webcowgirl | Entries tagged with scuba

Well, five days after returning, I have to say the continuously unfolding political situation in Egypt is still blowing me away. I saw hints of it when I was there three years ago - basically, any country where people felt it was so expensive to live and so hard to find a job that you just basically couldn't afford to get married ... that's the kind of things where you would expect people would consider it worth laying their lives down to make it change.

A bit about Dahab, Egypt: I'd originally thought I was going to go to Sharm El Sheikh, despite the fact it had a rep as a party town. Instead, solely based on hotel reviews on TripAdvisor, I wound up picking a place further ~~south~~ north, though I hadn't realized we were going to be an hour drive via occasionally sand-covered highway from the Sharm airport. But Dahab was extraordinarily pleasant and utterly worth the drive and extra cost and hassle (70 quid RT transfers via TravelRepublic.co.uk, SO HAPPY I set this up before we left, they met us perfectly upon arrival and we wound up traveling in a private car each way) to get to. It is a small town, seemingly of 5-8K people and a similar number of goats, rural enough that our first sight the morning after we arrived was of a young boy running down the road chasing after his camel. The people that stay there are mostly divers, I think, and thus not prone to getting riotously drunk - can't do that when you're going in the next day. There is a nice beachfront promenade with restaurants where for prices about 30% less than the UK you can eat on cushions while looking at the ocean. The view is pretty spectacular during the day, too: on the horizon across the waters you can see the red mountains of Saudi Arabia looming like the walls of a forbidden desert kingdom. Which, you know, it kind of was. It felt intimidating, somehow, having this place that is now in my mind like the USSR of old staring at you. But Dahab itself is low key and pleasant and lovely, just a small market area and full of tourists but still utterly Egyptian when you take three steps away from the strip.

J decided to come with me rather at the last minute, but I was able to change my one person in a double to two people in a double reservation at the Tropitel Oasis with a minimum of trouble. This turned out to be a really nice place to stay despite my fears of "all inclusive:" the food was good, if not outstanding, we got free drinks all day (not that I did much of that), the gardens were lovely, and the people that worked there actually seemed genuinely friendly. The night we showed up, they did a singing and dancing and presentation of cake thing to a table of three girls; apparently it was the fourth return for one of them, and if she comes back next year they will name one of the trees in the garden after her. And then there was the gorgeous water full of colorful fishies right of the dock, a perfect place to snorkel. There was a dive center on site, but I'd made reservations elsewhere. Ultimately my two complaints were too many mosquitoes and too short of a massage; the lack of internet turned out to not be their fault. The distance from town - about four miles - was more than I wanted to walk (especially after a day in the water), but the hotel ran a shuttle five times a day and we could cab it for four quid. My vote: awesome hotel, great town.

Anyway, our activities pretty much followed exactly the plan I'd laid out before I left, when I was thinking it would just be me, but with additional flexibility about the ordering of options and the eventual decision to bag on further scuba diving due to it being not available for J and me kinda getting my fill the first two days. So what we did was as follows"

Day one: We are picked up at the hotel at 8 AM by the dive company and go into town to get our equipment, then are dropped off at "The Lighthouse" to do our dives. I spent morning doing the first half of my PADI open water dives (writeup here if you missed it) while J did a "try dive" and succeeded in 1) making my instructor wish he were teaching J instead of me 2) getting a nosebleed in his mask, causing J to decide perhaps he wouldn't be doing anymore of this diving thing. J wound up lounging under an umbrella and drinking mint tea while I finished my second dive: he clearly had more fun than I did. I think we finished fairly early in the day, but most of the afternoon is a blur as I was really stressed out. We went for a walk to see about pricing for trips to Petra afterwards, then went back to the hotel for free lunch and a major nap. The evening was also a blur. I blame stress and cold.

Day two: we are picked up at 9AM and taken AWAY from town to a walkable dive site called "The Canyon." I finish my two final dives, while J snorkels and does some water colors. We go back into town to pay up (requiring a bit of a scramble as they want cash and due to lack of internet can't figure out the exchange rate for pounds), then head out for a walk on the promenade. We find a guy with affordable trips and set up for two - he allows us to pay him "on a promise" for the expensive trip to Jordan since we are low on cash - and get into an extensive talk about the political situation in Egypt. We then have an ultra-leisurely lunch at the "Bedouin Lodge," stew for me and grilled chicken for J, while we watch the ocean and laugh at the four black cats who are trying to scam our food. We go back to the hotel, nap, then get up in time for lovely massages, dinner (this time with wine!) and a few rounds of cards on the patio.

And ... well, I'll tell you about days 3 and 4 later.

Yesterday was the second day of the open water dives I needed to complete my PADI "open water diver" certificate. I'd done such a poor job with the mask removal that I was actually waking up over and over worrying about what a mess I was making of the whole thing and how lame I was. I'd "failed" the task because I'd inhaled water through my nose; not only was this wrong, it made me feel pretty panicky and made me want to call it quits. I had spent the evening chilled and feeling that all-body exhaustion that comes with having buckets of adrenaline pour through you; I thought of calling the dive center and just saying, "It ain't happening," or sending J out to the dive instructor in the morning and saying I just wasn't going to finish the course. But somehow 9 AM rolled around and I was outside of the gates of the hotel and hopping into Walid's truck, and off we rolled to "The Canyon," a diving area all of 15 minutes walk from our hotel.

