December 28, 2017 It’s day 3 and we finally got some sleep last night. However the weather doesn’t seem to be cooperating with us. It was really cold this morning, and analyzing tanks with cold fingers was not fun. Now have even more tanks to analyze, ( 4 sets of doubles, 2 AL40 deco bottles and 2 AL 80’s) it… Read more »
December 27, 2017. Both of us slept poorly again last night, and this morning My dive buddy was feeling worse than yesterday. She had a lot of congestion, and was up coughing all night. However, we managed to get moving fairly early. The morning started with the usual gear prep and breakfast. We analyzed gas, and I did some fixing of any… Read more »
With the anticipation of GUE Cave 2 training starting bright and early the following morning (December 26, 2017), My dive buddy and I went to bed at our normal time-ish (10pm). Unfortunately neither of us slept very well. I ended up sleeping on the couch because we were tossing and turning keeping each other up. I suppose we were just anxious about… Read more »
It’s almost bedtime on Christmas day 2017 and My dive buddy and I are about to start our Cave 2 class in the morning. We are staying at a house near Fort White, just a stones throw away from High Springs. The class will be roughly 8 hours of field and in water drills for 5 days. This is the pretty standard… Read more »
We’ve been really busy cave diving, averaging about 10 cave dives per month, since completing our GUE Cave 1 class almost exactly a year ago. We have learned a lot this year, and are lucky to have such beautiful dive sites in our back yard. Now we are on the cusp of taking GUE Cave 2, and we are… Read more »
My dive buddy and I have been wanting to get some professional pictures taken of us in the water for quite some time. We always seem to be taking pictures or video of each other, and never have any of both she and I in the shot. So I contacted Lauren and Jon Kieren to see if they would be interested in… Read more »
I’m not ashamed to admit that I like to eat and partake in the occasional adult beverage. But when life gets busy I tend to eat more and exercise less. Unfortunately my early to mid thirties have been a very busy time for me; and consequently I’ve not maintained a very healthy lifestyle of exercise and proper diet. Hey… Read more »
My dive buddy and I had been working hard all week and Mer was gracious to give us an open ended schedule. We pretty much agreed that it would take what it took to do the class and at this point we were just happy to be learning and growing as divers. As with fundies, we grew so much in just a short amount… Read more »
It was day 6 and we arrived at the front office of Ginnie Springs just before 8am. We waited a few minutes for the staff to open up but we were the only ones in the parking lot. We quickly checked in and everyone there was very nice. They gave us our “Cave 1” arm bands and we headed over the the… Read more »
The week was flying by. It was the morning of December 22nd and our plan was to meet Mer at Peacock again at around 8 am. We got up a little early and we were making good time. So we stopped at this really cool breakfast place called The Great Southern Biscuit Company in Mayo Fl. My dive buddy was wearing her santi… Read more »
After actually getting some sleep and waking up at a reasonable hour to prep gear, My dive buddy and I hopped into the truck and drove towards Wes Skiles Peacock Springs. It was cold and rainy but eventually it was supposed to clear up (we hoped). We met Mer at the gate around 8am and she showed us to the parking lot… Read more »
We had trouble falling asleep from just being wired and anxious, and on top of that, we woke up cold in the middle of the night. The temperature outside had dropped to the mid 40s and the thermostat was set for the low 60’s. I couldn’t figure out how to reset it in my half-a-sleep stupor, so I just tried… Read more »
Class started on Sunday the 18th at EE, with Meredith Tanguay as our instructor. We did the normal morning lectures followed by some gear inspection. There are some slight gear changes for cave diving that we hadn’t done prior to class, but Mer got us all fixed up. Really not much changes but you will see once you take the… Read more »
If you asked me two years ago if we would be getting ready to do a cave diving class, I’d have said “no way that’s happening!” In fact I remember when we first met Mer, she asked us what our goals were in diving. The subject of cave diving seemed pretty ridiculous to even think about. But I guess life tends… Read more »
When I first started diving in 2009, I didn’t realize there were many many choices for scuba gear. And I didn’t even realize the back plate and wing existed. The shop we went through had a good selection of quality recreational gear, but like most shops they are limited to what agreements they have with manufactures and what makes sense to… Read more »
We have been using the Light Monkey 9W 5.2 canister light for a few years now and it’s been pretty good for what we needed. And what we needed was to have a reliable LED light to dive in the murky Texas lakes, and on night dives. We used the 9Ws mainly for communication if we got separated enough that… Read more »
Shortly after My dive buddy got her tech upgrade, I scheduled a weekend with Mer and also got mine. It’s still very much a challenge for me to have the type of precision in the water needed for the upgrade, but we have been practicing a lot and I was ready as ever. The day I went for mine was following a work/training trip to… Read more »
My dive buddy and I decided that we needed a change to shake things up a bit. We had been tossing around the idea of moving out of Texas for a little while, but it was always a fleeting discussion. Let’s face it, moving sucks! The process is stressful and the comfort of living and working in a familiar area turns into chaos of… Read more »
Wow what a difference a year makes. This time last year My dive buddy and I did our last wetsuit dive with the CHUM club at the Blue Lagoon Dive Lake in Huntsville TX. It was memorable because we had already ordered our drysuits but were just waiting for them to arrive. The water temp last year was 49° F and we… Read more »
We find ourselves at the end of another year. Where does the time go? Since becoming a diver in 2010; this year, above all the previous years has been the craziest. It’s also a year that we didn’t get to do much fun diving despite having been in the water a lot. The training and gear changes have basically… Read more »