Full Cave Training trip report

A dive buddy and I headed down to Florida for a full week of Cavern/Cave training Feb 21-Mar 2, 2003 and found the week of intensity very satisfying. All the hard work, serious skills practice, and DIRF classes the past year definitely reaped dividends.

We took the class with an instructor from Indiana that we know and have dove with at Gilboa quarry.

Since I haven't figured an easy way to convert an HTML page to the markup language that Scubaboard uses, hopefully no one will mind if I simply provide a link to the report.


Full Cave Training Report

I look forward to continued building of experience and applying some new found skills to wreck diving in the Great Lakes.

wb

WB,
I was thinking about you and Scott recently, was curious how things went with Tim. Thanks for the trip report, sounds as if the three of you had a great time and learned quite a bit! Did you see Kelly? How is Tim doing?

Glad to see you both made it back. Just got done racking up what seems to be 1.3 million airmiles and trying to get up to speed with what is happening here on Scubaboard.

Tell Scott I say hello...

Best Regards
Don Costanza

dcostanza once bubbled...
WB,
I was thinking about you and Scott recently, was curious how things went with Tim. Thanks for the trip report, sounds as if the three of you had a great time and learned quite a bit! Did you see Kelly? How is Tim doing?

Glad to see you both made it back. Just got done racking up what seems to be 1.3 million airmiles and trying to get up to speed with what is happening here on Scubaboard.

Tell Scott I say hello...

Best Regards
Don Costanza

Click to expand...

Hi Don!
How was the diving on your trip?

I got ahold of a spare wing for Doubles, so if you want to give it a shot, we should have enough spare equipment to make a go of it.

Kelly ended her trip a day before we started ours. Tim is doing fine now. You may have heard that his father passed away the end of January. We probably kept him distracted enough on the trip, but it's hard to say where he might be in the grieving process.

Tim may have another ice class at Gilboa. If you're interested, you may want to let him know.

Catch ya later,
Bob

Good morning Bob,
I wasn't aware of Tim's situation, thanks for the update. I got a message from him about one of his ice classes but I think at that time I was in Vegas or Orlando and obviously couldn't make it.

Sorry to hear you didn't hook up with Kelly. Sounded as if she was looking forward to seeing you and Scott down there.

Thanks for the offer on the wing for doubles. Now that I'm getting settled in for a month or so, I was thinking about some of your comments about heading in that direction. That is something I would like to learn the finer points of. I'll pm you about a few things.

Diving in Lake Mead was probably the best time I've ever had in Vegas. Now that I found a really nice shop out there, the trips out there won't be so boring anymore. In Orlando I was hooked up to shoot some fish and hunt some bugs (in Daytona) but it got blown out so I ended up at Ginnie Springs. Sounds like I may have just missed you and Scott. I did run into someone else I knew from Cincinnatti while I was there. Reminded me of how small the diving world is. Atlanta, forget about diving there but my dry suit did look good sprawled about the hotel room. Makes me wonder what kind of thoughts the hotel staff had? I did entertain the thought of taking my gear down to the hotel pool late at night but thought that may cause some the the staff to think of me as being hopelessly addicted.

On another note, I mentioned a few months ago that I have a video housing we can use as a teaching aid. If you would like to get some video of the techniques you learned with Tim, let me know and I'd be more than happy to shoot footage of you and Scott. (It's the least I can do for all the insight you have given me.)

What are your plans for "local" diving?

Best Regards
Don

dcostanza once bubbled...
On another note, I mentioned a few months ago that I have a video housing we can use as a teaching aid. If you would like to get some video of the techniques you learned with Tim, let me know and I'd be more than happy to shoot footage of you and Scott. (It's the least I can do for all the insight you have given me.)

What are your plans for "local" diving?

Best Regards
Don

Click to expand...

That would be cool... video feedback is a good tool. It'll be interesting to see how well the skills translate to heavy drygloves. Allot of the typical skills (i.e. valve drills, clip-offs, etc)were much easier sans gloves since we practice them in drygloves.

Don't have any immediate plans to get into the water. Tim mentioned that he might have a Saturday Ice dive class upcoming (depending upon the folks that requested it). If so, I'll probably join in. Otherwise, Scott is out of town this coming weekend so it'll be a couple of weeks before I get wet. The way the weather seems to be going, there'll still be ice on the quarry then.

Look forward to getting together soon.
Bob