During our briefing. Walid explained the exercises we were going to do. For the first dive, we were going to do two things: full face mask removal and "fin pivot" (getting neutral bouyancy while you're stretched out level in the water) using your own air to inflate your vest (you have weights to help you sink and a "bouyancy control device" to help you float; as you go lower and it becomes less effective, you have to add more air to it to keep in the same position). We argued a bit about what had gone wrong yesterday; while I conceded that opening the mask from the top kept the water from filling the nose (and thus causing that "smothering/choking/water going up nose" feeling), I had never practiced opening my mask from the top and thus had not developed the motor skills to manage the flow of water. Plus, I added, it went right in my eyes, which burned like hell and was most unlike what had happened in the pool. I asked to practice mask removal before we went in so that I could "pattern" it correctly, and we did: tuck in my chin, back strap off first, then pull mask forward from the top (with my eyes closed) and full removal; reattach strap first, then get face mask in place. Sure, it all sounds easy, but when you do it under 5 meters of water with your eyes closed while you're breathing through a rubber hose (that makes a horrible brrrrppp noise when you exhale, not sure WTF was wrong with my regulator) it suddenly becomes really fucking stressful. And when we were done with those two things, he said, we would go for a swim to some really pretty places and just spend some time enjoying ourselves. He also mentioned my previous problems, like not swimming from the hips and flailing around too much from my hands, and reminded me that he basically questioned that I had got much of any skill from my earlier course and told me that was why he'd had me do skills that weren't required for the open water cert. Yay Walid, way to build me up.

So we went into the water and while I pretty much fell over before I was able to get my fins on (I hadn't loosened them up beforehand), when we got under the water (swimming through rather a lot of kicked up sand, visibility was about six inches) I was able to get into the "I'm not actually going to choke to death" mindset much quicker than yesterday, although I did need some time to mellow out. We got to a sandy bank before this wall of coral that encircled the beach like a giant bathtub edge, and I got on my knees on the sandy bottom - and took my mask off and replaced it properly, even untwisting it when it got entangled in my hair. And I kept breathing, and breathing, and keeping my eyes shut, and keeping calm although I was actually just waiting for it to be the final moment when I gave up and called it quits; but instead, Walid high fived me and shook my hands. Well. That was a surprise. Then we puttered forward a little bit more and I stretched out full length so I was basically laying on the bottom, and he had me inflate my BCD (inflatable vest thingie) orally, rather than using the pushbutton inflator that's attached to the air tanks, until I got to where inhaling made me float up and exhaling made me go down. The trick to this is that you have to keep taking your breathing tube out of your mouth after you got a lungful, then exhale into a second tube, then clear your breathing tube thing (either with a fast exhale if you had air left or by pressing the button that forces air through it) so that you didn't inadvertently get a lungful of water when you inhaled again. Breathe, remove, insert, blow, remove, insert, clear, breathe. It all sounds so natural, doesn't it, sitting underneath the water in a place where humans don't really have any business being, basically inflating a wearable beach ball with air you're sucking from an aluminum tank?

Anyway, I managed to do that correctly (and no water in my lungs or nose either time) and was tremendously relieved; we then went over the edge of the bathtub and to the rest of the reef. The fishies were beautiful; there's some little yellow kind that likes to hide in the branches of the coral, and they were very cute; also we saw a lionfish! It was very quiet and regal and I kept my distance. And on our way to the bathtub rim, we saw these cute little striped eels that hid in the sand and stuck their heads out and then back in their tubes, and yellow fish with long whiskers coming out of the sides of their mouths they used to kind of poke through the sand; and it was all really very pretty. Apparently we got to about 18 meters but I (ahem, bad form) never checked my gauge; instead, I was trying to keep close to Walid, who said I was kicking too fast, not deflating in the right position, too high, too low, et cetera (and all in divers's sign language). I did nicely clear my mask underwater when the water in my nose area started to irritate me (so there!), but I felt like I couldn't really get my position right. And I saw a very long pointy fish that looked kind of florescent and it was cool. And we went slooowly along the sandy bottom so that we got our "three minutes decompression at 5 meters," waved hello at J who was snorkeling overhead, and then we were out and done. I ran to the bathroom pretty quickly then sat down at the cool beachside "Bedouin tent" thing and ate the hardboiled egg I'd brought along with.

Walid said I wasn't keeping up with him correctly, that I wasn't getting my body in the correct position when I deflated my BCD (fully UP, left arm extended UP) and I kept stopping when he asked me to inflate or deflate; I apologized and said it just hadn't occured to me that I could keep swimming when I was doing that, and also that he was worried about hitting the coral. He told me if I was getting really close, that stopping would cause me to sink; the better choice was to keep moving forward and INHALE. Alright, I said, I would work on those things. Then we chilled (or rather tried to warm up) for a while, fortunately, the weather was better than yesterday, and I had my red polartec with me, so I felt much better than I did the day before and wasn't feeling nearly so apprehensive about going into the water.

