Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Diamond Cove, Hopkins

Dive: 17
Season Dive: 2
Site: Diamond Cove, Hopkins
Max Depth: 32 feet
TBT: 61 minutes
Cumulative: 12 hours, 12 minutes

On Friday night, 8/1, Nick and I headed up to the cklahr cabin early to get a Friday night dive in since Kristen and I were running in the Cross Lake Dam Run 5k marathon on Saturday morning. We finally got all of our dive gear and were eager to try it all out. We met at MSD, got some last minute necessities like clips, extra weight, tank covers, a noise maker to get Nick’s attention underwater, etc., drove to the cabin, consolidated our dive gear into the explorer and took off to Diamond Cove.

Once there, a bunch of dumbheaded actions by me took place. I grabbed my shiny new pink tank and started to hook up my brand new reg, an Apeks ATX50 with Suunto Gekko dive computer, when Nick advised me to put my BCD on the tank first. Woops, I knew that, I was just so excited. I strapped my brand new turquoise trimmed Diva XLT onto my tank then proceeded to put my regulator on. The first stage swivels for maximum mobility and I was real confused as to how it went on. First I put it on upside down. Woops. Then once I got it on it was backwards. What the heck? Then I realized my BCD was on the tank backwards. Good grief. I redid my whole set up. Next step, putting on my new Pinnacle semi-dry suit, which is really just a glorified wet suit that you don’t want to pee in. It’s a one piece suit with hood attached. It was quite a struggle to get it on. I needed Nick’s help to yank it up and he pulled me right off my feet. It was a hot day and the layer of sweat my body was producing wasn’t helping the suit go on any easier. “All right,” I thought, “now just for the hood.” I looked down in front of me at an empty hood, something didn’t look right. The opening of the hood was pointed at me. Then it dawned on me that my suit was on backwards. AAARRRGGHHHHH!!

At this point Kristen was already in the water yelling, “Are we going diving?” The struggle of getting it off and back on made me very frustrated. I was ready to say screw it and sit in the car for the night. The hood seemed tight and felt like it was choking me. The suit made me a lot less mobile than the farmer johns I was used to. Nick had to stick my weight pouches in for me. I decided to go with 24 pounds, afraid that the suit would make me more buoyant.

We got in the water. My new black Atomic split fins with spring backs went on quickly. Finally something worked out for me!! My mask, tried and true, went on quickly as well. The gloves didn’t work out quite so well. I couldn’t get them over my wrists. They came free with my suit, which I bought online at Leisure Pro, so I couldn’t really complain, but it was a damper on the already tainted dive. I was going to go without gloves as the surface temp was quite comfortable. Nick poo-pooed that idea and gave me his gloves to wear since he wanted to stay in the shallows and play with his dive computer. I didn’t want to wear them because they were quite large on me and I was worried they would make it difficult to use my camera, but once underwater they snugged right up and I was very glad to have them.

Curtis, Kristen and I headed out while Nick stayed back near shore. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at underwater, so I spent a lot of time checking out my computer and making sure Kristen was still in her favorite place, directly above me. We made a few resurfaces during the dive. One was over 5 minutes because my computer started recording it as a different dive. Eventually Nick caught up with us, bare hands and all. I had a real hard time with my buoyancy during the dive. I could tell I was over weighted. Better that than severely under weighted. It’s all part of the learning curve with new stuff I suppose.

The thing I enjoyed the most during the dive was knowing that everything on me was mine. No more questionable rental equipment. All my gear would be with me the next time I dove and each time after that. It was very comforting knowing that this was all the gear I would come to trust and get to know like an extension of my body. Maybe I would even learn how to put it together correctly on the first attempt!!

My purple tank, modeled here by Nick:

Scuba Nick:

Air ring by Curtis:

Sleepy Hollow (Mangan)

Dive 16

Finally, Nick and I got to go diving this year. We headed out early Saturday morning (approx. 9:30) with Curtis and Blog Reader Kristen. Kristen and I rented gear from MSD on Friday night, Nick was using Ted’s gear and of course Curtis has his own. I bought a dive computer on Monday (along with a BC and another dive computer for Nick, both on back order, the BC of which I’m going to exchange right away) but decided against using it because I didn’t want to unhook any of the rental stuff.

We decided to go to Sleepy Hollow, part of Mangan, because of some Beaver dams and fishes. It wasn’t terribly hot outside, mid 70s, but once the farmer john wetsuit is on it becomes quite uncomfortably hot. It took a while to get everything set up, we haven’t had to do it since October and I was a little rusty. The water was a bit chilly, but it felt good considering the wetsuit. The dive went good other than a little fiasco with my weights. One of my pouches slipped out of my BC. I thought I felt something tugging, then I looked underneath me and saw the swirling of the silty bottom and something black. I thought it was my camera and I did a panicked check for it. I found it still attached to me but suddenly I started rocketing to the surface. I figured I just didn’t have my buoyancy under control because I’d been struggling with it for the dive… I think I was a bit over weighted. Anyway, I let some air out of my BC and started swimming along. My tank kept falling over to one side. At first I didn’t know why, then I realized my weight pouch was gone. I was about equal distance from Nick and Kristen and assumed Nick would be the better diver for assistance in recovering it. I struggled to lopsidedly swim to him while staying at the same depth. I grabbed his fin and gave the thumbs up sign. He looked at me and immediately turned around and kept on going. Fortunately Kristen saw the event transpire and surfaced with me. Then we waited for the boys to realize we were missing. It only took a couple minutes for them to return and find us. I tried to assist in finding the weights, but without the extra 9 pounds I was helplessly stuck at the surface so Kristen and I stayed while the boys went searching.

