Scuba Certification: Part 1

I am going to share with you the amazing story about how me and my friend Jay became professional scuba divers. It is a story that has stupidity, pain, danger, research, death, excitement, heroism, tax evasion, sex, and drugs (all notified by italics). It all started on a Tuesday afternoon about 3:45 I believe, when Jay (who was on his cell) came to me with the idea of traveling to Australia. I was of course excited about the idea. Oz, as it is called by people too lazy to say or type Australia, we learned has one of the Seven Wonders of the World. That being The Great Barrier Reef, and in order to explore it correctly we were going to need to learn how to breath under water. We researched for about 5 minutes and decided to pay a months wages to Oceans Window to teach us the ins and outs of Scuba Diving. We had a good group of people in our class, and we had a great teacher, Terry Oaks. Everything was going great, we were learning about safety guidelines, we practiced what we learned in the pool and cheated on quizzes. Well, we passed the written exams, and all of our pool exercises, so now it was time to head out to Aquarena Springs to do the open water part of the certification. One problem. Oceans Window had not been paying taxes for the past six years and the IRS shut them down, leaving us without a certification and there would be no refund! Now we are out money and the trip to OZ is in danger!.... wait.... Terry Oaks to the rescue. He volunteered to certify us all on his own. Instead of going to Aquarena though we had to go to the Frio River, which for those of you who are not ambidextrous, that means COLD. Is was not only cold in the water, it in the 20's outside. Two people froze to death and seven people had frost bite but Jay (who was still on his cell) and I come out unscathed, except for a jammed finger. We were not not able to dive to the depths that we were supposed too according to guidelines, being in the Frio, but Terry passed us all anyways and we celebrated by burning the trees from the park and dancing around the fire screaming. One side note... When getting certified, over a two day period like we were, after the first day is over do not wad your wet suits up and shove them in a trunk, wet. Jay (who was on his cell) did that to ours. Putting a wet wet suit on that has come out of a car that had been sitting overnight in freezing temperatures, is a bad experience. I would compare it getting hit with a bat as hard as possible. But, thanks to the help of Terry Oaks, our dive partners safety checks and our fins, we became Certified Open Water Scuba Divers, and had a photo ID that proved it. We have now conquered the 12 foot deep stream! Our next dive spot? Non other then the 10,000 foot deep, shark infested, 400 miles from shore, Great Barrier Reef. I asked Jay if that made him nervous, but I didn't get a response. He was on his cell. To be continued ...