Diver Down
completed 10/24/02
ALLLLLL RIGHTY THEN!!

Let's talk about diving. Sorry this is such a long post, I'm trying to get it all down for posterity.


As you know, pics are posted and will be integrated partially into the entry.

Past weekend, Justin and I journeyed to Hoodsport, Washington to complete our Advanced SCUBA certification. Hoodsport is about five hours pretty much straight north of here along the Hood canal. We stayed at Mike's Beach Resort, which, despite the name, was less of a resort and more of a motel with student dorms. And for those of you who may have heard of it, it is the one with the Giant Octopus.

We stayed in bunks built into the wall in a large room with a living area and communal kitchen. I'm glad we were only there for a few days because we forgot to bring a few neccesities. Had I not had my head on straight, we would have been short blankets but as was, we decided to drive instead of ride in the van and went back to our apartment to retrieve blankets and unfortulately forgot towels. I abstain from responsibility given that I never actually ATTENDED class and left it up to Justin, my sub, to find out what we needed to bring with. Hell, I play little housewife most of the day but I can't think of everything. When diving, one needs a towel to wipe salt water and mook off of oneself and we made due with a bedsheet that we called, all weekend long, "Fake Towel."

We got up on Saturday at seven in the morning, a real treat after being up till one the night before. UGH. We were briefed on the dives we were to complete that day: the Search and Recovery dive and the Navigation dive. Both were dives with simple tasks to complete and, unlike in the Basic Open Water class, we were not required to have an instructor with us. I was excited to dive and try my new gear-- snorkel, mask, fins, and boots. I couldn't use my wetsuit because, given that it's a 3mm "temperate" suit, I would have died shortly after getting in the water. As was, we wore two 7mm layers and about thirty pounds of weights to keep us below the surface. Those weights, coupled with the tank weight, meant lifting a total of about seventy-five pounds when standing and getting into the water. Despite this, if only a few pounds UNDERWEIGHT, it was really easy to fly to to surface. Diving may be a recreational and leisure activity but NORTHWEST diving is not for the weak, the sqeamish, or the underinsulated.

Let me just say something about diving in the Pacific Northwest. It is FUCKING COLD. The water during these dives was in the low fifties and during our Deep Dive it reached the thirties at a depth of ninety feet. Northwest Diving, being the only diving I've ever experienced, is certainly not representative of all diving. At least, I hope not, because it fucking SUCKS. I don't hate it. In fact, I love it the same way I love hauling my ass up a mountain but it is very difficult and not very scenic.The difficulty stems from poor visibility (i.e. not being able to see more than five feet in front of your face) and low temperatures.

I was given the pink wetsuit again, much to my dismay. I think it's a joke because I HATE pink, but the guys at the shop insist it's the only one they have in my size.Pssh.

Despite this fact, the wetsuit is actually a few inches too short for MY boots but not the boots that the dive shop supplies. This time I was stuck with my boots and it proved difficult to function.

On the first dive we had to descend and operate a lift bag to levitate a bucket of cement over the bottom, take it 15 feet over and bring it to the surface. Let me just say that lift bags are a pain in the ass. I think I killed more bottom life that day with the bucket-o-rocks than I have my whole life over. Damn buoyancy control.

I, myself, seemed to have no problem with buoyancy on the first dive... which is good cos when buoyancy goes all wacky, the dive is pretty much shot. It's hard to swim around when you're floating or sinking all over the place. But after a few minutes of diving, I knew we'd have a problem. The wetsuit was gapping between the top of my boots and the bottom of the john. And because there was nothing holding up my boots, the zippers were coming undone so they repeatedly flushed with COLD COLD water. I was losing heat through my feet. Despite this, I decided to grin and bear it while we completed the dive. After a while, I found it hard to concentrate. A few minutes later, I was in pain and we had to get out. Standing, I realized my feet were numb and barely tingling and I was in severe emotional duress... my body was NOT happy. I managed to sit down, shaking, and have Justin pull off my boots. We'd been in the water half an hour and my feet were a blotchy whitish-red with light purple flecks. The edges of my toenails were bluish purple. Shit.

I felt nauseous but I couldn't move. I was too cold and in too much shock. I just sat there on the bench on the dock shivering while Justin brought me hot cider to drink, cup after cup. Eventually, one of the Divemasters, Don, a rather jovial and sarcastic guy came over and asked me what was wrong. Instead of laughing off my feet, he hauled me up and shoved me into a hot shower, wetsuit and all, filled my boots with hot water and shoved them back on my feet. That HURT.

After a little while, I started to feel human again but wasn't gung-ho about going back in the water. It had only been the first of five dives and my body was telling me that to go back in the water was a nightmare. I sat on the boat ramp nearly in tears. The first dive, all dive pairs had gone out sans instructor. We wanted to prove we could do it on our own... and now I was distraught and drained and I felt like I'd failed. Don volunteered to come with us on our next dive. I didn't object.

