Act 32: Scuba Diving Class

It occurred to me that I never blogged about my scuba diving class experience so even though it happened back in June or so, here it is.

My friend Carrie was home for the summer after graduating from PT school and despite my work and her studying for boards we got to hang out a LOT.  Which was awesome of course!  One night when we were at my house she was looking online for God only knows what when she stumbled across the website for the Scuba Diving Club of the Quad Cities.  Who knew that even existed?  Well not only does it exist, but they offer introductory classes and certification classes at Augie.  So she signed me, Steve, and herself up.  It only cost $10 and hey, why not?

The night of the class we went to the pool at Augie and were taken through the building to a classroom near the gym.  This was not easy to find.  There was lots of confusion over whether the classroom was upstairs or not.  It was quite the ordeal actually.  The room was super hot and the instructor either didn’t show up for 15 or 20 minutes or left during a short video for about that amount of time and left us just sitting there.  I can’t remember all the details since it was a while ago, all I know is he was gone for what seemed like a really long time.  There was general discontent with that situation among the attendees.

The guy that taught the class was an old, white haired, no nonsense guy in a Hawaiian shirt who has the kind of sense of humor that allows him to pick on people quite a bit.  That aside, he provided a lot of good information on scuba diving, where you can do it nearby (lakes, quarries, etc), what it takes to get certified, etc.  It was pretty informative and though the videos were a little cheesy, the underwater shots of ocean life and ship and plane wrecks kind of made you want to be able to dive down and see those things for yourself.

The classroom portion gave way to the pool portion of the night.  This would require everyone to wear a mask, flippers, and weight vest with a tank on their back.  Now here’s where the night got a little weird.  The instructor lined us up by size.  By weight essentially.  Fattest to skinniest!  He actually made comments like “you’re probably the biggest guy here” and then to a girl “you’re bigger than these guys aren’t you?  Move to this end of the line”.  I, for one, was a little appalled and it was pretty clear I wasn’t the only one that was uncomfortable with this method.  Maybe the instructor didn’t realize how crass he was being but come on!  Size people up in your head, silently, give them the size vest you think they need and let them try it.

Anyway, once we got ordered properly we put on the vests and tanks and got in the pool.  We stayed in the shallow end and were taught how to breathe, how to lower or raise ourselves in the water, etc.  Then we got to go into the deep end of the pool and swim around.  They had some underwater toys to play with... a Frisbee, some diving sticks, and a couple of others.  We got at least a half hour to dive, maybe more like 45 minutes.  It was fun.  I can see why people would want to do this on vacations.  You get closer to the action than you ever can with snorkeling (though I’ve gotten pretty close that way too).  I can’t see the point in getting certified unless I was going on a tropical vacation where I could do it quite a bit because I don’t really have a desire to explore nearby lakes here.  Plus, I really don’t need another expensive hobby!

They did mention that most people who get certified are going on their honeymoon.  That prompted Carrie to coin a new term and suggest a Friendymoon.  Why should newlyweds have all the fun??