Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Dive Fest 2008, part 1

**Disclaimer – I know the dive fest posts are terribly backdated, just roll with it**

Happy Birthday to me on Friday 9/26. Not only did last weekend mark my 28th birthday, but it marked MSD’s 10th Annual Dive Fest, and it was my first year in attendance. The weekend started early. Mike Sweeny picked me up on Friday afternoon and we headed to the cklahr residence to grab Curtis. It was a cozy drive to Brainerd with the 3 of us crammed in the front seat of Sweeny’s truck. We were one big happy.

Our first stop was MSD to get some tanks filled and pick up a dry suit for Curtis. Our timing was perfect because Ted showed up right after we did. After filling up, the four of us headed to the Dive Fest headquarters at the campground we were lucky enough to not have to stay at.

We hung around for the big reveal of the first three mines with poker chips. More importantly we wanted the clue for the medallion, which was worth a free season of fun dives. My personal goal was to find the medallion for bragging rights, and then give it to Curtis since he is the one who would benefit the most from it.

The first clue was “you have to be fit to get out of this pit.” My worst nightmare was starting to be realized as I remembered the place that Curtis and I took one look at before saying “[censored] that!” It was Feigh Downaway. Refer to my previous post where I said, and I quote, “One of the sites had a treacherous entrance point.”

Actually at the time it wasn’t all that bad. I never intended on diving Friday night because of my cold, which conveniently moved from my head into my chest Friday morning. Looking down the treacherous entrance point I was quite happy that I wouldn’t be scaling it. But inside I started to feel a little left out. We were the only ones at that particular dive site, and as Sweeny put it so eloquently, we were either geniuses or really stupid. I decided if the group victoriously found the medallion on the first night, I wanted to be a part of it. Sheer cliffs or otherwise. I went ahead with the dive.

PADI #79, Mahnomen II & III, dive 21

Dive: 21
Season Dive: 6
Date: 8/17/08
Site: PADI #79, Mahnomen II & III
Max Depth: 48 feet
TBT: 73 minutes
CBT: 16 hours, 41 minutes

On Sunday morning Curtis and I did a one tank dive. Nick and Kristen preferred to stay at the cabin and relax. We were on the road around 7:15. Still early, but late enough that the sun wasn’t too blinding through the filmy Explorer windshield.

We stopped to investigate a couple of dive sites before deciding on PADI #79 again. One of the sites had a treacherous entrance point, the other was mostly in the shade. Since we dove this site twice the previous weekend, we decided to dive the shaded half in order to see something new.

Shortly after descending we came upon a wall. It was probably the most wall like wall I’ve seen in my short 10 months of diving. At almost 50 feet it was quite chilly down right cold (although not as cold as last October) and in the shade visibility wasn’t all that good. Sure there were trees, but fishes don’t hang out in the cold dark water so there wasn’t anything too interesting to look at down there.

As we made our way up to warmer tempuratures we were greeted by many curious fishes (I refer to everything as fishes because unless it’s a northern or a rock bass I have no idea what kind of fishes they are) in a brush filled area. We deflated and sat on the sand trying to snap good pictures. I like it when the fishes come up all close and peek in my mask. Curtis says they do that to make us go cross eyed. I think they like it. Little devils.

We stayed around 15′ on the swim back. We were in the midst of a mad dash at the end for a well needed pit stop when we came across another platform. A couple shrugged shoulders and we headed over to practice air rings. I had to pee too bad to concentrate and couldn’t be bothered with them after a couple attempts. I also discovered I prefer to blow them on my knees rather than lying on my back (sounds dirty).

It was a really fun dive. I was shocked to find out the dive was 73 minutes. It didn’t even feel like half as long as the dive the day before. Probably because I wasn’t plagued with problems. Or maybe it was the place. I’m liking this PADI #79 business.

Gruntenheave, Joan

Dive: 20
Season Dive: 5
Site: Gruntenheave, Joan
Max Depth: 41 feet
TBT: 79 minutes
Grand Total: 15 hours, 28 minutes

Curtis, Kristen, Nick and I woke up at o’dark thirty to get our dive in yesterday. We loaded up the Explorer the night before so the only thing to do when we got up was eat breakfast and pack some snacks. We hit the road shorty after 7am.

After going through the tangle town of the mine pits and doing a turn around or two we arrived at the dive site Gruntenheave. Our mission was to find the submerged F-350, complete with dualies and chromies.

