Ah the weekend! I thought the fact that the weekend was finally here, it would somehow, well, feel like the weekend. It did not. The days are melting together. In fact, I am blending these two days together in this blog because I believe Saturday and Sunday were, in fact, one ginormous day with a nap in the middle. Don’t get me wrong, it has been great but a lot of information has been pounded into this 47 year old brain.
We started out at the shop early on Saturday, buzzing around, getting ready for our training dives and helping get clients get ready for their fun dives. There were 2 bubble watchers, two groups of 2 certified divers and our class of three plus Georgia, JT, an instructor and a divemaster, who were leading their dives. Captain Alonzo drooped us at our first dive site, a fun, deep dive, just to blow bubbles and remember why we were doing this in the first place. Georgia is really good at reminding us to “have fun”.
After blowing off some bubbles we got down to business and worked on our open water skills and presentations. Things are definitely getting much smoother and easier now. Our practice and hard work are becoming evident and we are now mostly having to overcome silly mistakes rather than the hot messes we were in the beginning, thank goodness.
We finished off our outing with a nice big dose of rescue 7, everyone’s “favorite”. The customers were finished with both of their dives and we headed back in for more classroom work, YAY, and up early and out to the ocean again Sunday with another group of fun diving customers.
We worked on more open water presentations and wrapped it up with some lift bag work. As a diver who dons an integrated LPI/alternate air BCD, I will now never confuse the inflate button for the purge button! Had we been graded on the lift bag segment, I would’ve gotten a 1 for corking myself. Luckily, we were only at about 25′. Time to gather up the fun divers and head back for some more, you guessed it, classroom!