Tech One Day Two...

[Sounder]

Aaaah, this feels better. Sure, we had our butts handed to us today, but today was different. Today we showed up and brought it.

Two long dives with multiple scenarios with a long debriefing and briefing over lunch made up the day.

I am sitting in my "Management of Info Tech" class (yawn) writing this so it'll have to be short but I'll try to hit a few key elements and then flesh it out tomorrow. I expect Peter and Lynne (who was kind enough to come play 3rd-buddy today for us) will add to this as well.

Today was fun... which was different from Saturday when I wondered whether I should take up knitting and give up diving all together.

We started out with running line, lots of common failures which were fixable (while we were running the line). When we had plenty of line out, the non-fixable failures started. OOA here, post busted there, etc. At one point while managing a complex OOA + post failures problem, Peter tapped on Lynne's head to get her to look up (who was in a "hold" position). Lynne immediately took off her mask and handed it up thinking she lost her mask. Peter and I started laughing (it was really funny) and I put Lynne's mask back on her face... nope, not yet Lynne... you may keep your mask, for now. She literally ripped it off her own face and offered it up to the failure-gods. While we were laughing, she moved it around several times as if to say "is SOMEONE going to take my mask so we can get on with the exit?"

Despite various posts down and an OOA diver, this chance to laugh really reminded me of why I was doing this. I'm doing this because I enjoy it and because I want to.

The dive continued and the failures continued. We'd "clean up and reset" to 100%, and then our failure prone team would head off into the danger zone again, and again.

The ascent was great despite some, surprise surprise, failures. Lynne had a beautiful bag-shoot in mid-water while on deco. After a couple other "issues," we surfaced to Lynne's beautifully erect SMB at the surface marking our team's location.

We enjoyed a nice lunch in the sun (it was a BEAUTIFUL day in Seattle today!!) with a debrief of the last dive.

After gearing up, we headed back in. This time, we descended, did our standard drills, and headed off to run line. I parked the primary tie near a lingcod next which was being gaurded... and the proud daddy ling posted up on Scott a few times (which was funny).

I botched the second tie so I re-tied it to the team's satisfaction and we headed off. We traveled for a while tieing to this and that and eventually Scott said to to a final tie. I tied it off (it was a good tie this time), and then... off with my mask. Um, we're 5 minutes into this dive... and I'm blind (and we're not going for back-up masks on this dive).

I don't mind no-mask stuff. I actually kind of like being forced to trust my team and I like the challenge of becoming hyper-sensitive with sound and touch. We'd just turned so I had to get their attention and eventually someone came to me. I was taken to the line, but first had someone's face placed in my hand... hmmm a forehead, a nose, a hood, um I'm not feeling a mask here. I laughed thinking "somebody has their hands full!!" Turns out, Lynne (miss "will SOMEONE please take my mask already?!") was the only one of us with a mask. I was #2, Peter was #1 and off we went. I'm typically an eyes-closed no-masker, but on this dive I forced myself to open them. I'm glad I did - it wasn't as bad as doing it in a pool. In fact, it wasn't bad at all and I learned that in the future, I'm opening my eyes. It helps and I was amazed how much I could see. Not to sound salesy, but I could read depth and time (the two large values) on my X1 without my mask on.

What a COOL experience!! This was the longest I'd ever been without a mask and the X1 says the water was about 46 degrees. This class is also my first real experience with running and following line. I thoroughly enjoyed the no-mask line exit.

We circled up and due to the simulated deco time we had racked up, we elected to ascend. We had a great ascent with a few getting-to-know-your-gear things, but all in all, it was a "good" performance. It wasn't awesome (luv ya bud) or great, but it wasn't too bad.

Something else we learned today was unconcious tech-diver. Wow, what a difference a few bottles make!! We learned how to rescue an unconcious diver and swim them out (if in over-head). Challenging, but really quite a helpful tool to have in the box!

Well, class is ending so I will hit the post button. It was a fun day today and we learned a lot. More to come!!