OP
Start my Cavern/Intro training!!
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Damn @kensuf I would have loved to have met you and I am sure I will before too long. I was the guy wearing the Mr. Incredible Fusion Bullet drysuit.
I know. I saw your last name on your line arrows (clipped on your harness) while I was scootering in the opposite direction of you yesterday. I was one of the two guys with the SF2 rebreather (the third guy in our group had a meg).
OP
Day Four: Sunday
Oh holiest of days please allow me to not make an idiot of myself today, amen. This was the tiny prayer I was praying as we drove to meet up with Johnny at the Turkey Roost. As we pull of the main road at Ginnie to go to the Turkey Roost parking area I see there are people that have tents in the parking area, so we head back out and park over at the main Devil's parking area. Johnny pulls in and we start getting our stuff together while waiting on Von to show up. He gets to the parking area about 15min later and he starts getting his gear together too. Once we are all put together Johnny starts the pre-dive briefing and explains that there will be a good bit of skills we need to get out of the way and then hopefully we might be able to have just a final fun dive. First dives plan is for us to enter with Johnny running the reel in with Von behind him and me pulling up the rear. Johnny will turn the dive over to Von once the reel is tied into the goldline and I will become diver two and Johnny will simply observe. Upon entering the Ear I am finding that I am more easily able to make it in as I have started to get the hang of the "process" and I find myself floating next to Von in no time right by the Reaper sign. Johnny shields his light and backs up and it is just me and Von as far as the world is concerned at this point. We make our way to the left wall and I go up about 15ft and start to pull myself along. I look down and see that Von has not really made it up to the "proper" height on the wall and he is finning a lot, so I signal him with my light and when I have his attention I give him the sign to "RISE UP" (Go Falcons) and he comes up and we continue. I am really building my confidence now as I am finding it very easy to get back at the least to the Lips. Once at the Lips Johnny signals us and gives us the thumb. What comes next is the most fun I had on the whole trip to this point. Johnny had told us that we would do our blacked out mask lost line drill and that when he gave us the thumb we were to get a good mental image of our surroundings, orient ourselves to the gold line and then don our black out masks. Once I had my mask on and I gave the OK signal I felt Johnny grab my arm and start to pull me off in some direction and then I started to spin around. I could tell that I was starting to drop slowly as my ears were equalizing and then my hands were on a rock. Not to give away the whole thing but I did not find the line, I was very close and even had the line trapped with my line at one point but alas, no joy. Von was supposed to have ran his concurrent with mine and he got confused on the dive briefing evidently and he just watched me run the drill. So he get to run his on the next dive. Then we did a couple more drills and headed out to the surface. Upon getting to the surface is when I found out that Von had not ran his lost line drill and would have to do it on the final dive. We all had a laugh and I felt vindicated at least to some small degree for my faux pas from yesterday. Von and I run and swap tanks real quick for the final dive and I am all excited because at this point I have done all my required skills and drills and all Von had left was the lost line drill. Once back in the water we do our safety checks and gas checks and then Johnny gives us the dive plan. Same basic plan, we go in and turn the dive around the Lips and Von does his drill and then we just fart around for a bit. One difference is this time Von runs the reel in and I am second diver and Johnny is a complete observer until we hit turn. Von does a good job getting the reel ran and we make our way along the wall to the Lips. For some reason just before you go from the left side of the wall over to the right side Von dropped about half way down and is just sitting there. I am guessing he watched and saw how and where I did my drill and instead of going to the Lips he just went to the general area where I was. Prior to the dive Johnny had told me that I could just stay up high out of the flow and watch while Von did his lost line drill so instead of bouncing over to the right wall at that spot I just went left and more or less sat in that little pocket of calm with my light pointed to the ceiling. This allowed Johnny to visually see I am still OK without my light disrupting the lost line drill. So Johnny gets Von all setup and going on the drill and for a minute I sit up there and peacefully float and enjoy myself. I am right where other entering teams come through so I see a few teams pass and give them a wave. I see one guy come by and smash his manifold right into a rock directly in front of me, in my mind I am like "DAMN!!!" About this time I look down on Von and see that long armed, long legged bastard got the line and is finishing up his drill, so I drop down and start to check things out on the floor and then Johnny points at me and does the OOA signal. Then I go over to Von and signal OOA and as he is sidemount and his longhose reg was not in his mouth he had it boltsnapped to some other cord or something and he was literally taking for ever so I just went limp and dropped my head and started to float with the current. Von finally catches up to me and hands me the reg and I magically revived and we finished the dive and headed out. On the surface we got out and went to take all or gear off and get it stowed away in our vehicles. We conducted our post dive briefing and then Johnny had us go up to the Deli to take our test. We completed our tests and discussed answers that needed more clarification and then Johnny gave us a hand shake and said that we were now INTRO CAVE DIVERS!!!!!
In closing, I had the best time with both my dive buddies and Johnny. I could not more highly recommend Johnny and his thorough patient teaching style. See ya in the caves!
