6/11/08 scuba

"Courage is the mastery of fear"
i saw that in a movie i watched today. yes, today. went to sleep around 1.30/2am, woke up at 3.30am and haven't been back to sleep yet. part of it is my left ear is still clogged. part of it is this dang sleep thing, and part of it is i felt a little nauseus.

we had week 3 of scuba class last night. substitute teacher. classroom went pretty well. i kept wanting to add in a 'safety factor' into the dive tables for some reason. but as far as errors go, the one i was making would save a life as opposed to actually drowning someone due to me miscalculating the amount of bottom time (amount of time spent on a dive) they have.

i had a moment there in the pool last night where i was just all of a sudden overcome with sensory overload. that's the best way to describe it. i just felt this wave of overwhelmingness (if that wasn't a word it is now) and had to surface and take a minute. felt really silly, but i tell you, letting a few tears escape and a few deep breaths and it can do wonders for the psyche.

let's see if anyone's reading this...small tangent, sorta related sorta not. i guess we'll see if anyone leaves a msg on my message board, eh? as you know we're taking scuba so we can see more/do more in palau, which is definitely on for jan-feb 2009. matt and i have been talking about few other trips between now and our New Zealand bike trip in 2011. 1 is the trans-america trail on the tandem, if we can find someone willing to drive the truck for our support vehicle. 2 is the mongol rally. but what has me excited is 3-yesterday matt signed us up and paid registration fees for us to do the rickshaw run. 2 weeks of driving across india (yes, the country of india) and nepal in a 3-wheeled tuk-tuk. www.theadventurists.com. we were thinking of doing the summer run in june 2009, but this week they sent out a newsletter tellign of the addition of an easter run, and the moving of june back to sept. so next feb we're in palau, and for easter we'll be driving across india! planning on taking the route thru nepal and visit kathmandu for 1, see the giant stuppa, over and cross the ganges (hopefully this time i won't get strep!) on to agra for the taj mahal, then upwards towards delhi and on up to the north somewhere where the finish line is yet to be determined.

anyway, i was really proud of myself last night. i managed to kneel on the floor of the deep end of the pool. we actually started there as well. learned how to take the 'giant stride' entrance into the pool. as soon as we feel we won't be infringing on class time we'll take a camera with us and get some pics of us all decked out in gear and underwater. we have 1 more classroom/pool session before drysuit training and open water classes start. i made the decision last night that we're going to push them back a month.

i was proud of myself last night because i did it. i was a little nervous (ok, small panic attack when i couldn't hang onto the step between the shallow and deep but still couldn't quite touch the bottom of the pool, but B___ can't remember his name was there and reached out a hand to help steady me. meanwhile matt's just swimming all around the deep like a fish. :-) yay for him. but i did get down there! had to ascend a little once for my ears, but was able to equalize the pressure pretty good. did have a few moments a few times where i wasn't sure about my ears as we spent what seemed to me like hours down there. i'm still having bouyancy issues. as long as i'm swimming i seem to be able to maintain 'altitude'. just checking. 'depth' is more accurate. anyway, sorry, maybe the lack of sleep and no coffee or breakfast yet this am is getting to me. where was i? oh yeah, i tend to follow my head. when i look 'up' to see in front of me my body follows. so i was pretty constantly adjusting to stay down. if i emptied my bc i was too heavy, if i added i was too light. i never did find quite the right balance last night. that, and the fact that i had to struggle to stay put when kneeling, and the fact that i don't know how many times i said to myself ' i just want to surface and get out' last night tells me i'm not ready for open water. i told matt last night before we even got out of the pool that i wanted another night like last night before learning anything new. he says it's ok.

also not entirely sure my physiology will allow me to dive comfortably yet. while i did get down to the floor of the deep end, the fact that i do have problems clearing my ears can stop me from descending. if i'm stuffed up with sinus stuff i'm not going to dive. the last 24 hours before flying home (or to a destination) diving is off-limits. it's strongly encouraged to not dive 24 hours before flying for anyone due to all the pressure changes. even if you surface just fine, when the plane descends on approach you can get bent! and with lymphodema being uh what's the word. not caused by, aggravated by, pressure changes, i have that much more incentive to keep that rule strictly enforced! now i've been out of the pool 10 hours and my left ear is still plugged and i still feel a little queasy in the tummy... not sure how much of that is actual verses psychological. so we'll see.

i think i'll know after that if i'm still having the 'get me out of the pool' thoughts if i want to continue to dive. monetarily it kinda sucks. but there's also good. i've learned how to do something i never thought i would do. i put myself in a totally different element than i'm comfortable with and survived. (like what was cancer????) we'll still go to palau only do more snorkeling. i'm a stronger person for doing this. and all that. but as far as stuff we've purchased, the only gear we've bought which we can't return is the BC - mainly becuase it was custome made to fit our body and we 'spared no expense' and had them monogramed. why not, right? but i can use the BC as a snorkel vest, so that's not a total loss. and even though we've paid for the drysuit training and open water dives we can return them if we decide not to go through with them.

did i have fun last night?
no.
did i have more fun last night than i did last week?
no.

not this time.