We waited for our air to be refilled, a process that took over an hour. Meanwhile, all the cider that Justin and I had been drinking had gladly accumulated in our bladders. That's the other thing about cold water diving, it makes you have to pee like a MOFO. So we had to waddle off to the restrooms and peel out of our wetsuits. I swear to god it took twenty minutes to pee and get suited again. We were grunting like old people the whole time.

After emptying my bladder, I felt much more open to approaching the water again. The second dive was the Underwater Navigation dive and we had to demonstrate our skill with a compass. No biggie. Don came with us and watched as we completed swimming in a square via counting kick-strokes and taking compass measurements. When I was on the last leg of my square, I stopped dead in the water and watched in awe as a school of tiny, silver fish hovered in front, over, and around me, standing in the current. I knew that everything was going to be OK and that I didn't hate diving after all. After we'd navigated, Don took us on a tour of the artificual reef (read: washing machines, refrigerators, tires, sunken boats, etc) near the dock... it proved useful later to know where this was.

We were out of the water until that night when we would begin our night dive. Another thing about diving: for a "leisure" sport, it is more physically exhausting than even hiking. Perhaps it's the water temp or breathing pressurized air but after a few half-hour dives, everyone was sleeping like bricks, draped all over the dorms. For dinner we ate sausage from Whole Foods in Portland and barbecued fresh oysters... drool... Nothing tastes better after diving than PROTEIN and FAT. I get so hungry I eat a day's worth of food in the evenings after dives and still have room for more.

(Continuations)
Hm, I've decided that I'll never chronical my dives unless I abbreviate them a bit and perhaps summarize... or rather annotate the dives instead of writing volumes on each one.

In any case, I continue...

That night, after everyone slept for a good few hours and stuffed ourselves silly, we regrouped and headed out into the gathering darkness. Actually, it's been getting dark around 7:30 so don't get the impression the dive was late at night or anything. We slapped our gear on, still wet from the morning dives and now excruciatingly COLD. But that's the good thing about 14mm of neoprene on your body, it will be cold putting it on but by the time you're done hiking all the pieces up your chub, you're burning hot again.

It was dark. The mist was rising over the canal and it was just Justin, Don the divemaster, and I. The water was cold but somehow not as cold as during the day. I'm often soothed by doing physical activity at night, there are so many less distractions to take away from focusing on the body. It was this way with the dive.

We witnessed what they call the "changing of the guard" where all the little day animals scurry to their dens and the night animals come out to hunt and feed. We dropped down and turned on our super-uber halogen lamps to be greeted by a sea of little glowing red eyes. The shrimp were out to feed. Don chased a little silver squid, which I never did see, and we almost immediately ran into an octopus slightly larger than both my hands put together... a little baby. As soon as we'd chased that octopus a bit, I found another, about the size of my thumbnail and scooped it up. Don says it's the smallest he's ever seen.

We swam down and looked at the shrimp grazing in the kelp beds. Don grabbed one from behind so has to avoid the spine on it's forehead and passed it to Justin and I. The shrimp are funny little creatures though really not as little as I thought... these were like MEGA PRAWNS, a healthy pink with kooky little eyes and stripes. Their shells are also a helluva lot harder than you'd think by seeing them in the stores. I was chuckling and pretending to eat the shrimp through my regulator when I passed it back to Don. Suddenly, the shrimp who was two seconds ago squirming in my hands was in two pieces and Don was slurping the twitching insides out of one of them. HE ATE IT. HE ATE THE DAMN SHRIMP UNDERWATER. Just broke it in half and... MMMM. Ok, I like sushi more than the next guy and I LOVE amaebi (raw sweet shrimp) but it was traumatic to pick up the poor shrimp's upper half and watch it still twitch while the insides slid into Don's belly. I almost cried. I think I'm going to become a vegetarian.

We swam further into the dark. It was beautiful to see everything just by the glow of our lamps. The colors were brighter, the water clearer and less threatening. The fish were out and schools swam over and under us, ugly Ling Cod peeked out from the artificial reef. We hunted for the giant octopus again but didn't find it.

I had some trouble with buoyancy, almost flying up to the surface and Don hauling me back down ten or so feet. When I'd settled at the bottom, we turned off our lights and witnessed one of the most seriously amazing things I've ever seen. Bioluminescence.

The water was dark but when we moved and where we moved, trails of light formed, little specks and glowing dots danced in currents when we moved our hands. I sped my fingers through the water in the glowing cold. Aside from looking cool, moving kept us warm. Justin threw chi balls at me under water and I could see sparkles running over the surface of my wetsuit. It was amazing.

We ran into a bit of a tangle on the way back. At the end of the dock there were several groups of divers and since many people had been through that way and kicked up the bottom, the visibility was poor. Struggling to get around the herd, I lost control of my buoyancy and divebombed the group then headed spastically for the surface. Oops. No one could tell who was who and my light was starting to go out. Luckily we got it all figured out and luckily it was time to go back in... I was out one halogen lamp and didn't want to run down my backup light.