Then it was time for the final dive and we only had two things to do; "navigate by compass" and "meditation," which is basically hovering in the water in a sitting position so that inhale takes you up and exhale makes you sink. He said it's an important exercise because it helps you learn how to use your lungs properly; I was not looking forward to it as it's notorious for not working so well for women, who tend to roll over because their center of gravity is in a different position. Compass navigation he had me practice above water; you put a wrist compass on, take notice of the "degree" you're pointing at, go ten paces, then add 180 degrees to what is shown and return in that direction.

To be honest, I kind of felt overly coached through the execution of these exercises in the water. I sucked at the hovering as I thought I would, but got my handshake and pass; for compass navigation, I wound up counting breaths instead of "kicks" for my ten "paces," I suddenly forgot how to do subtraction, yet somehow we wound up in the same place (according to him) as we started and I'd passed the course. We then went over the edge of the bathtub and I tried to 1) inflate my BCD while moving 2) not kick too much 3) slow down 4) keep at the right level 5) keep moving. Aargh. We got to see the "canyon," a cut through the bathtub rim that goes pretty deep; and I got to enjoy all of the corals that were around, purple and brain and fan and pretty pretty and unsurprisingly when I got to the surface in my final debrief I was told off for looking down too much and not keeping up with him. Sigh. Whatever. I was done.

We went back (when J finally returned) to the dive center and filled out my paperwork and took my picture, etc, and paid, and I was done, and we both decided that we were just going to take today to do something mellow, a little snorkeling and a camel ride, no more tanks, masses of equipment, and stress stress stress, and I was glad.

And today we had a nice man meet us at our hotel at 8 AM and take us by truck to the other side of the "Canyon," to the "Blue Hole," where we were given flippers and masks and met another young man who had two camels, which we rode to Ras Abu Gallum, where we sat under a shelter and drank mint tea and decided, when we were warm enough, to go putter around looking at coral and fishies. This we did and it was fun but it was windy and J got too cold, and when we stopped (probably only half an hour later), we were done for the day. We then played cards, were served up some lunch (tahini, rice and vermicelli, tomato/cucumber salad, and pita bread, with freshly caught fish for J), and then I napped and J sketched. We went beachcombing, then at two the camels came back and we rode off on them, returning to the Blue Hole at 3ish, where we drank mint tea and talked politics with the Egyptians, who were very excited about what was going on and wondering what was going to be next and would America get involved. And that was our day. And that was me done with scuba diving for rather a while, I think, I'm just not so sure if I want to continue doing it anymore.

Today was the first of two days of "open water dives" I need to do in order to complete my PADI open water diver certificate. I had some wonderful shooting pains in my bad ankle first thing; it's like some piece of it (a tendon? a ligament?) wraps around the bone and doesn't want to go back to where it belongs. It only happened twice, though, and not after I'd left the dive center, so yay for that but boo for my shitty ankle in general.

We were picked up at the hotel by the folks from Big Blue; I was really glad I was running around like crazy on Wednesday trying to fnish getting this set up, as the result was that upon arrival at the hotel I had a message saying the driver would be there at 8 AM the next day - and he was. J decided to go for a "intro to scuba" thing (not the "scuba diver certiifcate" I'd suggested, which meant he didn't have any more things to do after he'd finished his one dive), so we both wound up heading to the same dive site together after our equipment fittings and orientation. My instructor was "Walid," who's a master instructor or some such; I was, to my later relief, the only student. We went over what I'd learned in my class for a while; some of the things I hadn't done, like learning how to figure out how to properly weight yourself. I seemed to remember a fair bit, but there was clearly a lot further to go.

The skills for the first dive were: remove and replace breathing regulator (emptying the water out of it before you breathe); remove the regulator, toss it over your shoulder, and "recapture" it using a sweep; "pivot" (achieve neutral bouyancy so you go up as you inhale and go down as you exhale) in 6 meters or so of water. My problems were that I was using my arms too much, messing up my bouyancy; I kept swimming sideways when I was on the surface; and I wasn't getting into the right position when I was letting air out of my floatation device (I needed to be pointing up so the bubbles came out of it easily). I was also struggling (thinking) about how to get the right amount of air in my floatation device; oddly, as you go lower, you have to add more air so that it counteracts the greater pressure of the water. Boy, gosh, doesn't that all sound so simple, only what was happening as I started was that I was bouncing around in the water desperately trying to maintain my balance as I failed to get my flippers on, then I was freaking out about my mask again and failing to get into a calm headspace. Waves were making a lot of difference (and really, the water was calm, but just being pushed around was really different than being in a pool), but I had another irritating mask problem. This time it didn't seem to sit on my face right, and I felt like it was being blown around when I exhaled. My instructor was saying I was actually doing a good job of breathing well and mostly holding my position well when I was swimming, and I was getting panicky for no reason at all. He said the cure for feeling panicky was to just get swimming, as it gets you distracted and also gets you out of the surf and into the quieter water. He was holding onto my arm for rather a lot of this, and I did really get caught up in the "ooh ahh" of it all when we went through a school of very tiny yellowy-orange fish. I saw, over the course of the day, trigger fish, parrot fish, a black angel fish (I think), a puffer fish (not sure what kind), and lots of other things including loads of beautiful coral (fan, brain, purple, etc). But, unfortunately, I got cold again; not what I wanted.

