Scuba Certification: Part 3

Like I said, we are in the water and ready to begin our Diving Career. Let me fill you in on the requirements of becoming a PROFESSIONAL DIVER. We were required to do five specialty dives. We could choose from a list of about 12, but these were the ones we did, with a brief description of each one because they are very confusing names.

1 A deep dive consisting of diving to a depth of stupidity, where you then experience narcosis, which means you have gone to a stupid depth. We only went down 90 feet. If you were to fall off a building that high you would die, so to me it seems stupid to go that far under water, away from the surface. But to tell you the truth it was not bad. Made things a lot funnier when you go down that far, Jay actually said something that seemed funny down there.

2. An AWARE Fish Identification dive is where you dive down and look at fish and try to remember whet they looked like and then use a book to point out to the instructor what we saw. This seemed like the easiest dive, but it was not so easy, since all of us had to find five different fish and most of the fish looked the same, and I had my eyes closed.

3. A boat dive meant we did just that, we dove off of a little raft boat. Getting back in with all that gear was not as easy, especially for the midget that was with us.

4. Underwater photography dive was another kind of dive that we did. This was neat and easy. At this point we realized it was not so hard to become a Professional Diver. We each took a camera around on a dive and took pictures of fish, coral, and each other making crude gestures to the camera.

5. We did a underwater navigation dive. This was not as much fun because it took up a dive of seeing fish and we had to try and swim in a perfect square by using our compass. I guess you have to give a few things up to become a professional. After doing an oval we passed with a C-.

6. Every one participated in a night dive. This was a dive were, as the title suggests, was done at night. Not at sunset where we could still see, it was done in pitch black. Does not seem like the most wise thing to do, but it sure was great. Seeing fish at night is way different then seeing them during the day. I guess it is the same with women and makeup. All we had to guide our way was what our Aussie guides called a torch. When I think of a torch, I think of something that I could make shadows on the moon with, but what we were given were tiny flashlights put in a zip-lock baggy to be made it waterproof. And yes, mine went out in the middle of my dive. I was lost, but they found me the next morning chillin with the little mermaid in a giant clam.

We did four more leisure dives on this trip, and skipped one due to exhaustion, better known as over sleeping. It was an intense trip, the schedule when like this: wake, dive, eat, dive, shower, dive, eat, dive, shower, rest, dive, eat, dive, shower, sleep, repeat. The rest time we had was about 3 minutes. But it was worth it. We had a great group of people on our boat as well. A group was from South Africa, some English blokes, a couple from the US, a couple from Canada, a couple from OZ (wife was one who spent her whole time in the loo), a guy and a girl that met while traveling and were going their separate ways after this adventure), and a surfer from New Zealand. You always meet interesting people on excursions like this, and this was no exception. The most interesting person by far however was our guide. We were older then him but he had experienced more in his life then probably most of the Kansas population put together. He was full of stories. Stories of jobs, stories of diving, and stories of girls and parties. He was full of colorful language as well. I will put in a story of his but leave a blank where each foul word belonged.

______ man, that____ _____ ____and _______ was a________real_________ _________, she_________ __________and ___________with _____________ hours , she ________ elephant _________ _____________ friends _________that________ and _______girl. In the ____________ end _______.

Well, does that make you want to become a Professional Scuba Diver like myself and Jay? If we can do it each of you five people now that read this can. It all started with a dream, and now has ended with a ID Card that gets us discounts on copies at Kinko's and allows us to dive to stupid depths our own. And all this for only a hundred dollars more!
Side note, I apologize to midgets and women for some remarks I made earlier, I have nothing against either. Until next time.