I got my tank hooked up and wetsuit on without a hitch again. Had to wait for Nick to use the bathroom so I put my BCD on myself. It was a tad bit cumbersome, but not too hard to do. Again I put my own weight pouches in. Last time I felt I was still a little bit too heavy at 20 pounds, so I ended up using 18lbs this time. We had to tackle a steep hill with our gear on in order to get to the pit. I think Curtis was afraid I would tumble into him. I wasn’t too worried, I figured the tank on my back would put an end to any perpetual rolling that might occur if I fell. The four of us got in the water. The surface was all scummy and a nasty film covered my gloves and mask. Nick and I swam out a bit into the clearer water to finish suiting up. We were on our way shortly after.

At first I was afraid I wasn’t going to sink. I hovered right below the surface for a little bit. Once I got to the 5 foot mark I started going down faster, but not so fast that it was uncomfortable or that I had to kick to slow down. Finally, the perfect amount of weight. The water was 73 degrees at the surface but seemed to get chilly early right around 20 feet. I didn’t want to stay too shallow because I knew the top of the truck was around 35 feet and I didn’t want us to swim by it. There were strange patterns in the water, almost like fog. There were whispy white spots and deep blue streaks. At first I thought it was the sun shining through, but I’m sure that wasn’t it. It looked really neat. For some reason it reminded me of the old Scooby Doo cartoons. After what felt like an eternity Curtis turned around and gave the victory fists, we finally found the truck.

I got an extreme case of vertigo as I approached the F-350. I think it was a combination of 1) it being at such a steep angle and 2) I’m not used to floating weightless around any vehicle. For some reason I had pictured the truck pristinely preserved under the water, shiny black with sparkling chrome rims. Quite the opposite was true. It was covered in moss and algae. Apparently it was red underneath all that business. The chromies weren’t as impressive as I pictured either, but then I realized I have no idea what makes rims impressive if they aren’t shiny. But according to dive instructor Dan, “if there was some way a guy could retrieve those chromies…”

I hovered around the bed of the truck for a little bit and tried peering in through the missing back window when suddenly I felt a bit of claustrophobia coming on. I quickly scurried away from the truck. Underwater vehicles give me the heeby jeebies. I reflected for a moment what it would have been like to have been in the truck when it slid down the hill into the pit. At 35 feet it must have felt like an eternity of a swim to get to the surface.

I didn’t have my camera with. I remembered seeing it somewhere when I packed up all the dive gear at home, but I kind of forgot about it until I had my wet suit on and at that point I was hot, stiff and didn’t feel like searching around for it. Then I remembered that the batteries were almost dead and the spares were still at the cabin, so that pretty much sealed the deal on not looking for it. [Side note: I just went to retrieve my laptop charger and found my camera in my laptop bag, so the search efforts would have been in vain.] Fortunately Curtis had his camera with and took a lot of photos of the truck.

Awesome pictures over at .:cklahr.

After leaving the truck I realized how cold I was. We ascended to 15 feet and I felt the drastic change in water temperature. My dive computer told me to do a 3 minute safety stop, so I tried to stay below the 15 foot mark.

The remainder of the dive we stayed above 20 feet as we made our way around the perimeter of the small pit. There were lots of beaver dams and real tiny fishies. We saw a couple of northerns. The boys saw an eel pout, but Kristen and I missed it.

Somewhere along the lines my hood flipped back and my mask started leaking water. It wasn’t hard to clear out, but it was starting to become a pain in the arse. I thought about taking a glove off and fixing it, but at 40 minutes I assumed the dive would be ending soon so I didn’t bother. My snorkel was also in my face the whole time and it ended up pulling my mask a few notches tighter so it was really doing a number on my nose and upper lip. Had I known my TBT would be 77 minutes I would have fixed it.

I attempted blowing air rings a couple times. The first time I had four good ones in a row. The second time I had one good one. I was hoping to get another chance at the end, but there was really no where convenient to stop and do it, besides the fact that Nick was low on air and had surfaced and Kristen was already at the surface for what seemed like 90% of the dive. Oh well, maybe next time.

I liked diving at Gruntenheave. It was a one tank kind of place, but there seemed to be a lot to look at.

PADI #79, Mahnomen II & III, tank 2

Dive: 19
Season Dive: 4
Site: PADI #79, Mahnomen II & III
Max Depth: 65 feet
TBT: 51 minutes
Grand Total: 14 hours, 09 minutes

My goal for the surface interval was to leave my suit half on because I didn’t want to deal with getting my legs back in it while it was wet. Problem was I had to use the bathroom so bad that I had to take it off. While we were having our surface interval a few car loads of divers arrived. We decided it was probably a good time to head back in for dive #2. My suit went on surprisingly easy. Not as good as when it was dry, but much better than the week before. I dropped my weight down to 20 pounds. Curtis dropped 10 pounds (pipe dream). We started our second dive well before the other group of divers was ready… even with Curtis discovering he had to get out and get more weight.