We surfaced and I felt kind of out of breath and chilly, and even though it's probably fairly warm here it took me forever to warm up after the dive. My stomach felt very empty and I tried to put a little food in it but then it turned out that, er, it appeared to be a lot more nausea rather than hunger. In fact, based on my overall reaction, I seemd to be dealing with a huge blast of adrenaline that had left me chilly, ill, and a little light headed. I think we sat there for an hour while I continued to contemplate just calling it done and waving bye-bye to my 160 euros (as I thought at least three times the first time out). J was just hanging out on a couch under an umbrella in a surf-side restaurant (Bedouinsons) and was happy to sip my unfinished banana shake while I went back in; he'd got a nose bleed on his trial dive (in his mask, yuck) so he wasn't in a rush to do anything much else.

On my second dive I had to redo my other skills as "for reals" for the test part for the certificate, but with some other more active (and new) things. First, I had to show I could blow out a snorkel tube (had lots of practice doing that in real life so easy); then switching between snorkel tube, regulator, and tube again (cleaning the water out of both of them before each try). Then it was "tired diver" exercises, consisting of the tow (which I had done before) and the "push" (with their fins on your shoulders, in both cases first task is to ask them to "inflate your BCD!"). Then we were scheduled for "emergency ascent, share your air, share my air" but I really just got confused about what we were trying to accomplish as we sat under water holding onto a rope attached to a surface bouy; was he saying I was supposed to give him my air, or was he still going over the steps of the emergency ascent (the "CESAR," controlled emergency something something, you have to do it on one breath of air then inflate your BCD at the surface using your breath instead of a tank)? He got frustrated that I'd got confused, but my head was just packed and I didn't really know if we were doing things in order or not. And then after we finally did this one I did the "water in mask when you're deep underwater;" he didn't like how I was letting water into the mask (he preferred from the top instead of the bottom), pulled it so a BUNCH of water got in (eyes ow!) and while I was trying to clear out seemingly gallons of water, I wound up breathing some in. Poor, poor job, me, but I just wasn't expecting what he was doing and it upset my mental picture of what was going on enough that I got a snortful of seawater. I managed to cough myself out without surfacing, which was probably good, but damn I had a good time not just heading for the surface and where my head thought safety was.

After this disaster (I failed that part of the test and have to redo it tomorrow, I will have to ask him to please not touch my mask) we had another swimaround, working on controlling my bouyancy, seeing pretty fishies, and trying to get my head together. I was also getting cold again and keeping my arms crossed over my chest not because it was his recommended position (I prefer to swim with my arms straight down to my crotch) but because I was trying to conserve heat. We then went back to this sandy bank and did the "three minute wait" thing (guesture: flat hand with three fingers pointing up to it from below, kind of like a table), then did "other person out of air, give them your extra regulator" followed by "pretend you're out of air, borrow your buddy's regulator." We then made it back to shore where Jason had just ordered some fresh (and far too salty given what I'd just swallowed) tahini, and after I'd done the "close your tanks" exercise, Walid said he'd clean the gear off at the dive center if I wanted to just leave it as his car was showing up in about 5 minutes. And really, I was more than happy to let him do so (despite feeling like I was lazing out on my duties), as I was just exhausted and wanted only to eat and sit in the sun for a long time.

Oddly the first dive was all of about 40 minutes and I suspect the second one was similarly short. When we made it back to the hotel, we dug into the buffet, showered, and then I collapsed and slept for at least an hour, only really emerging at sunset. Tomorrow I only have four skills (plus one make up) to practice during my two dives, which will take place near the Blue Hole (it's famous). J will come with us and do snorkeling. I'm hoping it's all painless and that I'm mentally in better feather than I was today. I can only think of one of them, which is "remove your mask underwater," doubtlessly something I'm really going to enjoy based on my most recent experience getting shit out of my mask, but, well, at least I know I can work through it this time if I inadvertently get water in my lungs again - which I'd really NOT like to do given it will mean I've failed the certification. Pick up tomorrow is at 9, which means I'll feel like I've slept in.

I forgot 2 things about the scuba training.

1. We had to use spit to defog our face masks. Given that even the shit dive shop in La Paz had defogger, I thought this was just the height of cheap and tacky.

2. When we were doing the in-water getting-back-into-your-gear exercise, one of the clips I'd just undone to get the thing off caught in my braid. It was embarassing (a little) and painful (a little more) and a huge fucking pain in the ass that I really hope never to encounter 20 feet below the surface.

Today I had a lazy day with french toast and then tacos and then a quick tube to Waterloo and the Puppet Theater of Terror! at the Southbank Center. (I'm going to write it up but I haven't yet.) Afterwards I met

exedore and we went to dinner at the HK Cafe in Chinatown; with a little arm twisting he convinced me to go to a place called Amorino and have one of their 24 different kinds of hot chocolate for dessert. I got pooped out (I am still beat today) and headed back home at around 8. Now it's almost 10 and I've been cleaning the house and now reading a little bit (Last Dragonslayer, enjoying it a lot). I'm going to be getting in an early night, but first I have a review to do ...

