Sometimes I Wonder Why I’m the Only Normal Person I Know

Well, a successful day of diving. Well, maybe not a day, more like a single
dive of about 40 minutes, but still very cool. We left around 10am, and had
to get to the dive shop to rent stuff and get air ahead of time, so by the
time we got to Whytcliff Park it was around noon (gotta love traffic).

Things that sucked were the gear! Oh $GODs there is a lot of junk! First
there is a poor fitting rubber straight jack… erhm, wetsuit, which gives you
about 50% mobility, and is not flattering at all. After
thatn you throw a 40 pound weight belt around your waist, making moving
anywhere fast a chore. Follow this with a BCD (boyancy control
device) which is fine, except that attached to it is a air tank (not a bad
thing, just a heavy thing) and an octopus of a regulator, with hoses for
inflating the BCD, a regulator and secondary regulator. Oh, did I mention the
gloves? The ones that are hard as smeg to get on without a pair of vice grips
and a ceiling harness setup to get the fscking things half onto your hands?

We went in slow and easy, and went down slowy to about 10 feet to go along the
floor and explored around the floor and wall, heading down to a depth of about
30-40 feet. Most of the time I was kneeling on the floor, wondering how the
hell Joker and JokerWife managed to float just a foot or two off the bottom
without crashing into it. I’m glad there was no wall to fall down 🙂 When I
tried the float thing I just ended up heading towards the surface (a bad
thing).

Coming out was heavy again, and a bitch trying to walk on the rocks with 80
pounds of stuff on your back. Oh, and did I mention it was cold? Yea, coming
out it was pretty cold. Not terrible, because it was a good day. The main
point of a wetsuit as I’m sure you know is to keep a thin layer of water next
to your skin and have it heated by your body so you don’t freeze yourself.
This requires a good fitting suit to keep the thin layer there. Of course,
when renting a suit you’re not going to get a great fit, and sometimes that
thin layer turns into large rivers of freezing cold water flowing around your
neck, ankles, and anyplace else it can get.

Oh, and traffic was a bitch 🙂