Oh holiest of days please allow me to not make an idiot of myself today, amen. This was the tiny prayer I was praying as we drove to meet up with Johnny at the Turkey Roost. As we pull of the main road at Ginnie to go to the Turkey Roost parking area I see there are people that have tents in the parking area, so we head back out and park over at the main Devil's parking area. Johnny pulls in and we start getting our stuff together while waiting on Von to show up. He gets to the parking area about 15min later and he starts getting his gear together too. Once we are all put together Johnny starts the pre-dive briefing and explains that there will be a good bit of skills we need to get out of the way and then hopefully we might be able to have just a final fun dive. First dives plan is for us to enter with Johnny running the reel in with Von behind him and me pulling up the rear. Johnny will turn the dive over to Von once the reel is tied into the goldline and I will become diver two and Johnny will simply observe. Upon entering the Ear I am finding that I am more easily able to make it in as I have started to get the hang of the "process" and I find myself floating next to Von in no time right by the Reaper sign. Johnny shields his light and backs up and it is just me and Von as far as the world is concerned at this point. We make our way to the left wall and I go up about 15ft and start to pull myself along. I look down and see that Von has not really made it up to the "proper" height on the wall and he is finning a lot, so I signal him with my light and when I have his attention I give him the sign to "RISE UP" (Go Falcons) and he comes up and we continue. I am really building my confidence now as I am finding it very easy to get back at the least to the Lips. Once at the Lips Johnny signals us and gives us the thumb. What comes next is the most fun I had on the whole trip to this point. Johnny had told us that we would do our blacked out mask lost line drill and that when he gave us the thumb we were to get a good mental image of our surroundings, orient ourselves to the gold line and then don our black out masks. Once I had my mask on and I gave the OK signal I felt Johnny grab my arm and start to pull me off in some direction and then I started to spin around. I could tell that I was starting to drop slowly as my ears were equalizing and then my hands were on a rock. Not to give away the whole thing but I did not find the line, I was very close and even had the line trapped with my line at one point but alas, no joy. Von was supposed to have ran his concurrent with mine and he got confused on the dive briefing evidently and he just watched me run the drill. So he get to run his on the next dive. Then we did a couple more drills and headed out to the surface. Upon getting to the surface is when I found out that Von had not ran his lost line drill and would have to do it on the final dive. We all had a laugh and I felt vindicated at least to some small degree for my faux pas from yesterday. Von and I run and swap tanks real quick for the final dive and I am all excited because at this point I have done all my required skills and drills and all Von had left was the lost line drill. Once back in the water we do our safety checks and gas checks and then Johnny gives us the dive plan. Same basic plan, we go in and turn the dive around the Lips and Von does his drill and then we just fart around for a bit. One difference is this time Von runs the reel in and I am second diver and Johnny is a complete observer until we hit turn. Von does a good job getting the reel ran and we make our way along the wall to the Lips. For some reason just before you go from the left side of the wall over to the right side Von dropped about half way down and is just sitting there. I am guessing he watched and saw how and where I did my drill and instead of going to the Lips he just went to the general area where I was. Prior to the dive Johnny had told me that I could just stay up high out of the flow and watch while Von did his lost line drill so instead of bouncing over to the right wall at that spot I just went left and more or less sat in that little pocket of calm with my light pointed to the ceiling. This allowed Johnny to visually see I am still OK without my light disrupting the lost line drill. So Johnny gets Von all setup and going on the drill and for a minute I sit up there and peacefully float and enjoy myself. I am right where other entering teams come through so I see a few teams pass and give them a wave. I see one guy come by and smash his manifold right into a rock directly in front of me, in my mind I am like "DAMN!!!" About this time I look down on Von and see that long armed, long legged bastard got the line and is finishing up his drill, so I drop down and start to check things out on the floor and then Johnny points at me and does the OOA signal. Then I go over to Von and signal OOA and as he is sidemount and his longhose reg was not in his mouth he had it boltsnapped to some other cord or something and he was literally taking for ever so I just went limp and dropped my head and started to float with the current. Von finally catches up to me and hands me the reg and I magically revived and we finished the dive and headed out. On the surface we got out and went to take all or gear off and get it stowed away in our vehicles. We conducted our post dive briefing and then Johnny had us go up to the Deli to take our test. We completed our tests and discussed answers that needed more clarification and then Johnny gave us a hand shake and said that we were now INTRO CAVE DIVERS!!!!!
In closing, I had the best time with both my dive buddies and Johnny. I could not more highly recommend Johnny and his thorough patient teaching style. See ya in the caves!
OP
Out of curiosity, did Johnny run the line for you guys every dive? I'm only seeing once that he didn't . The reason I ask, is that's a very basic cave diving skill you should be mastering for yourself. Most of the instructors that I consider to be above par will maybe run the reel once as a do what I do thing, but from that point forward leave it to the students to run the line. On top of that, alot of the above par instructors love to make you run line into the eye (because it sucks when you're new.) Some wait until after intro for that, others from the very get-go.
If you didn't run the line on the majority of your dives, I think you would be doing yourself a service to reach out to Johnny and find out why. All of my courses, I was required to always run the line. Even in my recent DPV class my instructor enjoyed watching me struggle in the flow as I figured out how to run a line with a huge appendage strapped to me.
If you didn't run the line on the majority of your dives, I think you would be doing yourself a service to reach out to Johnny and find out why. All of my courses, I was required to always run the line. Even in my recent DPV class my instructor enjoyed watching me struggle in the flow as I figured out how to run a line with a huge appendage strapped to me.
Last edited:
Dish
Are you for Scuba?
OP
Both Von and I ran the line more than once. That is the downside to doing these class reviews as you get people nit picking the **** out of it, instead of getting the story. I did not give every single detail of either the Cavern or the Intro class. I specifically did that so the know it alls on this board would not be in a position to do exactly what you are doing. I would be more than happy to meet up with you and run a line if necessary.
Don't worry about anyone else. You have a license to learn, now go learn.
And have fun doing it!
CptTightPants21
Contributor
He mentioned running the line and even having a dive at the end of the day where Johnny had them just run the reel into the gold line and back several times, but I'm not a nitpicker. I mean if I WAS a nitpicking diver, I would point out that you probably meant to reference the Ear and not the Eye when talking about difficulty running the line....
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