The only one to complete in her class of three and the only woman to complete in my class of seven ended up being each other's diving buddies this weekend. Lucky Star and I met Monday night at dive practice and reviewed skills together, and I tried not to despise her when, Tuesday, we happened to be trying on wetsuits at the same time and had rather opposite problems of fit. I had my revenge this weekend, when I was mostly fine and she was shivering violently. But I rubbed her back and chafed her hands and we had a good time.
You have four open-water dives altogether in your certification, but only three per day. After the first one Saturday morning, Instructor Mark thought perhaps we would stop after the second one, because Star was cold, and do two Sunday. I wanted to get done, and Star, good buddy that she was and a trooper, decided she could manage three. After that, and retreating to the hotel for showers, we met at the Comet II (I never did ask what happened to the first one) for lunch. We were six: Star and her beau, two instructors, and RDC and me. During lunch, the restaurant played early Madonna, and Star began dancing a little in her seat. I looked at her solemnly and said, "You can be my lucky star, Star," and she danced some more.
This alias became even more appropriate Sunday morning when we swapped contact information. The first thing I asked about her seven-character email leader was what her middle name was. This is perhaps invasive of me to ask without context as often as I do, but the leader--what do you call the string before the domain name?--began obviously with her initials. She told me, and then because of the last four characters I asked if her birthday was 24 May. It is. "May 25th!" I whooped and we high-fived. I told her my very good friend's birthday is the 24th (when he and I were inseparable, we called ourselves twins, not only because we share a birthyear as well), and she said "Gemini power!" but is too young to have offered the "Wondertwin power--activate!" fist so we just high-fived again.
An alias for her is an unnecessary vanity, since I doubt she will figure much in these annals, but I liked her and she made for good story.
So I am all certifimicated. We went to the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, where the water temperature ranges broadly throughout the year, rather as Dorothy Parker described Katharine Hepburn's acting range, from 61 to 64 degrees. RDC dove with the other "instructor," who was kind of the Miss Bates of scuba diving, talking a lot while saying nothing, though at least he must have been quiet underwater; Star's beau Andy didn't dive but kept the cocoa, towels, and fleece ready; and Mark put Star and me through our paces. A specialty class 80' below stirred up the silty bottom, murking the usually clear water, but the hole was still blue and shining. It's lovely. The Washington Post says people lie on the bottom on winter nights and watch the stars, and if I had a hood and gloves I'd join them. Because it's pretty (and cold).
As long as I can figure out what to do with my ears.
I began on the surface to equalize the pressure behind them--hold your nose and try to exhale--but could not do so enough. I'd descend a few feet, shriek into my regulator (the bit you breathe through), ascend to less pressure, try again to equalize...I took a long time descending, and this made me feel bad for Star: the sooner we completed skills, the sooner we could leave the "platform" and start swimming around, i.e., circulating our warm blood around our extremities.
Cold water and the ignorance of my inexperience meant that I came away with barotrauma: inadequate reaction to changes in pressure. Fluid, including blood, clogs my eustachian tubes. The actual tympanic membranes are fine, and my hearing is not (yet) threatened, but my balance is off and I hear every internal noise more than I ought. Although my sinuses are clear, I have the stuffy-head feeling and sounds. Brushing my teeth, scratching my head, chewing, water from a shower pounding on my neck and back--all of this I hear inside my skull. I saw a doctor Monday morning who told me that this is not a contraindication for diving but that the blood, coagulating as it does, will take four to six weeks to clear. Four to six weeks, beyond which if it hasn't cleared on its own, icky things must happen in hopes of safeguarding my hearing.
I spent the weekend badly disoriented (and disoccidented, and I want words for dissouthed and disnorthed and why do we orient ourselves in English when European navigation relied so much on Polaris? hmm). We napped and read Saturday afternoon in the hotel and drove six hours each on Friday and Sunday. But High points included one, my leaving just one peg in the board on my first try in years at Pyramid Solitaire, at dinner at Joseph's; two, spotting what turned out not to be another game but a merely display of little burros on a board filled with holes for their little feet, and these little burros were flame-breathing. They were lighters, sparked by thumbing the ears back. I was sorely tempted, but even if I needed a lighter, these were bad lighters in both spark and duration. But they were cute burros. And three, most excellent pie at the Comet II. We bought one to bring home and had it for dinner Sunday night. Oh, and four, the victory jumps. I was kinda scared, all my grown-up brain's fault whining about danger from 10 or so feet up. Other divers shouted Star, Andy (in just a bathing suit), and me in, and they jumped, and I didn't, and RDC says on the video camera that maybe I couldn't hear, and finally I jumped because I was not going to back out at that point. Then Andy and Mark decided to go again, and it was fun once I actually got myself off the ledge, and I wasn't freezing like Star, so off I went again. They jumped together and from higher up, all Butch and Sundance, and once again I had to get over my own cowardice/good sense. Swimming back to the steps in a wetsuit was unfun: the buoyancy and immobility a wetsuit enforces made me feel and swim like a bloated carcass. So I went in again in just bathers. If it had been sunny, that would have been fine.
Because the dinner restaurant was named Joseph's, as we approached it RDC called "Joseph! Joseph!" like Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life" wanting to be rescued from Bert's arrest at the abandoned house The place was packed, as we could see from the outside, and so RDC said Joseph must be giving out a lot of cash-register wings.
Future diving will happen in warm water, which will require few to no millimeters of neoprene compressing my body and restricting my movement, and which is less likely to cause barotrauma, and which is clearer and has more to see. I knew before I started that I would like the wateriness and the underwaterness and the weightlessness, and I figured I wouldn't have the I'm-underwater-I-can't-breathe panic that bested some of my classmates and I didn't. I don't like having water against my nose when I can't breathe through it: it's unnatural. But now that I'm certified I don't have to prove again that I can remove and replace and clear water from my mask, so I don't have to overcome that instinct anymore. The permanent very bad thing is that I hadn't connected champing on a regulator bit with actually having to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose. That I don't like: it makes you stupid and dehydrates you to boot.
Photographs eventually, plus perhaps video of the first jump.