Start my Cavern/Intro training!!

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Day Three: Saturday

Well I said bye to my Cavern buddy yesterday and today I get a new buddy for Intro. Feels a bit like groundhog day now as far as the getting up in the morning and eating some Hardees prior to getting to Ginnie Springs. We were told to be there at 8:30 so naturally myself and crippled cheerleader get there around 8:00. I walk in and find my now pal Johnny at the central display case/table finalizing some paperwork and I start to fill out my new waiver. This time I feel like a total stud because I put down "Cavern" as my highest training. Johnny fills out my wrist band and on it he writes "INTRO" in bold letters along with the date 2/11-2/12. Once again, I am on top of the world and feel great. Then we wait around a bit for Von to show up around 8:20. Johnny tells us that once our paperwork is all done and the piper has been paid to meet up outside so we can do some line work. So off we go to learn about line arrows and cookies and proper protocols for placing these items on a line in a cave. Gear configuration was our next little task to complete and there was just about as much difference in mine and my buddies gear than there was in the cavern class. Von was rolling sidemount and I was still in backmount double 100s. Then it was on to our first pre-dive brief and dive. So the plan was Johnny would run the line in the Ear and then I would be the second diver and Von would be third and we would go in and get up on the left wall and pull and glide our way back to the Lips and then call the dive, simple stuff. So here I am eager beaver and excited guy while Von and I do our safety checks and we head to the Ear. When we get near the Ear I am looking around and I don't see Johnny so I think "Johnny went in that damn hole without us and this is part of our training" so I look down in the Ear and see a guy down at the bottom heading on into the Ear cavern. I see this and think that it is Johnny so I shoot down the Ear and when I get down I do not see Johnny's line nor do I see Johnny so I get off to the left and look above me and a see a sidemount diver (who I thought was Von) above me waiting in the the little calm area. In my mind I am thinking maybe Johnny just did not come down but Von and I did and we will wait for Johnny, so I wait and wait and wait, had to have been 7 minutes and I see Johnny pop his head down and look at me and then throw a thumb so I thumb back and we head up. Once on the surface I discover how big of an idiot I am and how the lead diver would not go down without signaling the team to make sure everyone is on the same page. Everyone got a good laugh at my expense and I felt horrible. Let me correct that, I was not made to feel horrible by Johnny, I just felt terrible feeling like I had let Johnny down. We re-did the pre-dive briefing and this time went in with no issue and did our entry to the Lips with no problem and then did a drill or two on the way back out. We get to the surface and get our briefing and chat for a bit before getting ready to make our second dive. Second dive was more of the same as the first but this time I get to run the reel in and lead the dive back to the Keyhole. We don't actually make it all the way to the Keyhole though as Von called the dive on his turn pressure about half way from the Lips to the Keyhole. More drills on the way out and everything ran well up to and including the pulling of the line. Back at the surface we had our final post brief for the day with Johnny. He said we did good but he would like us to make a few dives at least to the sign so that Von could practice running the line. So Von and I did our safety checks and gas matching and Von led us back in so that he could run the line. When we surfaced and made it back to the parking area Johnny was the and I told him "Johnny, I am whipped bud. Just tired as **** and Von is saying he is cold (wetsuit)" So Johnny told us that was fine and we all cut out for the day..

to be continued...
 
There's a well-known "secret" to getting through the gallery. I imagine your instructor has told you, but it took me a few times to figure it out even after I'd been told-- hint: use your eyes! That trick will save you a ton of gas and can make the difference between being exhausted by the time you get to the lips and being ready to keep on truckin'
 
There's a well-known "secret" to getting through the gallery. I imagine your instructor has told you, but it took me a few times to figure it out even after I'd been told-- hint: use your eyes! That trick will save you a ton of gas and can make the difference between being exhausted by the time you get to the lips and being ready to keep on truckin'

I prefer my scooter :-D

@Doby45 great report man and very glad that you're enjoying the class. Don't stress too much about your entry, getting into that cave isn't particularly easy and when you're caught up, especially with new buddies, it's very easy to not recognize them from a distance. Just be glad it happened to you early on and close to the front of the cave :p
 
There's a well-known "secret" to getting through the gallery. I imagine your instructor has told you, but it took me a few times to figure it out even after I'd been told-- hint: use your eyes! That trick will save you a ton of gas and can make the difference between being exhausted by the time you get to the lips and being ready to keep on truckin'

Oh yea, by the end of the class I was zipping through the Cathedral with zero issues. And unlike @tbone1004 I was not using a scooter. :wink: It was funny that during my lost line drill I heard a couple of scooters coming through and I was told later by Johnny that they were very courteous and understood what we were doing and got a bit of a chuckle out of it.
 
@Doby45 i will somewhat embarrassingly admit that I have never actually kicked through Ginnie, all of my dives in there have been on a DPV due to my aversion to kicking in high flow caves and since all of my training was in Peacock/LR/Madison/Cow so never got to Ginnie until several months ago *7 years after finishing full cave*....
 
@tbone1004 I was under the impression that Little River is a rather high flow cave in its own rite..
 
@Doby45 i will somewhat embarrassingly admit that I have never actually kicked through Ginnie, all of my dives in there have been on a DPV due to my aversion to kicking in high flow caves and since all of my training was in Peacock/LR/Madison/Cow so never got to Ginnie until several months ago *7 years after finishing full cave*....

Well then let me tell you Tom, YOU HAVEN"T LIVED. Although to be fair, if you do more than 20 kick cycles in the first 500 feet of Ginnie, you are doing it wrong.
 
@tbone1004 I was under the impression that Little River is a rather high flow cave in its own rite..

it is, but I had training dives up in that area so I had to kick through it, and before I got DPV trained I just never got around to going to Ginnie. Went for the first time last fall and we were on dpv's which while you don't have to go fast, you certainly don't have to do much work.

One of my buddies has it in his head that we are going to kick to the Henkel one day just to say we did it, so there is nothing saying I won't ever kick in that cave, but if I have the choice, any of the high flow caves are on dpv's....
 
I saw you this weekend.. I was working with a full cave student on Saturday and Sunday I was on the CCR with a few other guys.
 
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