. Drifting along for a while without getting into more than 8' of water we decide to re-board and paddle down a little further. This is about 40 minutes into the trip when we realise the no one brought the KEYS for the retrieval car! Oops. Still paddling away without seeing any depth we're getting a little tired, impatient, and worried. Ahhh, we see another kayaker, all hope is not lost! We ask the kayaker how far away the bridge is and she dropped a bomb on us, "oh your still about four hours from the bridge". Yikes! We had already been on the river for hours! For about 30 minutes that DiveyakŪ became a speedboat as the two of us paddled frantically trying to beat the setting sun. About an hour later we came to an unmarked fork in the river, and of course took the wrong way. Luckily we saw someone on the shoreline who pointed us in the right direction and we were back on track. This whole time we're silently pondering about the 2000 lbs of air we still have left in our tanks, but we're beat, disoriented, and a little unsure of our outcome. We decided we would wait until we saw the bridge before we would dive finally seeing it we jumped in for our victory dive! In the murkiest part of the entire @$%& river! But we made it! Sort of, still no keys. We talk a stranger into letting me into his BMW with a soaking wet 5mil and drive me back to KP(thank you kind stranger) for only ten bucks! Finally I drive back to the bridge get everything loaded up, pack in and get ready for the long journey home, and we lived happily ever after. Just kidding, 5 minutes up the road I get nailed and a four car pile-up and have to sit next to my busted up truck for the next two hours. Boy I wish I would have bought a sandwich.
Sunday morning I get a call from one of the guys I was going to Rainbow river with, he got into an accident. Thankfully he was OK (if your reading this, our heart goes out to you). Probably not the best decision for us (me and another dive buddy that is) to go ahead with the dive because we've never been there before and had no knowledge of the terrain. But we REALLY wanted a dive, so off we went. After slight confusion surrounding where to park the retrieval car (yeah yeah, I know by the bridge), we were off to KP hole. I proudly pull out my shiny new DiveyakŪ and at least acted like I knew what I was doing and within a blistering 30 minutes we're off (by the way, the DiveyakŪ was surprisingly easy to get on and off of even with two loaded divers). As soon as my dive buddy was in the water I looked back to put up my brand new dive flag, it's gone, gift one to the river and lesson learned about securing gear for me. We continue anyway seeing as the DiveyakŪ has dive flags on both sides. So we dive. Drifting along for a while without getting into more than 8' of water we decide to re-board and paddle down a little further. This is about 40 minutes into the trip when we realise the no one brought the KEYS for the retrieval car! Oops. Still paddling away without seeing any depth we're getting a little tired, impatient, and worried. Ahhh, we see another kayaker, all hope is not lost! We ask the kayaker how far away the bridge is and she dropped a bomb on us, "oh your still about four hours from the bridge". Yikes! We had already been on the river for hours! For about 30 minutes that DiveyakŪ became a speedboat as the two of us paddled frantically trying to beat the setting sun. About an hour later we came to an unmarked fork in the river, and of course took the wrong way. Luckily we saw someone on the shoreline who pointed us in the right direction and we were back on track. This whole time we're silently pondering about the 2000 lbs of air we still have left in our tanks, but we're beat, disoriented, and a little unsure of our outcome. We decided we would wait until we saw the bridge before we would dive finally seeing it we jumped in for our victory dive! In the murkiest part of the entire @$%& river! But we made it! Sort of, still no keys. We talk a stranger into letting me into his BMW with a soaking wet 5mil and drive me back to KP(thank you kind stranger) for only ten bucks! Finally I drive back to the bridge get everything loaded up, pack in and get ready for the long journey home, and we lived happily ever after. Just kidding, 5 minutes up the road I get nailed and a four car pile-up and have to sit next to my busted up truck for the next two hours. Boy I wish I would have bought a sandwich.