I remembered another petty thing to complain about: my ankle. Once we got the fins on, I spent rather a lot of time with my foot pointed straight down, or being knocked into a variety of positions that were not particularly comfortable. I had not thought about that possibility in regards to the class, that it was likely to aggravate my ankle. On the other hand, it's tremendously better than it was in August, when swimming in the hotel pool was just brutal.

It's the next day. My ankle still hurts. I am still worn out. I think I can type better now, though. I want to finish telling about the class, in part because I know

shadowdaddy has bought the same Groupon and is going to be doing this at some point.

Some more notes about the written test: I think I got about 75%, which is rotten but considering I didn't study for a test was an accomplishment - not one I can be proud of, though. I failed a lot of the "memorize this" factoids, like what's the ultimate safe depth you can dive for, what's the maximum safe speed of ascent, how many hours do you have to wait after diving before you can get on a plane, that kind of thing. I also missed "what do you do if you've gone over your maximum safe dive time" in which you have just used the calculator to figure out how many minutes your safe diving time was. For this one I'm not sure if I did the math wrong or remembered the response incorrectly (I think it was 2 minutes over; I think I remembered the response wrong). However, I did correctly learn the six most used hand gestures, which DID include "out of air" and did NOT include "look, it's a crab." And I'd focused on the correct responses to "what to do if a diver panics" and "what do you do if a diver is non-responsive on the bottom." (I think it might be good to go over a lot of the rest of this, but I'll just say you ought to be able to pass the knowledge tests WITHOUT cribbing from the book, and do learn the right way to swin if you're starting a dive with a current.) And a lot of the other things that I got right, well, when I was reading them they just kind of nuzzled up with all of my other stash of garbage in my head, i.e. "why might water be cloudy?" No idea really what to do when you're diving at high altitude or in cold water, other than "less than you would have" and "do your freaking research beforehand and don't just rely on something you read in a book 5 years ago."

Anyway, back on to the practical part of the day, after two hours of exams and a rather tiring and chilly swimming test - funny how you're told to conserve your energy to dive well and yet the first thing we did was burn energy like mad! (I actually swam the laps quite slowly so I _didn't_ burn myself out - and as it turns out, the instructor wasn't counting how many we did, so when he came back and said, "Okay, it looks like you're all done," I decided to just go with that rather than finish my remaining laps - I knew I could do it but it was going to be at least another 5 plus minutes and I didn't want to hold everyone up.) We put on wetsuits, then were taught how to set up the tanks - which hose goes where, which side the tank valve goes in relation to the "bouyancy control device," aka the vest thing you wear that holds the tank and that you can inflate to help you float, etc., then got in the pool.

We immediately started in on a series of exercises that seemed designed to terrorize the weak or claustrophobic out of the class as soon as possible. I'd expected we'd spent some time just practicing swimming around the pool and breathing; instead, we put on our masks and practiced the ever popular "OMG I just lost my breathing device" routine (taking it in and out of your mouth), followed by "OMG I really just lost my breathing device, where did the damned thing go?" I felt it was, "Hi, you may have never breathed underwater before, how do you feel about being underwater and NOT being able to breathe?"

The tension and fear ratcheted up with our next exercise, which had the subtitle of "You are being smothered by water, how do you like THAT, scarecrow?" This was a series of exercises involving deliberately getting water in your mask and then clearing it by blowing out of your nose (all of your inhale and exhale is done through your mouth; your nose is encased by the face mask). This is obviously a very necessary exercise, but I found it terrifying. It was all worsened by the fact I'd spent all of the previous exercise struggling to stay on the bottom of the pool (albeit only in about 4 1/2 feet of water); my heart rate was up and my breathing was rapid from the effort and, I admit it, the fear. I wasn't able to breathe well; I felt like I was gasping and not getting enough air.

I was feeling panicky and miserable; suddenly my planned trip to finish the "open water" part of the course seemed like it was going to be a major failure as I would obviously never be able to make it any deeper than I was. I consoled myself by saying I could do snorkeling. Then I started to plan my escape from the class. No doubt lots of people left pretty early on, so it wasn't like the instructor hadn't dealt with it before. I'd just call a cab, head home, spend the evening blogging about it, and write off learning how to scuba as I'd obviously had no idea that I was mentally unsuited to do it due to extreme fear of breathing underwater when more than about a foot from the surface.

Oddly, two things happened around this point that helped me get through this really low point. First, I remembered that in the book it talked about how hyperventilating actually keeps you from getting enough oxygen to the lungs if you're breathing fast and shallow; I had got some extra weights from the instructor so I could stop floating off the bottom of the pool, but then, once they'd got me stabilized, I really, really focused on trying to change how I was breathing, to slow myself down, so I wasn't inadvertently starving myself of oxygen. I sat on the bottom counting my in breaths (one, two, three seconds), taking a one second pause, then exhaling in a similarly slow way. The girl who had been next to me and lent me her calculator (Grace), she was next to me in the pool, and I could see she was also focusing solely on getting her breathing right, practically frozen on the bottom, just breathing in and out.

