Rick. I do not care for being scooped. No more moral support from me.
Steve White is teaching the class. Steve is slender and elegant and looks like somebody who should have a residence in Trieste, which he does. To our enormous advantage, he appears to have imbibed significantly of the southern European spirit, meaning that he is relaxed and pleasant and full of wit, rather than intense and humorless. Clearly he needs to be weeded out of the GUE instructor contingent
This may surprise people who have not taken DIR-F, but the most frequent comment I heard today was, "I am NOT here to tell you what to do or how to do it. I am here to give you information. You are all adults, and you will go home and make your own decisions." Furthermore, not a SINGLE brand name . . . of ANYTHING . . . was mentioned in the entire day.
We talked about GUE and where it came from, and what its mission actually is (which is not to improve the diving skills of marginally competent recreational divers, although clearly they stoop to doing so). We talked about GUE certifications, and about the requirements for GUE instructors, which are impressive. There is no question that we are being taught by someone who walks the walk -- and who started where we all did (with an AIR2, no less!) One could infer, therefore, that there is hope.
We talked about basic skills, which are the same basic skills that everybody learned, except that we will be expected to do them in 10 feet of water, maintaining buoyancy and trim. Luckily, we were given license . . . we may, at any time, tell Steve, "STOP -- I need to get my buoyancy before doing this skill." I may spend the entire day tomorrow giving that signal.
We watched videos of people performing said skills, all of which were produced by Industrial Light and Magic (Rick and I agreed) because NOBODY can shoot a lift bag without moving a single part of their body except their fingers. NOBODY. I'm sure.
Of course, Steve did say he was going to "show us the bar", but did not expect we would reach it. I think I'll be lucky if I SEE it.
I tried to get Rick to shoot a picture of Steve lying on the conference room table, demonstrating center of gravity drills, but the battery in his camera died just at that moment. If you believe that. I think he was trying to score points with the teacher.
In the afternoon, we reviewed our equipment. Lots of us had hoses of questionable lengths, improperly tied on bolt snaps or necklaces, and other small errors. Some of us had D rings placed where we were making our lives miserable (I didn't, thank you Bob), or buckles that ended up where they weren't supposed to be. Steve didn't assess anybody's anything as unusable. Even Rick's quick release got a, "If you have to have it, then you have to have it, but it's a potential failure point, and you have to assess whether you are willing to take the risk of losing your tank in order to save yourself some discomfort at the end of the dive." Rick bought webbing and was SUPPOSED to be spending the evening rewiring his harness, which he clearly wasn't doing, because he was beating me to posting on Scubaboard. I, on the other hand, have made all the requested adjustments to MY gear.
Fifth Dimension is going to sell out their entire stock of fine bungee cord and cave line this weekend, as we all retie and reorganize our spaghetti.
Then we got to don our undergarments (at this point, I was beginning to be forcibly reminded of my wonderful experience getting stuck in my backplate when I first got it). Fit and range of motion was assessed. Then dry suits were put on, and again, we went through fit and zipper placement. We actually have one brave soul in the class who is diving a wetsuit, which is doubly brave after one of the most interesting parts of the afternoon, which was an analysis of what happens to your buoyancy if you go deep in a thick wetsuit and your BCD fails. It was a powerful argument for "dive deep, dive dry". Of course, I came home and told my husband that, and he said, "I wonder how we all survived?" Because, of course, in the 1960's, when he learned to dive the first time, all they had was thick wetsuits, and they HAD no BCD's. Of course, they didn't weight themselves enough to descend (they had to swim down) and they were all too narced on deep air to remember that they would be in trouble if they couldn't get up
Eventually, when we noticed Mark was getting dehydrated from sweating (I actually thought his gear had been wet when he put it on, until I realized where the water was coming from) we moved outside, so Steve got to suffer instead of the six of us. Then we went through S-drills, and S-drills, and S-drills, and eventually we almost got them sort of right . . . although there was no can light involved. Steve wasn't entirely happy with our leadership skills, so he went through the whole class, and man, when Steve grabs your arm and says, "We are going THIS way", you are going THIS way, right now, no questions asked. No polite requests and gentle deference. I think it was Rick who asked Steve if he had ever been a police officer . . .
We then spent half an hour on our stomachs on the floor, waving our feet vaguely in the air and attempting to mime various propulsion techniques. I'm going to have sore muscles where I didn't know I HAD muscles tomorrow, but I actually have hopes of learning the back kick. They have apparently developed a new method of teaching it, because so few people got it before, and Steve says everybody gets at least some of it now -- YAY!
A few wheat thins went down the hatch while Steve ran home to get swim trunks and a towel for the class member who didn't have them (talk about service from an instructor) and then we repaired to the pool. I couldn't find that pool again if my life depended on it. I honestly think we went in at least four circles getting there -- I think Steve was trying to see just how willing we were to follow where we were led. It was a bit of a surprise to discover it was going to cost me four dollars to fail the swim test, but luckily, somebody else had brought money -- I am GOING to pay him back, Rick. Really I am. Or buy him lunch, or something. The damsel in distress act is not my thing.
And the good news is -- we ALL passed the swim test. I could shoot the guy who did the swim in seven minutes, but I passed, and that's all that was important. The swim requirement had been raised from 300 to 400 yards since I checked the standards, but that was okay. I wasn't worried about that part. I was TERRIFIED of the breath-hold swim . . . and that got MUCH worse when I found out you had to do it submerged. What I had read said I could do it on the surface. I'm so buoyant that I did the PADI tread by sitting immobile in the water and waiting for ten minutes, so staying submerged would require even MORE energy than just swimming, and my track record on the breath-hold, on the surface, was about 50%. I was dreading it, and everybody did it before me except Rick. The two of us were standing in the shallows not looking at each other, wondering just how long we could procrastinate, when I finally gritted my teeth, took my three deep breaths, and WENT FOR IT. A triumph of determination over physiology, but I'm not going to fail Fundies on the swim test, and that was MY goal for the class. I can cheerfully go on to fail it on skills.
I forgot to mention that Bob, bless his heart, showed up as we were leaving for the pool with HIS Nite Rider light, so I am can-light equipped again, and have no excuse for not learning at what point in the S-drill the light has to be re-routed.
Tomorrow, we gather at the DIR diving site, otherwise known as Cove 2, at 8:30 in the morning. Why does diving always seem to involve getting up WAY too early?