Thank god for showers and hot tubs. After that, I crawled into Justin's bunk with him and slept like a rock.

The next morning it was up at 7 AM again for the Deep Dive and Underwater Naturalist Dive. Deep Dive is just that. Groups are paired with an instructor and go down to the tremendous depth of one hundred feet. Prior to this, we'd been to sixty feet max... most of us, not even that. The depth limit for recreational divers is 130 feet which really is further than it sounds.

We were nervous and excited both because it would be cold and dark down there and because water under such pressures can do funny things to the body and mind. Divers breathe pressurized air and at depth, the nitrogen in that air infuses the blood stream. In deep water this causes some people to become intoxicated or narked (nitrogen narcosis). Most people jokingly hoped they'd experience it. We've all been told stories of people who tried to give their regulators to fish or who thought they were a giant dinosaur because they were so narked. As it turns out, it's not so pleasant an experience for everyone.

We descended along a reference line, which is basically a float with a rope tied to it and secured to the bottom. There were six of us and I descended second to last. It took forever to descend. And, watching the depth increase and the air in my tank slowly decrease (but faster with depth) I realized what a tremendous strain deep diving puts on the body. A few times I had to stop to re-equalize my ears but most of the descent was steady. Down, down, down. I looked at the rope below me, unable to see the end; the only other visible sight the thousands of tiny bubbles rising from the exhales of the people below me.

Around eight feet, things started to get weird. I stopped to equalize my ears, rose a bit, and dropped back down. Eight-five feet. It was darker, colder. Ninety feet, it was even colder and dark as hell. I felt something below me. Startled, I thought I'd kicked a diver on the line. We weren't at the bottom yet, were we? I thought we were going to one-hundred feet? No, it wasn't a diver below me but a tire to which the rope was tied. I looked at my gauge. Ninety-two feet. It wasn't the bottom. I tried to go around the tire, to find the rope but couldn't. I was confused. Where were we? I kicked the tire and the divemaster above me descended and pointed to my left. There were the other divers.

But it I let go of the rope, I'll float away or fall! You want me to free swim over to them??? We were ninety-four feet under water and I was seriously narked.

She pointed again and I shook my head. Grabbing her hand, she led me over to a platform made of milk cartons that was lashed together on the ocean floor. I couldn't see anything and I could only focus on what was right in front of me. It was like being stoned but I was terrified. I thought I might float away and die, so I let all the air out of my BCD which only succeeded in crushing me to the bottom. I clung to the crates and looked at Justin. He was looking away.

In front of us the passed around a rubber ball, almost imploded from the pressure. Don showed us colored strips of neoprene, black in the darkness and pressed to the thinness of a dive skin. Then he cracked an egg and peeled off the shell. The raw egg floated whole in front of us, neutrally bouyant and surreal.

After a few moments, I reasserted my buoyancy and chased the egg with my hands, swirling the white over the yolk. I was greatly amused. I crushed the yolk between my palms. Every action seemed to take an eternity and took all my focus. I wanted to check my air but my gauge seemed so far away. It was getting colder and colder. I put my trust in the group.

After what seemed like forever, the divemasters signalled to the group to begin the ascent up the bottom contour. I watched Justin pull himself together and we slogged through our mutual narcosis until we reached eighty feet and our heads cleared. Later, he told me that he never wants to dive deep again. To him, the world spun and there was only a whirlpool of disorientation.

After another hour above water comparing stories of narcosis-- we were actually among two of the few who experienced it-- we were free to complete our last dive. Fortunately the premise of the dive was just to dick around and look at wildlife under water. We could stay down until our tanks were empty but were advised not to go below forty feet.

Justin and I searched for the giant octopus after several other groups told us they'd found it. Again, we looked and looked but found nothing. Thankfully, both the disorientation and buoyancy problems had dissipated and we used most of our air wandering about, chasing crabs and fish. So much for a passive interaction with the wildlife. Oh well, we decided we could make a fortune selling the dungeness crab we found wandering the bottom.

Only after we came back up did we realize we exceeded dive limits by fifteen feet making us in the risk area for decompression illness (another ailment caused by nitrogen in the blood). We played it safe and thankfully neither of us died. We are now both advanced divers and will, in all probability, be certified Rescue Divers before we go to Belize in December.

But we were DAMN tired and still had a five hour drive home. We stopped in Portland to eat dinner and didn't make it home till ten o'clock. So much food and so little energy made for one tired couple. I'm glad we can dive together. It makes it worth it. If I didn't have the option of certifying with someone I know, I don't think I could stand Pacific Northwest diving even if it is one of the most rewarding, challenging environments to dive in.


Some choice pics:
This is where we were diving
Divemaster Don
Morning sunshine
Look at that tight butt
Wearing all the dive gear makes one feel a bit like a human penis
OMGZ, I'm a pirate!!
Don't ask... I live this pic
You can be old and crusty and still dive. Look at all that gear!
Lion face, ARRRRR!!! Lemon face, ooooooo!!!