Saturday I dove even though it wasn't my scheduled day. Dad gave me a ride, which was a nice start to the day. I was covering for someone (Allen) who had agreed to cover the shift I'll be missing on the 17th, when I'll be at Dutch Springs doing my drysuit class. We all dove in Glover's. I was especially excited because not only was it big, clean, nice tank with a lot of cool fish, but it is warm and I can wear a thinner, somewhat more comfortable wetsuit. As it turns out, I was a bit chilly, but I did stay in the water for 1 hour 45 minutes, making this dive my longest ever (yes, it was no more than 12 feet of water, oftentimes less). Glover's is in pretty good shape at the moment, but I know it won't stay that way. It's a big tank and there are a lot of structures in it. Cleaning structures where you can't see much dirt isn't really satisfying, and you can never be sure which spots you missed. A few of them did definitely have some algae buildup already, but not a lot. It was also a more challenging dive than I was expecting because there's so much to get yourself caught on. Diving requires a lot of hoses and your field of vision isn't what it is on land. But I got accustomed to it as I worked. Generally the fish stayed away from us, but every once in awhile an enormous hogfish would do a curious drive-by.
Each of us were assigned structures to clean, and like I said, it was hard to know when you were done. So we moved on to adjacent structures as soon as we were done with the assigned ones. Turns out this was the wrong thing to do. Dick got upset with us for spreading out too much over the tank. Apparently our assignments are to keep us together in a particular area of the tank so that the fish can escape us if they want! So after about an hour and 15 minutes, we all surfaced and got a talking-to. I had bad leg cramps at that point, and almost got out of the water, but Dick told me to pull on the front of my fin with my leg straight and that helped. My legs are still particularly tight from the run I did last week in my new barefoot shoes. I love them but they work my calves particularly hard and I'm not used to it. I must have also been hungry because I was thinking about pizza for most of the time I was underwater.
In keeping with my last couple of weekends, Saturday was a jam-packed day. On my way back from Brooklyn I met up with a guy in my dive club who has been helping me fix up this used Dive Rite backplate and wing I picked up, in this case the wing. The power inflator it came with was rusty and this guy told me he could swap it out with one of the many he has lying around. He did most of the tinkering last weekend and it turned out I needed a new part, which he ordered and put on for me. The wing still seemed to be leaking. The owner of the workshop we were working in (it's also a dentist's office) came in and ended up helping us fix it. So I guess I have a working BP/W now! It's not perfect yet, and depending on who you ask it may never be. I dove with it for the first time on Sunday night in the pool at Pan Aqua, where I am doing the PADI drysuit certification class. But I think that is going to have to be another post because I have written enough for the moment.
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