scuba diving, part one

I thought to myself, there is no way I'm ever going to make it through this. When our friend Mark said we could become certified divers, Michael was thrilled! Me? Not so much. I have this little fear of drowning that caused me to almost hyperventilate every time we talked about it. But I figured I give it a shot. The lessons start out in the pool that is only 4 feet deep so what's the worst that can happen. I can just stand up. 

Those first few breaths underwater were pretty terrifying. Breathing underwater is great for fish. Not so natural for humans.

I had a whole new level of confidence the next time we got in the water. And I figured that by the time we got to our open water dives I would at least feel like I wasn't going to die. 

The time had come. We drove over to the springs outside of Gainesville. I had to make it through four 20 minute dives in two days. We walked down to the entry site at Blue Grotto and my palms were sweaty just looking at this hole in the ground. 

I was really worried about two things: my breathing and my ears. Much to my surprise I had no issues with breathing. I jumped in that freezing water with three layers of wetsuit on and not once was I nervous about drowning. I did have some trouble with my first descent. Learning how fast or slow to go down is something we couldn't practice in the pool. At a max depth of 6 ft you don't have to worry about clearing your ears. On our second dive I went down face to face with April. I modeled her pace and how often she was clearing her ears. It helped me tremendously! I realized that it wasn't a race and I could go as slow as I wanted. It's so nice diving with people who have been doing this for 20+ years. You learn a lot just by watching.

Two dives down. After all the required skills were complete we spent a little time just looking around. We saw a neat school of fish and Virgil the resident turtle. That thing is friendly, but scared the crap out of me when he came up on me from behind, swam under me, and came up near my face. April got a good laugh out of that one. I got a good laugh every time we entered the water. That 72 degree water rushing into your wetsuit and down your spine is no fun. All sorts of girly screams came out of us. That night we had a nice dinner with Mark and April and took our final exam back at the hotel.

For the record, I scored higher than Michael.