Grace was actually having a pretty hard time. During the water treading exercise, she had looked to me like she was constantly about to go under, and I was actually kind of worried for her. Everyone else was floating around on their backs but the two of us; I was using my ultra low energy water treading technique (honed in Lake Washington), but she seemed to be paddling hard, and her mouth kept going under. She looked miserable. I found out later she'd inhaled some water while she was swimming and hadn't managed to get herself back to a good state. She'd started the class part in a pretty bad position, worn out and having already had to fight off some "OMG you have water in your lungs GET OUT GET OUT" messages from her body. Watching her next to me on the floor of the pool, fighting as hard as I was to manage our bodies long-honed evolutionary protection GET OUT OF THE WATER feelings, I thought to myself, "If this is just going to be a long day of shit that I really can't get through, she and I can go together and share money on the cab."

Appropriately enough, Grace was responsible for the second thing that helped me get through the misery baddicle and get through to a point of relative sanity (when physical discomfort from cold and tired and my fucking ankle became bigger problems for me than the mental issues). She was fighting to get through the mask exercise and explaining to the instructor why she was having a hard time dealing with it (the water in the mask made her panic), and I realized ... it was having water trapped in the space surrounding my nose that was triggering my massive primal ESCAPE WHILE YOU CAN! fear. I then focused hard on keeping my nose space empty of water as much as possible - it could be done - and then only had the "chlorine in my eyes, ow!" problem to deal with. For the "fill your mask all the way with water, then empty it" exercise, I was reminded to keep my eyes SHUT (to help with the burning), and focused on blowing as many times as I needed to to get it all out.

And then, somehow, over the next half hour or so, I was able to get away from the feeling of smothering under the water, and I stopped trying to figure out when the right time to leave was going to be. And I spent the rest of the class carefully congratulating Grace when she got through something hard, trying not to be so enthusiastic that I made her feel like I'd noticed she was struggling, but to provide her with just enough "yay" to give her the strength to make it through. She had really helped me, both deliberately and inadvertently, and now I wanted to make sure that she, too, made it through. I didn't want either of us to have to quit; I didn't want her to feel the abject failure that I knew I would be racked with if I gave up.

So we continued on through a series of exercises that, as near as I can tell, were mostly designed to simulate all of the emergencies you could have in the water. We did the "breathe from your partner's spare breathing apparatus," then "breath from their apparatus after you run out of air because the instructor has turned your tank off, being sure to make the correct hand signals for 'out of air' and 'share air;' " cleverly, I went back to using my air before he'd actually turned it back on, which wasn't as bad as the girl next to me, who breathed from my apparatus before she'd cleaned the water out of it. Ah well, better to make these mistakes in 4 feet of water than 20.

We carried on with things like "breath underwater without a mask for 60 seconds," "pull your buddy across the water by their scuba tank yoke," and "get your tank back on from the surface," then some deeper water (bottom of the pool, the 12 foot deep section) "get your tank back on when you're underwater," "take your weights off and replace them underwater" and et cetera emergencies. We finally did some fun stuff, which was learning how to set the air in your vest to the proper level so that you had neutral buoyancy, floating when you inhaled, sinking when you exhaled. This was a "my big monkey brain is taking in a lot of data" moment for me, and one of the things I discovered is that there was actually a major lag between when I exhaled and when I actually sunk. This was fun, though, and it was also enjoyable to try to read the instructors various signals about what I needed to do to try to float correctly.

The latter part of the day included a lot of "buddy" diving activities as well as changing out your tank to one with fresh air (one guy didn't turn his air off before he removed the hoses, DOH!). I was starting to get dehydrated from so many hours of having the water leached out of my body (or possibly all of the activity) and trying hard not to cough at the bottom of the pool; of course, I started drinking water and suddenly became Princess Tiny Bladder. I also started getting colder (the pool was 30 C but the room was 20 C with a lot of wind outside), and getting tired. At one point, we did an exercise where when we were done we were supposed to just swim around the pool; I got bored of this and went to the shallow end, inflated my vest, and just sat there, breathing real air and spacing out. He came up to check on me eventually; I told him I was running out of juice and trying to conserve energy until we needed to do our next exercise. He accepted this and said we'd be doing another one from the bottom of the pool in about three minutes; obviously I went back but physiologically, if we'd been doing a real dive this is the time I would have got back on the boat and called it a day.

The last few exercises, I started not hearing all of the instructions; I can't remember what all we did anymore (aside from "simulate that your air regulator is stuck open and blasting out air and breathe from the giant stream of bubbles"), only that the last real exercise was swimming across the bottom of the pool with no air, then exiting the water and filling your floatation device using your lungs rather than the tank. And that was it, after removing and cleaning our gear, changing into our clothes with our sopping wet hair, and getting our certificates and dive books (we had to pay five pounds for them, not bad really, with the taxi fare it meant my total expenses on the day was 15 pounds). One of the guys gave Grace and me a ride back to the station; appropriately enough we'd missed the train by five minutes, but we used our spare time to get some snacks at the Sainsbury's across from the station as we were STARVING and fortunately were able to wait the last ten minutes on the train, which was sitting at the platform waiting for its departure line.

