Temperature : Cold still
Mood : Tired
This week kicked off with "Dusty's PT" which is how Dusty the instructor gets his laugh by absolutely destroying us with morning PT. Dusty's week is regularly known as "PT Hell" Once that was over and we ate breakfast it was off to the classroom to take Physics...Now we all know I struggled with mathematics in high school so I had very limited hope in understanding physics. Monday we covered how to find the volume of a cylinder, how to find out the absolute lifting capacity of a object and we covered Boyle's Law which states that if the pressure goes up the volume goes down if the temperature is a constant. Tuesday was more phyics with us covering Charles's law ( at a constant pressure, as the temperature increases, the volume increases. The opposite is also true.), Gay Lussac's Law (at a constant volume, as the temperature increases the pressure increases and visa versa.), General Gas Law ( GGL which accounts for variables across the board), and Dalton's Law ( the pressure of gas is the sum of the partial pressures of the gases). Pretty interesting stuff actually.
Day Ten / Eleven : 0630
Temperature : Warming up!
Mood : Still tired
After more of "Dusty's PT" it was off to take the Physics test. I actually felt pretty confident about the test for some reason. I seemed to grasp the concepts fairly easy. Turns out I grasped them very well because when we got our tests back at the end of the day, I was the only one who scored a 100%.... :-) ! Physiology on the other hand is not going to be as good. I can see that already. Human anatomy, cell structures and etc were always too difficult to remember for me. After Wednesday's physiology class, it was time for "Team Building" which is just another way for Dusty to scream like he did in the military and get his laughs and somehow make us work as a group. It basically comes down to another PT session combined with bridge jumps. A right of passage here at C.D.A. Luckily it only took us two tries to get it right but it wore all of us out. I made it through two very long days in class, thinking we were going to have a test on Friday morning, but they ended up pushing it back till Monday. This week has been nothing but sitting in the classroom and I need to do something, thank god tomorrow is Friday.
Day Twelve : 0800
Temperature : Warm finally
Mood : Glad to be diving
Today is dive day, and our entire class is excited to finally be out of the classroom. Today's dive was a flange project in the 20 foot training tanks, getting use to taking it apart and using the correct terminology over the radio. Dive time was going to be a minimum of 20 minutes and a maximum of 30. Everything went alot smoother in terms of rotation of jobs and getting dressed and back to the dive site in a timely fashion which the instructors were happy with. I was in the 3rd rotation of divers so I spent the first part of the morning Tending to the diver that was in the water (keeping the hose from having too much slack and dressing and un-dressing the diver, which is just making sure the hose is secure to him and getting him into the hat properly). "Red" our instructor who was managing topside gave me high marks for tending because he saw that I wanted to do the best job possible, getting the diver dressed properly in a very short time (less than a minute) which I was pretty happy with. I'm going to make sure I keep up the good job. My dive went pretty good, time flew by and definitely didn't feel like 30 minutes of bottom time. Before we knew it, class was over and I wound down the week by hitting the bar....enough said.
Day Thirteen : 0700
Temperature : Nice
Mood : Hungover
Today was our final checkout dives for our Open Water scuba license, so the bus left school at 0700 and I slept the entire way down to Ocala. Our first dive was down to 30 feet and we practiced taking off and putting back on our BC's underwater and buoyancy control. We stayed down for about 30 minutes then headed to the surface to let the other group get their dive in. After playing the fun little game called "hurry up and wait" we had another dive at 1430 where we went to 40 feet ( I dropped down to 60 to keep from getting kicked by everybody ) and made a lap around the grotto, we only ended up making it about half way due to the fact two people ran out of air since they weren't checking their pressure gauges. Once we all got to the surface and got out, we finished up our log books and are now officially Open Water certified (I'm going to take full advantage of this between now and the end of school). After playing another round of "hurry up and wait" we were told school would be leaving food out for us when we got back to Jacksonville, then they told us to eat at Ocala, then right after we got our food, they told us the bus is leaving so we barely had time to eat half a plate. They're extremely dis-organized as a whole for the SCUBA program and I'm really glad that I had already taken the class back home even though I didnt get to finish it out up there. The two hour bus ride back went quick because as is tradition, I passed the hell out. Tomorrow is going to be another lazy day where I can finally sleep past 0630 and I have to do laundry. Oh the joy's of doing laundry...
I'm looking forward to this upcoming week, 2 dive days (class is split half and half on who dives which day) in the "demand" hats and finish out the week with dive medicine and finally a full weekend off. What to do, oh what to do?? Hmmm
"love is just a word, until someone comes along and gives it meaning"
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