Jason and I met up with George Watson and his Tech 1 student (Stephen) this past weekend, with the idea to dive and talk about UTD and the classes that he is able to teach. Little did we know that George had some other plans for us. His student was solo this weekend because his team mates bailed on him at the last minute, so George wanted my buddy and I to act as his team mates so that he could practice some of the skills.
The first dive was a shakedown dive with valve drills and OOG's. I wasn't performing my best since I it was my first time wearing double LP72's and I didn't quite have the trimmed out correctly. So I was yo-yoing a bit trying to find that happy medium. After a quick debrief, George must have felt confident that we weren't going to kill each other or him, so we did a really cool experience dive to look at some gypsum crystals growing out of a clay bank.
I must say that I've only dove on this site a few times, but have never really had an opportunity to explore. So this really turned out to be a real treat for me. Out of the local sites we have available, Rock Lake is truly unique. The geologic features of the spring has some similarities of some other local springs, but at the same time are dramatically different.
After a surface interval that included some land drills and George explaining how to *cough* manage some scenarios (that should have been a clue of what was to come), we were back in the water. My buddy was to blow an SMB to use as an upline, while Stephen, was to run the line south along the spring. We experienced fixable post failures, unfixable post failures, lost mask, and even an instance where we were buddy breathing because of the available working regs between us. We even experienced a couple failures that weren't due to George, such as line entanglement and light failures. Luckily, my battery died on my primary light during deco on one of our experience dives.
On our last dive on Friday, George gave us our first dose of crack, for free of course. It was my first time to pilot an x..... I must have one... Dammit, George!
I went into the weekend expecting some simple dives and chatting up George, but what we got was completely different. It's very cool to see how you handle failures when your head isn't in class mode. Over all, we could have handled some things differently, but no body died and I think that's a big plus. Two days, 11 dives, excellent weekend. I think my buddy and I will be starting our Tech 1 class with George in the early spring.
Our first dive on Saturday morning was one of the coolest dives that I've ever experienced. It was dark, except for our light sabers lighting up the wall. If you looked up, all you could see was a green silhouette of the surface. If you looked down, all you saw was a vast wall in front of you disappear into the abyss. And the gypsum crystals hiding in plain site stole the show for the weekend. That was a completely unexpected surprise. I loved it.
My favorite moment was when I had a left post failure, so my only breathable reg was on my primary reg, Stephen was maskless and I was guiding him up the line via touch contact, and Jason and George were having a pretty detailed underwater conversation, where George was telling Jason to go OOG and take Stephens primary regulator. Jason, being the nice guy that he is wanted to make sure that George really wanted him to do that. After a few moments, George reached down, took Stephen's primary, and gave it to Jason. I have to admit, I was chuckling a bit by that.
The first dive was a shakedown dive with valve drills and OOG's. I wasn't performing my best since I it was my first time wearing double LP72's and I didn't quite have the trimmed out correctly. So I was yo-yoing a bit trying to find that happy medium. After a quick debrief, George must have felt confident that we weren't going to kill each other or him, so we did a really cool experience dive to look at some gypsum crystals growing out of a clay bank.
I must say that I've only dove on this site a few times, but have never really had an opportunity to explore. So this really turned out to be a real treat for me. Out of the local sites we have available, Rock Lake is truly unique. The geologic features of the spring has some similarities of some other local springs, but at the same time are dramatically different.
After a surface interval that included some land drills and George explaining how to *cough* manage some scenarios (that should have been a clue of what was to come), we were back in the water. My buddy was to blow an SMB to use as an upline, while Stephen, was to run the line south along the spring. We experienced fixable post failures, unfixable post failures, lost mask, and even an instance where we were buddy breathing because of the available working regs between us. We even experienced a couple failures that weren't due to George, such as line entanglement and light failures. Luckily, my battery died on my primary light during deco on one of our experience dives.
On our last dive on Friday, George gave us our first dose of crack, for free of course. It was my first time to pilot an x..... I must have one... Dammit, George!
I went into the weekend expecting some simple dives and chatting up George, but what we got was completely different. It's very cool to see how you handle failures when your head isn't in class mode. Over all, we could have handled some things differently, but no body died and I think that's a big plus. Two days, 11 dives, excellent weekend. I think my buddy and I will be starting our Tech 1 class with George in the early spring.
Our first dive on Saturday morning was one of the coolest dives that I've ever experienced. It was dark, except for our light sabers lighting up the wall. If you looked up, all you could see was a green silhouette of the surface. If you looked down, all you saw was a vast wall in front of you disappear into the abyss. And the gypsum crystals hiding in plain site stole the show for the weekend. That was a completely unexpected surprise. I loved it.
My favorite moment was when I had a left post failure, so my only breathable reg was on my primary reg, Stephen was maskless and I was guiding him up the line via touch contact, and Jason and George were having a pretty detailed underwater conversation, where George was telling Jason to go OOG and take Stephens primary regulator. Jason, being the nice guy that he is wanted to make sure that George really wanted him to do that. After a few moments, George reached down, took Stephen's primary, and gave it to Jason. I have to admit, I was chuckling a bit by that.