So. That is the story of how I got my PADI Open Water referral course certificate. If you were in any doubt, let me assure you, I do really feel I worked for it. I do think I'll be able to manage the part I'll be doing in Egypt, but, man, I feel like to get there it was a trial by fire.

And it's odd, you know? As it turned out Grace and I did go back together, as we took the train all the way in to Clapham Junction (where I got off). We went over the day and how much we had struggled (she said I really helped her with my low key cheerleading), and congratulated each other for surviving. And we talked about Australia (where she's from) and Seattle, and when and where we were going to do the other half of the course. And I'm really happy that this was how I was able to end the course, going back in with the person who'd made it possible for me to make it through.

GOD WHAT A FUCKING DAY.

The dumb things to complain about: I'm all wrinkly and smell like a bleached out sink. The air in the pool area was really cold. Chlorinated water in my eyes hurts. There were no showers or hairdryers in the changing room. The taxi to the dive place cost ten quid. The little missing tiles on the bottom of the pool cut my feet (only a little though).

So two months ago I bought this "Groupon" thing to learn how to do scuba diving, since I said I was going to learn how to do it five years ago as a turning forty kind of thing then didn't actually get around to it that year. It was for the "London Scuba School" which is, as it turns out, in Surrey, only in East Grinstead by which I mean train service only every half hour AND you have to take a taxi to get to the school from the station.

After buying it I called to set up a date and discovered that my class was only a partial class, that needed to be filled out either as part of a two day class (extra 40 quid) or by buying a book and video (45 quid) and doing a bunch of self study beforehand. I was aggravated that it wasn't inclusive but also that it wasn't in London, so decided to do the self study route and find my own books to do it with.

I get pinged on Wednesday and told by the school to bring the following X forms to class, as well as a towel, suit, packed lunch, and the 5 knowledge checking exams. Fair enough, I thought, they need to make sure we've read the material.

Now I was good and started in reading the book last week, started in on the videos Sunday, and spent the last several days slowly getting through the videos and the chapters, only of course I had a bit of a rush last night with the last two chapters and the last two videos. While reading chapter four I discovered I wasn't actually able to do all of the exercises in the book because I was missing a chart that explained safe diving times. Ooops. Well, I got through the work I could do and headed off this morning for my train.

I arrived and immediately was given a test to take, about 60 questions. Most of them had been in the knowledge exams (which I'd finished on the train), but I hadn't realized I was going to have to memorize so much of this stuff. I also discovered that in order to answer three of the questions, I was going to need a "dive calculator." What the heck was one and why didn't I have one? It was the chart I mentioned above, but also it existed as a kind of specialized calculator. I told the teacher I didn't have one and wasn't going to be able to do those questions unless he lent me one and helped show me how to use it. "Hmm," he said, "it's going to be awfully hard for you to finish the final exam, then, since 10 of the 50 questions use a dive calculator and I can't really teach you how to do it right now."

Well, fuck.

Then the girl next to me (who'd already finished her test) said, "It's not that hard, here, use mine - here's the instruction manual." And I picked it up and I started from scratch and by God I made it through that test, even before some of the other people, and I got all of the calculator questions right. I reviewed the ones I hadn't understood (i.e. correct things to do in case you have to ascend without enough air, in the order of preference).

And then we were given the final exam. Bam. Like that. Right away. Without ever having touched any of the equipment. Like, wow. I started on the dive calculation questions first, struggling through them until the girl sitting next to me had finished all of the rest of the questions (then handing her back her calculator) and then continued to struggle through them when she was done and able to give it back to me. Net result? Somehow (aiming for 70% and above), I passed the test. I don't know how, I really hadn't studied for it. And of the class, two of the six failed it. They will have to return to retake it in order to get their certificates.

Then it was lunch (at noon), for me, peanut butter and honey sandwiches. And then, in case we were feeling like the morning had been too easy, we had a swimming exam. 10 laps in the pool and then ten minutes of treading water or floating - all this in a rather. chilly room that was not pleasant to be in in just a suit, or EVEN with a shorty wet suit on. Brrrr.

So, exhausted and brain dead ... we started to learn how to breath through a tube with a mask full of water over our eyes and nose.

I somehow made it through. I almost left half an hour in. But it got better, eventually, after I had enough weight to stop floating off of the bottom and was able to slow down my breathing so I wasn't gasping for air constantly. At one point, I figured my trip to Egypt was going to be a total wash. But I did it all. I passed the test. I'll write more about it later. Tonight, I am bone exhausted and going to bed.

Today I'm going to take a scuba diving class. This is something I've been intending to do for three years but just now got around to rather randomly as I saw a good deal on a class and didn't have much else going for January. I've also planned a trip to actually use what I've learned in a few weeks. Will this be the start of a new hobby or just an expensive blip in the first month of 2011? Only time will tell.

One of the things the counseling I'm supposed to be getting started next week looks at is underlying false beliefs about yourself or the world that negatively affect your behavior and cause you problems. One of them (an easy one to understand) is that the world is basically dangerous. Another is that you are basically worthless.

Another one is that people will always reject you.

This is something I know is a problem for me, but it's not something that is an imaginary belief, it is a reality. I could name numerous people in the last ten years who have just cut me out of their lives. Some have done it without saying why. Some of them have made big announcements about it.

