I has a PADI SCUBA diving cert:
Random stream of consciousness:
So we are done. We’re certified as PADI Open Water Divers. I’m too exhausted to look at the moment but yay.
The boat we were on was the biggest non-cruise boat I’ve ever been on:
- Two bathrooms w/ showers w/ fresh hot water.
- Probably a dozen small but very sleep-able bunks to sleep in at the front and the back of the boat. Very nice for napping on the 2.5 hour trip to the site because you had to get up at 4 million a clock in the morning, and passing out on the 2.5 hour trip back from the site.
- A full kitchen. There was food waiting for us every time we got out of the water, as well as them cookign breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was pancakes, eggs, sausage and hashbrowns. Then we had Chili. Then we had Teryaki and/or BBQ chicken on rice with corn. Then we had Hotdogs/chilidogs. Then we had spaghetti and salad for dinner on the way back.
- There was something like 30 people on the boat including crew.
- While we were getting ready to dive, I kept hearing a whistle and it was weirding me out. We dove in a pool next to a high school and I kept hearing whistles then, but I knew it was from some high school sporting event happening next to the pool. It took half the day for me to realize the whistles were coming from the football game they were watching, think it was the Steelers game. They had a HD TV and satellite TV on the boat =P
- We saw sea lions on the way out of the LA Harbor. They were following our boat and peeking at us.
- I think we saw Dolphins when we were about ten minutes away from Catalina. They were just peeking.
Some of the stuff we had to do in the pool yesterday and in the ocean today:
- Had to swim 6 laps in the pool with just bathing suit, goggles, snorkle, fins, and booties. No arms. So cake.
- Learned how to actually skin dive, which was really fun. So I guess, to oversimplify, your body wants to breathe not because you’re exercising, but because you have too much carbon dioxide in your body, and needs to get it out. By hyperventilating a little, you can calm your body down a bit as far as needing to breathe goes. You ‘hyperventilate’ 3 deep, fast breaths and then hold your 4th, do a somersault so you’re facing straight down, straighten your legs and then you sink into the water. When your feet cut the waters surface, you start to paddle, and then you’re way deep. Making sure you equalize when you go down, and exhale a tiny bit as you go up so you don’t pop your lungs.
- We had to do an exercise where you take your entire vest off with all your gear and then put it on, on the surface of the water and also at the bottom of the pool. One of the guys we were doing it with got new gear this weekend and when he did it he skyrocketed to the surface because his new wet suit was super buoyant.
We dove with Nitrox for our last dive; Wtf is Nitrox? In short:
- Anyone can dive with normal breathing air.
- Normal breathing air is ~21% oxygen and the rest Nitrogen. The longer you dive and the deeper you go, your body absorbs the Nitrogen from the air you breathe, and you get little Nitrogen bubbles in your body. A little is fine, too much and you can get sick and need to decompress.
- That diving card/chart that I linked a bit ago and said that I learned to use, (this one) basically is used to determine how much Nitrogen is in your body and how long you have to stay out of the water if you do consecutive dives to get enough of it out of your system.
- You also can’t dive with pure Oxygen because you can actually get oxygen poisoning if you go down too deep with it.
- Nitrox is just a different mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen. We dove with ~32% Oxygen.
- The benefits of diving with Nitrox: You can stay under longer because you absorb less Nitrogen. You are breathing more Oxygen, so it’s more refreshing and you aren’t as tired when you are done. It’s hard to describe and quantify but you can totally tell the difference when you’re done.
- As I said before, the only downside to Nitrox is that you can’t dive past a certain depth with it, because it contains more oxygen then normal. The more Oxygen in the Nitrox mix, the less deep you’re allowed to go. I.e. with ~32% you can only go 100 feet, which is fine because I don’t think we can dive deeper then 60 feet without another cert =P
- You need a cert to use Nitrox, unless you’re with someone cool like an instructor.
Other randomness:
- I had a bandaid on my had all day covering up a burn I got from cooking this weekend. I now have a bandaid-shaped tan on the back of my hand.
- Lots more pictures forthcoming when McKenna, our instructor, uploads them!
Thank you very much to Victoria for the generous and awesome gift that I will be able to enjoy for my life! I really appreciate it and had a great time learning and testing myself, as well as having a fun time with my awesome girlfriend.
P.s. Our instructor McKenna was awesome! I hope she reads this cuz then I know she’s a NOSEY FACEBOOK STALKER! :3
KK time for showers and relaxing and… freelance work. =P
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