SCUBA-duba-du

For the past few weekends I have been taking classes to become a SCUBA diver. I am happy to say I finished my final open water dive and am now a Padi certified diver.

The certification involved 8 hours of classwork and testing, 8 hours of contained diving and 4 open water dives.

The classroom work was done at the Diver's Paradise Scuba Shop. The contained diving was in the swimming pool at LaPorte High School. The open water diving was at 288 Lake.

There were 3 people in my class and believe it or not my dive partner, Rusty, was from Amarillo. What are the odd?

I have to say the first time we were in the pool I was a little nervous because the idea of "breathing" under water kind of freaks me out. That is the whole idea of starting out in a pool. You are in an area you can stand up if needed. By the time the first contained dive was over I felt more at ease. The second day was in the deep end of the pool where you can't stand up. We practiced safety proceedures over and over.

I was a little more calm before the first open water dive. I was more nervous about not being able to see but to my surprise even in a murky lake we could see in front of us about 15 feet. There were submerged platforms we sat on to practice our bouyancy, equalizing and more safety proceedures.

The last day and on the final 2 dives we were to do navigation. Now I'm the first to admit I'm no good with a compass. Our assignment was to go in the direction the instructor indicated, swim out 15 kick strokes and hopefully return to the same spot. You do this with your dive buddy. One navigates while the other counts kick strokes. Rusty was the first to navigate and he did great; success the first time. Now it is my turn to navigate. I get my direction, set my compass, indicate to Rusty "let's go" and we're off. One kick, 2 kick, 3 kick and I go head first into the platform pole. We had made a u-turn. What happened? I try again; same results. I wasn't holding the compass level so the needle was getting stuck. After a few minutes of underwater instruction on how to use a compass we set out again...success!!! I don't know who was happier, me, Rusty or the instructor Dave.

After we completed all the task we went on a short swim to celebrate our success in completing our certification.

I will always be a cautious diver but I will enjoy getting to look at the fish and other creatures like the little bass under the platform that watched us as we dove and a little crappy that swam along with us on our dives. Wonder what they were thinking?