It's not something that's just my imagination. It's something that really happens, has happened, and is happening. It's such a big deal for me that it's part of the reason I moved to England, after the three girls I considered my best friends all shut me out simultaneously then denied it was happening. This was probably the worst of all of the incidents because it was such a head fuck that I spent a good year very seriously believing I was just a worthless human being that no one would ever want to be friends with me. And my parting gift from one of these girls, as I got ready to move, was, "Those people will get tired of your shit, too." It was a nice pick-me-up but also just incredibly effective at fucking my head up just a little bit more.

Anyway, so social ostracism really bothers me. When I'm feeling really good about life and on top of things and like I'm not the source of all evil, I can shrug off people that I consider acquaintances deciding they don't want to be a part of my social circle any more. People are all very different and I'm not everybody's cup of tea; there's no O- / universal donor when it comes to friends. When someone I think that's a close friend shuts me out, well, that would probably be upsetting at the very least because I would miss them; because I consider really close friends important bellwethers as to when you're a fuck up, their stamping of "not worthy" is something that inevitably leads to soul searching, or at least a lot of questions if they'll let me ask it.

Now sometimes my stress all amounts to nothing. Once I was rejected because someone didn't want to get close to someone who was going to be moving in a year; another time a girl had successfully developed a relationship on someone we had both had a crush on and suddenly I became a threat. These just aren't things I can do anything about, or things I really think should involve a bunch of self-questioning about my morals and how I conduct my life. Me, when I reject people, it's usually because they are verbally abusive to me and unable/unwilling to quit, or, worse, disinterested in my feelings of hurt. Accidents are forgivable, but if you hurt my feelings and don't want to stop doing it, I want to get away from you. And if I really care about you but you don't care about me ... well, this is probably a relationship I also need to step away from.

So the point of all this is that, as you might guess, I'm not really at the strong point this decade right now, and I'm not able to shrug off shunning easily. And I'm getting a lot of it. And it's getting to me. And the upshot of this is, again (as I mentioned it a few days ago), I'm looking at parties I might go to and they're making me feel anxious, because I don't actually like to be around people that don't like me. Counseling might help me be able to (at some point) shrug lesser rejections off as the quirks of human relations that they are, but I realize that, to get to a good point, I probably also need to avoid putting myself in situations where I'm going to really be feeling the hate. I really want to go and show people that I don't care, that they can't get to me, but I do and they have and I know the end result will be me being miserable. It's sad, I love being around lots of people, but right now, one or two bad apples will send me home with an ache in my heart that lasts for days and days, and I need to not be doing that to myself especially if I can see it coming.

Anyway, so scuba diving. I have my class on Saturday. Tomorrow night I expect I'm going to pop by the Tate for a bit to catch the Gauguin exhibit before it closes, then I'll go home to study. I hate that when I think of how I'm going to be spending my evening was that C was right, those London people have gotten tired of my shit (at least some of them have), just like she said they would, and I hate that such a little piece of poison could have lodged itself so firmly in my heart. Maybe if I get lucky I can find someone to have dinner with me somewhere so I don't feel as adrift as I always do when I spend the whole evening with no one to talk to. And maybe in six months it just all won't be bothering me so much, and the people who've gone to so much trouble to show how poorly they think of me will have receded into tiny pinpricks in my consciousness, like stars dying in some distant galaxy.

Wow - today I've finished my first book of 2011. That means that I've bought new books, seen a movie, squeezed in three plays, and bought a book (by Jasper Fforde, a kid's book I bet I'll really enjoy). That means all of the side links for this blog have been updated - I doubt most of you read them, but I've been tracking these three things for about seven years now.

Today I did some planning for my Easter travels, picking up a ticket to Palermo for Tuesday, April 18th. Irritatingly, I think the price doubled over the course of the day. Grr. My plan is to go from there to either Riga or Talinn on either Easter Monday or the Wednesday after. I'm a bit torn; I like Sicily a lot but I kind of think I'll be wanting to move by Monday. Then again, maybe I'll get bored in the Baltics after four days. It's hard to tell.

Meanwhile tonight was a quiet night of Pilates (first time in a month, actually did an exercise perfectly I'd never managed to do before, as if forgetting to think actually helped me do it smoothly), a dosa, and studying for the scuba class this Saturday. The video section is BORING. I think tomorrow I'll watch a few episodes and focus on the book. My guess is that I'm going to really be feeling the Pilates tomorrow.

I've got guests tonight for Puerto Rico and enchiladas, but I've got PILES of things to do in addition to getting down the Christmas ornaments, cooking, and cleaning the living room. I must remember to
1. Empty the stuff off of my phone's chip, as I'm getting a new one this week
2. Buy return tickets from Cologne, as it's not a one-way trip
3. Wake up.

I also want to write up the Alice in Wonderland puppet show I saw yesterday with

booklectic, which I really enjoyed. I managed to get The Animals and Children Took to the Streets (from Wednesday) written up in short order, and Alice still has a week to run yet so I should make the effort. I also need to finish chapter one of the PADI scuba course book and watch the associated chapter on the DVD. I need to hurry to get through all of it before Saturday.