There definitely wasn’t as much visual stimulation this time around. There were a few giant northerns. One gave Curtis quite a shock and he had to take out his underwater slate to express his feelings. We went much deeper on this dive, 65 feet to be exact. It was much colder than it was at 45 feet and my entire body knew it. It was also the deepest I had dove in non tropical waters. I held the regulator to my mouth a couple times because I was afraid my lips would go numb and it would fall out. I wasn’t too concerned about free flowing because it wasn’t that cold. I was, however, afraid that something with a giant set of jaws would come out of the abyss and swallow me whole. Must have been from watching Shark Week on the Discovery channel for the last 5 days. I kept telling myself that there was no way for a bull shark to get into the pits and that I was safe. But them my mind wondered to the Loch Ness Monster. “What if there was some similar monster here? That’s not logical or there would be rumors. Someone else would have had to have seen it already, right? Maybe no one has lived to tell about it…” Gotta love the fear of the unknown. Too bad the cold water couldn’t numb my ridiculous thoughts.

We weren’t down there very long before heading back up to shallower water. Since Curtis had a smaller tank we made our way back after coming up from the depths. We passed by the platform as the other group of divers was congregated there and opted to blow bubble rings in the sand instead. I had a few good ones. Ok fine, they were mediocre at best. We swam back in through the minnow farm where I got to be ALL POWERFUL again. As we got out we saw a couple speedy boats fly by. It made the surface pretty choppy and I imaged the visibility becoming horrible as the red bottom was being churned up. Talk about good timing for Curtis and me. Not so much the other divers. That’s what you get when you don’t get up at o’dark thirty!!

ALL POWERFUL:

Random fish:

PADI #79, Mahnomen II & III, tank 1

Dive: 18
Season Dive: 3
Site: PADI #79, Mahnomen II & III
Max Depth: 47 feet
TBT: 66 minutes
Grand Total: 13 hours, 18 minutes

Curtis and I had the pleasure of being dive buddies on Sat Aug 9th. I headed up to the cklahr cabin alone on Friday night, dive gear in tow. Nick stayed home to attend Bolin’s baseball game and BRKristen couldn’t be bothered with renting an exposure suit… although I think second thoughts were setting in when we were all up at o’dark thirty.

I slept horribly from the excitement of knowing I was diving in the morning, but was wide eyed and bushy tailed at 6:30 when the alarm went off. We had some breakfast and hit the road at 7am. It was my first time driving to the pits. We decided to go to PADI #79 located at Mahnomen II & III. We were the only ones there so it was pretty quiet except for a sheep bah-ing in the distance. I assembled my equipment and got my suit on without a hitch. Much different than the week before. Curtis helped me with my last couple inches of zipper and lifted the BCD on my back. I managed to get my own weight pouches in. I decide to cut back to 22 pounds to see how that felt.

It was a fish filled dive. We were greeted with a bunch of small mouth bass. When we crossed over the training platform we practiced some air bubbles. Not too bad for my first time, but not good by any means. It was pretty much same diving, different day. Lots of trees, good visibility, fishies, etc. We ended up going to 45 feet and it was pretty chilly. I could feel the cold on my exposed face. Burr!! The cold surrounded me, but it wasn’t seeping into my semi-dry suit. It was quite comfortable for being 50 degrees. We ascended to the mid 30s. I was just thinking how I was feeling pretty warm when Curtis gave me the cold signal and we went up another 10 feet. The water felt really warm up there, but better than being really cold.

We took the rest of the dive at a leisurely pace in shallower water. Curtis searched under rocks for crayfish and used them to lure the bass closer. The sunnies were friendly, coming right up and peeking into my mask. I tried to snatch some up like Nick did but that didn’t work so well. I kept envisioning my hand moving so much faster than it actually would.

On our way back we stopped at the platform again for more air rings. Close but no cigar for me. Curtis had quite a few good ones as usual. The sun was hitting the shallow water just right, and on our swim in I realized we were surrounded by millions (yes, millions) of minnows. I kept making quick jerky movements of my hands and they would turn on a dime in synchronization, their little bodies reflecting the sun like shiny coins. It made me feel like I was ALL POWERFUL, so I kept doing it in what felt like a band conducting type manner. Soon we were back where we entered and started our surface interval.

More air rings by Curtis:

Random trees:

Home     About     Contact     Disclaimer