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Gruntenheave, Joan, dive 34

July 4, 2009

Dive: 34
Season Dive: 2
Date: 7/4/09
Site: Gruntenheave, Joan
Avg/Max Depth: 14/22
Temp: 63
TBT/CBT: 1:09/26:47
Buddies: Curtis, Kristen & Ted

What better way to spend the 4th of July than diving? And what better way to remember all about it than to blog about it 6 weeks later? Too bad my dive computer doesn’t record experiences. For your reading pleasure, please enjoy Curtis’s rendition:

Our diving plans were thwarted by my being sick on Friday morning. Saturday we gave it another go and it was a success. Jill requested we dive someplace with lots of fish so I suggested Joan for the two nice beaver piles. When we arrived at the site we were surprised it was completely empty. No divers, no campers, sweet. There was a loon swimming right by our entrance, maybe we’d see it on our dive? The four of us suited up and made the hike down the steep bank to the water. We stuck Jill with the little 63 so the rest of us air hogs would have a chance to accumulate some bottom time.

We swam to the right towards the beaver piles. Right away we noticed the horrible vis. Below 15 feet we couldn’t see more than 5 feet because of a brown haze. It was decent on top. Kristen and I both had to surface to fix a leaky mask. While fixing my mask I noticed one of my gloves needed some correcting as well. Once underway Ted and I noticed a nice northern leading the way. It kept our attention in the otherwise barren terrain. Kristen and Jill were lagging behind too far to see it. I happened to look away and missed the highlight which Ted later described. The northern pounced on a sunfish at the bottom. When I looked it was arranging the sunny in it’s mouth and choked it down. Nice.

At the first beaver pile there were quite a few sunnies, large mouth bass, and rock bass. Not nearly as many fish as expected but still enjoyable. We slowed our pace quite a bit to take it all in before continuing on to the second one. It was way farther away than I expected. I started to get nervous that Jill was getting close to half psi so I asked, 1100. Another 20 feet or so and we were at the second pile. Again plenty of fish but not like expected. We spent a short time watching the fish then swam back in high gear.

When we passed the first beaver pile I swam on the shallow side and notice some huge sunfish spawning in a ‘hole’. There was also a cluster of big ones around some old tree trunks.

The rest of the dive was just a quick swim back. At the exit Ted and I did some rings. We were both hitting them like a couple of pros. I had quite a few doubles go up and after I snapped a pic of one set I noticed Ted hitting all kinds of good ones.

Source

Actually, I’m about 87% positive that I had a write-up of this dive, but I can’t seem to find it on my laptop anywhere.

Arco Point, North Alstead, dive 33

June 18, 2009

Dive: 33
Season Dive: 1
Date: 6/13/09
Site: Arco Point, North Alstead
Avg/Max Depth: 16/24
Temp: 59
TBT/CBT: 0:55/25:38
Buddies: Curtis & Kristen (& Nick, Mike & Adam)

The long awaited first dive of the season finally came last weekend!! In attendance were Nick, Curtis, Blog Reader Kristen, Mike, Adam and myself. Our desired dive location was Arco Point located in North Alstead. Dumbheadedness ensued the moment we entered the pits. Wrong turns, backward hookups, forgotten hookups, forgotten weights, gloves stuck to heads. Fortunately non of these errors were executed by me. For my first dive all went quite smoothly.

Our group got divided in half almost immediately. Kristen tagged along with Curtis and since (for the record) Kristen and I were officially buddies I tagged along with her. Besides, I like being in Curtis’s group, his frog swim is very calming to follow.

It was refreshing to be back in the water. We stayed around 20′ for the majority of the dive and the temp stayed at about 59 degrees, not too chilly. We made friends with a rock bass, but other than that there weren’t too many fishes spotted. Except for the Mega Eelpout which Curtis somehow commanded to attack me. I narrowly escaped.

Because of the landscape we bobbed from 20′ to 10′ and back a few times. That always seems to take a toll on one of my ears. For the return trip I tried to stay above 15′ which wasn’t a problem, especially when we neared our exit and the depth decreased to one foot. I wanted to stand up, but since I was virtually laying on my stomach from swimming it was much too late to get any type of footing. Curtis was smart enough to go around the rocky sandbaresque obstruction. Nick asked why us girls were surface swimming, probably hoping that we ran out of air before he did for once (psssht, yeah right, I finished with 1800psi).

Good dive buddies, good dive.

Little Ashes

June 12, 2009

Last night I went to see Little Ashes with Blog Reader Kristen and Sarah (not Taylor), my partner-in-crazy-Twilight-crime, because we’re all really into independent films like that. And what a coincidence that it just happened to star Robert Pattinson!! I know, I know, we were all shocked too.

Happy 2^nd Birthday jillapalooza.com

February 28, 2009

Today jillapalooza.com enters it’s terrible twos!!

Wow, two long years. P&T to me for not getting all ADD on my beloved website. I have done [almost] my best to keep my loyal readers happy. Why, it seems like just yesterday I was consulting my fellow webbies to help me pick the perfect name. Here were the suggestions from Curtis, Kristen and Ryan that didn’t quite make the cut:
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Twilight⁵ & Twilight⁶

January 15, 2009

I saw Twilight for the 5th time last Friday night with my sister Lani and niece-in-law Megan. Lani had read the first two books, but Megan was a Twilight virgin. The movie was enjoyed by all. I thought the theater was still quite busy for the movie having been out for 7 weeks, but I suppose not everyone is a superfan like me who rushed out to see it on opening weekend. Of course, I was curious as to how many people in the theater had already seen it. Apparently the dad in the family sitting in front of us hadn’t seen it before, because he kept leaning over and asking his daughter questions.

I fully intended on stopping at 5 times. It seemed like a good number, and more than enough times to tide me over until the DVD comes out in March. But Blog Reader Kristen left me a comment that she was interested in seeing it again. Apparently she had to see it again to make up for that disgusting display in Grand Cayman, which it didn’t seem like she wanted to count in her total Twilight viewings. I drove to Cloud on Saturday night so we could see it there. Curtis accompanied us as well, not having enough Alice is my guess. That or he wanted to monitor our swooning, keep us in line. Somebody has to. I swooned over Edward as usual, but Kristen fully swooned over baseball Jasper.