It wasn’t a very fun time at the surface for me either. I stayed fully inflated and upright. I couldn’t snorkel around, swim or even look underwater because I’d just tip over sideways. Nick ended up finding my weights, Curtis got them back in my pocket and away we went.

The dive was fun, although most of the dive was uneventful. There was a spot with a lot of fishes. Curious little buggers. I tried to stay really still so they would come up to me, but I was having trouble with my buoyancy, so I tried my best not to get in Curtis’s way or stir up the bottom and ruin the visibility.

On our way back there wasn’t much to look at again other than trees, so I snapped a couple pictures of Kristen and Nick.

After the dive Kristen and I were pretty tired so we hung out while the boys dove again. Maybe next time I’ll be up for two tanks!! Maybe next time I’ll have more of my own gear as well :D

More pics in the gallery.

Read Curtis’s account of the dives.

This is why I’m cold

This Minnesota weather is really starting to toy with my emotions. It’s nice, then it’s cold, nice, cold, nice, then there’s a snow storm, then it’s 60, 60, 70, 60, it rains, I paint my toe nails, then it’s 35 and snowing. Not exactly the weather I was hoping for when I intended to bust out my sandals today.

I’m just itching for it to be nice. I want cabin weather to be here. I want to wear sandals and skirts. I want to start diving again. Speaking of which, the cklahr duo is somewhere underwater as I blog this. Looking at fishies and corals and what not. *sigh*

Unfortunately Nick can’t relate to the way I feel because the weather is always the same in the room he’s been locked in playing WOW for the last 4 weeks.

Anyway, a lot has happened since I last posted. Nick and I went bowling with Adam, Laura, Smitty (who finally got an email address) and The Deebz. I upgraded to WordPress 2.5, which rocks. I made an all new Killer Beez website which I’ll be doing all my softball posts on. I’ve disabled my jillapaPhorum forum since the only thing on there was Beez posts and put up a forum (with the help of Curtis) on the Killer Beez site in lieu of. And that is just about it.

UPDATE: Just when I thought I’d never see another Sven & Ole’s bumper sticker, I spotted one on Friday on the back of a 1980s Plymouth Voyager, blue with wooden panel siding, heading south on 169.

The Whale Shark

After 3 months Nick and I finally received our PADI Advanced Diver certification cards in the mail. Of course I didn’t mail in the application until a couple weeks ago. I got the limited edition whale shark card and it looks like this:

Awesome.

Tackle Box

Dive 15

After about an hour surface interval at the dive shop we headed out to a spot called the Tackle Box. We entered the water the same way. Rudy through his BCD in the water to suit up but forgot to inflate it a bit so it started to sink. Curtis saw the whole thing unfold. I was videotaping Kristen at the time when I heard the splash, but by the time I saw him he had already gotten to it, about 20-25 feet down. Ha ha.

Rudy had some fish with him this time, so a large group of snapper and grouper followed us around throughout the dive. We saw a ton of lobster!! I got some good pictures and a short video of them. There were a couple barracuda during the dive too. One turned and looked at me, and they are pretty creepy from the front. They are so narrow and the silver color almost makes them disappear in the water. I quickly tucked my fingers under my armpits and swam to the other side of the group so if it was eying up a human lunch it would saw someone else in half. We didn’t see any rays today and only one shark which seemed kind of odd. No dolphins either, but Felipe’s group saw dolphins yesterday which is where we would have been if our Lamanai reservations didn’t get all messed up.

**LOBSTER PIC COMING SOON**

We swam until we arrived at Esmeralda and Rudy gave the rest of the food to the fish. At one point I turned around to see a giant grouper trying to eat me. Ok, it wasn’t trying to eat me, but I’m pretty sure it wanted me to swim into its mouth. It was just hovering on the bottom, mouth wide open, gills sticking out. It was about 3′ long and waiting for a little fish to swim in. There were a couple other ones doing it too, but none as impressive. I quick snapped a photo, then was able to capture it on video too.

**PIC OF GROUPER TRYING TO EAT ME COMING SOON**

While we were doing our safety stop Rudy was blowing some impressive air rings. Kristen set a record for the trip, ending with 200 PSI of air. We boarded the boat and were quickly on our way back. I gave a sad wave goodbye to the deep blue.

These two dives were my favorites of the trip. Not because of the marine life but because of the dives themselves. I felt the most relaxed on these out of any dives. I didn’t feel like I was in “follow the leader” mode, I was perfectly comfortable descending a bit or going out of the way to take a photo. Perhaps it was because I was out of the schooling frame of mind or because these were my 8th & 9th dives here… I’m not sure. I also had a great handle on my buoyancy. I needn’t need to adjust the BC very often and I never felt like I was going to float into anything. It reminded me of driving a motorcycle, if I looked at where I wanted to go, I would just end up there.

The nine dives on this trip were great and I can’t wait for the next mouth full of salt water I get for taking another self portrait.

***UNDERWATER SELF PORTRAIT COMING SOON***

Home     About     Contact     Disclaimer