We are proud to welcome 4 newbies to the wonderful world of diving!! Congrats to Ashley, Jessica, Marci and Tiffany. Oh yeah...and congrats to O2Neg on her first Open Water class!! We also want to thank Sid, owner of Ascuba Venture, for having a club night out at Windy Point. We appreciated the pizza and prizes.
We had a great time at Windy Point, the weather was fantastic but the visability was crummy at best. Like they say, "a bad day diving is better than a good day at work." So true. Despite the low vis we had a good time diving.
We arrived at the park around midnight. The Ascuba Crew and Mike and Cindy all got there hours earlier and staked claim on our "usual" spot. There was plenty of snoring going on while we were setting up camp. After settling in, we fell asleep around 2am or 3am.
After a nice little nap we awoke around daybreak to the voice of one of the Bills looking for O2Neg. The good news is that we got some much needed coffee. Soon we were gearing up to head down to the great below.
We head down about the same time that O2Neg got her girls in for the first time. It is kind of interesting to see the Open Water class from the other side. We ended up just hanging out around the platform. The girls seemed pretty relaxed...the perchiannas seemed to keep their minds occupied. After 45 minutes hanging out, and trying to stay seated in the underwater stool, we headed to the surface for some lunch.
The classes's 2nd dive of the day did not go as smoothly as the first one. The low vis helped the group to get seperated but the buddies did a good job of sticking together. Mike, Cindy, and I were down in it as well and we also got seperated. Funny thing is that we managed to locate the pieces of the seperated class. Shortly after we then found each other and all was good.
After a rest we were finally able to show the class why the fish are called perchiannas. They could smell the hotdogs from a mile away. The girls had a great time. I suppose this is why someone would become an instructor. It was so cool to be there to see how much fun they were having.
Guppy and I went on our first night dive. We went with the whole Ascuba Crew. The Bills lead the way. We descended to 100ft (actually I went to 107ft...your ball, Mike) and turned left. Guppy followed closely behind the leader for a while. We saw the trees but that was about it. At one point we headed back to the right and ran into O2Neg, Mike, and Cindy. Guppy and I slowed down thinking that they would follow behind but they did not and we managed to lose our leader. We blacked out our lights and were in total darkness. We were hoping to see lights. We continued in what we thought was the same direction not realizing that we were ascending as well as moving forward. Suddenly we see bubbles all around us and then realized that we had risen above our own bubbles to the surfaced. After figuring out what just happened we decided that we needed to go back down because we had not made a safety stop after reaching 100ft.
We decended on a platform and hung out for a few minutes. We were approached by a group of unknown divers. They flashed their lights at us to see if we belonged with them. We shook our heads at them and they went on. Another diver approached looking a little more paniced, and she flashed her light at us to see if we were with her group. We finally left the platform in search of our usual platform. As we were following the wall we also slowly ascended. When we emerged we were about 20ft away from the rest of the group that had emerged.
After the night dive we had pizza and prizes courtesy of Sid and Ascuba Venture. Some of the newbies were lucky in the drawing. We ended the night around the campfire. Then everyone started dropping off like flies. Cindy, Guppy, and I were the lone rangers until O2Neg woke from her cat nap. We stayed up until 3am or 4am talking and trying to solve all the world's problems.
On Sunday, we dove a couple more times and were able to see the girls do their "special drill". They were very excited to be certified divers. They did a great job!! We had another opportunity to feed the fish. For their first FUN dive, we all went with a couple of the newly certified divers down to 100ft. The girls were happy to say that they did it. It was months after certification before Guppy and I got to 100ft. Way cool!
We had a little excitement on our way home also. Sometime after passing San Antonio I was driving down the road as Guppy and O2Neg were sleeping. As we passed a truck that was pulled over on the side of the road, I noticed blonde hair and a frantically waving arm in front of the truck. I slam on the breaks and pull over to the shoulder. O2Neg and I run up the road to the truck to find a young single mother with her two month old son stranded on the side of the road. They had run out of gas. After taking a couple of minutes calming the mother, Savannah, down, we decided to load everyone up in my already jam packed truck to find the nearest gas station. There's not much else to the story. O2Neg bought Savannah a five gallon gas tank and 5 gallons of gas. We took Savannah and Justin back to their truck, I put the gas in, and we followed them to the Exxon station that Savannah's boyfriend was stranded at with a broken tension pulley on his car. Savannah exited the highway, and we continued on towards home hoping that everything works out for the new family.
Now we are back in the real world. Poor O2Neg is sicker than a dog and I am starting to feel something coming on. Now we are looking forward to underwater pumpkin carving and the clean up at the Jetties. Hope to seeing you guys soon.
Go down and get wet!
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