Success! Sort of.

Well, I got back in the water.  I REALLY didn't want to do it at the last minute.  We had to wait for lap hours to finish at the pool and, while I sat there, I started talking myself out of it.  It really was a completely mental thing.  However, when my instructor signaled that we could get in the pool, I just told myself that I'd try again for a few minutes before walking away.  Lo and behold, it wasn't so bad.  We still had a few skills to do in the shallow pool and, luckily, it was much cooler that day so I didn't get nauseous at all.

Then we had to go to the "deep" pool.  It's just 9 feet deep but that's a big deal when I had been able to stand up and reach air in the shallow pool.  My freak-out tendency was soon overshadowed by the sheer weight of all the gear I was carrying.  As I tried getting out of that pool, every step seemed like it would be my last.  I almost didn't make the last step.  My leg was all wobbly.    I walked to the other pool all bent over; my waist was literally at a 90 degree angle.

To get into the deep pool, we had to learn the "giant stride".  You basically just look ahead and pretend your are going to walk on water.  You take one big step forward...but you sink.  The BCD (buoyancy control device) is inflated though so you pop right back up.  This didn't scare me at all.  What scared me was the thought that the second I lifted my leg to take the giant stride, the other leg was going to buckle under the weight.  It didn't.  Hurray, because that would have been embarrassing.

So that session was pretty weird.  First, we learned how to descend and equalize our ears.  Then we did this thing where you learn how to establish buoyancy by lying on your stomach and breathing in and out.  Ideally, you should go up a bit when you breath in and then lower back down when you breath out.  We got to swim along the bottom for a bit and that was my favorite part.  The good thing is that swimming along the bottom is really what we'll be doing most of the time when we go on real dives.

The last skill of the night...let me rephrase that because it wasn't supposed to be the last skill of the night...so the last skill I tried that night was one were you have to establish buoyancy and just float for a minute.  Sounds easy, right?  It sure looked easy when my instructor demonstrated.  I was feeling pretty confident so I established buoyancy and started floating.  The problem was that my feet wanted to float higher than the rest of me so I started to turn upside down.  I didn't like that so I got all twisty and tried to right myself.  We went back to the surface and my instructor said that a lot of people end up with their feet higher and I should just roll with it.  Mhmm.  So, I tried again...and again I got all twisty and my arms flailed around.  You aren't supposed to do that.  So, I tried one more time, resolved to just go upside down.  This time, it wasn't my fault that I had to abort the mission.  There was some water in my mask and it went straight up my nose.  It's hard not to react when that happens.  So, once more to the surface.

Eventually, we realized that I need a new mask because this one was going to continue to leak.  I really didn't want to go upside down again if I was just going to get water up my nose so I pretty much ended the class right then.  Plus, my calves were cramping like crazy.  Cramping is common when diving because you use different muscles with dive fins than most people normally use.  Great.  You mean I get to cramp at "other" times of the month?

I had done enough skills that I could still do my ocean dive so we did that on Saturday.  I'll write about that tomorrow night.  For now, I'll just say that it was another "success - sort of" experience.