September has been great! I decided to get my scuba certification this month in anticipation of my trip to the Florida Keys in October and I just finished my open water dives. So...this means I didn't drown.

This is another one of those things that I would recommend to anyone looking to expand their horizons. The classwork is painfully simple. The pool work is fairly easy but very funny. I'll explain in a minute. The open water dives are a blast.

Can you remember to breathe...good, then you can scuba dive. To be fair, it is a bit more complex than that. Being underwater for extended periods of time is very unnatural. They say you'll always remember the first time you are underwater...and breathing. Hell yeah you will, because you think you are going to die any moment. So what that you are in the three foot end of the pool. Fact...not all scuba gear is the same. Fact...scuba shop rental gear varies greatly.

On the first pool session, I had a regulator that made me feel as though I was having a very bad asthma attack. The air is very dry which you get used to quickly, but on some regulators you really have to work to draw the air out of the tank. Now, some regulators on the market have zero resistance breathing or are much easier breathing. This information would have been much more beneficial to me prior to taking those first very labored breaths at the bottom of the pool. Additionally, it would have been nice to have a wetsuit where the zipper worked. To remedy this, I just went to another dive shop and bought a wet suit before the next class. Problem solved and I have a pretty cool looking wet suit that keeps my warm and from looking like I am stuffed into some sausage casing.

The second pool session I ended up with a different regulator. This one had such easy breathing that you barely knew it was there. I loved that regulator and the pool session went much better. Additionally, by this time I had silicone lube to smear on my mustache and now my mask actually sealed on my face allowing it NOT to completely fill with water every time I went below the surface.

NOTE: After you arrive at the pool and take all your gear out of your vehicle...you MUST put your keys (with the nice key fob) in a safe DRY place that is not your swimsuit pocket!!!

The skills practice is unnerving at first as your instincts try to take over in a situation where they have no practical application. Taking you mask off and putting it back on underwater doesn't have anything to do with your breathing. But your brain tells yourself that you are in a foreign environment and somehow with out your sight you are about to drown. You have to consciously REMEMBER to stay calm and BREATHE. Your mask being off doesn't mean you can't get air...duh! Seriously, it is one of the harder things to do underwater as you start to think that must mean you are about to lose all your air...completely irrational.

Also of note, big people need big weights to keep them from floating up to the surface. AND if you are a large barrel chested individual with a large lung capacity, good luck trying to maintain your buoyancy control. Breath in...heading to the surface...breath out...heading to the bottom. Lots of fun trying to get that one just right.

You put twelve people in your local YMCA pool with sixty pounds of weights and gear, then add fins. Next, you will really wish you had a camera. At first we are all bobbing around like dorky corks banging and clanking into each other as we try to move from the surface to the bottom. It is just hilarious watching everyone careen into each other and the pool during these pool sessions. Soon you are yearning for the open water and the promise of more space (and hopefully less careening)

Our Open Water Dives were in the Puget Sound. This is a large inland fjord that is flooded with sea water from the Pacific with its most notable port being Seattle. We were down on one of the fingers west of Seattle in the Hood Canal. The water temp was about 50 degrees...so yeah, it was cold. As such we had to wear full body two piece wet suits, neoprene hoods, boots, and gloves. One thing about scuba is that there is a LOT of gear. Also, since this is seawater, not pool water, we all had to use more weight to stay underwater.

After standing in the 75 degree sun for about twenty minutes in a black neoprene full body suit covering you from head to toe, the cold water felt just glorious! Visibility for the first twenty feet was awful which makes you want to panic and shoot straight for the surface. I mean, come on, for God's sake...there are eels down there...and octopus too! Eventually you get to about 35 feet and visibility suddenly clears. The bottom is only about six feet away and no Loch Ness Monsters or Orcas in sight...whew. There are however loads of slimy sea anemones and Pacific Sea Cucumbers which look like an eighteen inch spiky jelly roll...yech.

Over Saturday and Sunday we do a total of four dives practicing our pool trained skills and ending each dive with a sightseeing component. This was great. I got to see tons of fish, most of which I couldn't identify (except the rockfish...yum!), a wolf eel, some prawns, and a lot of eating size dungeness crabs (oh, so it IS a marine sanctuary, which means we can't take them back for dinner?...damn!). Unfortunately the Hood Canal is having a lot of oxygen depletion problems right now so there were a lot of dead fish about.

The dinner Saturday night back at the bunk house was a wonderful dinner prepared by our dive instructors (oddly, no seafood...hmmm) and was much appreciated by all us tired, soggy, hungry divers. All in all it was one of the best weekends that I have had in a very long time. I met some truly fantastic people, learned a wonderful skill, and saw tons of awesome sights both in and out of the water. I can barely wait to start taking the Advanced Open Water training and maybe even the Underwater Photography course.

If you get the chance or even think you might enjoy it...take a scuba course...it is easier than you would expect!