feigh downaway

Dive: 22
Season Dive: 7
Date: 9/26/08 (Happy Birthday to Me)
Site: Feigh Downaway, Feigh
Max Depth: 38
TBT: 1:01
CBT: 17:42

Once I decided to dive I suited up as quickly as possible. Since I didn’t have my swimmer on it took me a bit longer than usual. Also, since I was trying to hurry it seemed like I was fumbling around a lot… or maybe it just felt that way. My main concern in rushing was that it was extremely hot outside and I didn’t want to make the poor boys stand around in their suits longer than necessary. As curtis so eloquently put it, the weather was “thick.”

feigh

The trip down the hill wasn’t as bad as I had expected. It was steep and the ground was silty, but I easily slid down most of the way on the side of my leg. The water felt great for how hot it was outside. Once we were all in the water, Mike pointed out a mother and small child a few hundred feet away at the waters edge. WTF. How did they get there? We decided to span out in different depths in order to find the medallion. My ears were taking a bit longer to equalize because of the sickness, and I tried my hardest to stay at the same depth during the dive.

Diving sick is exhausting. I felt winded and tired the entire time, and the cold dry air was not easy on my throat, sore from the persistant cough for the past two days. Coughing under the water wasn’t so bad, I made sure to hold my reg securly so it wouldn’t fly out of my mouth. Clearing my mask, on the other hand, wasn’t as fun. You know how when you’re wearing a mask and have to breathe from your mouth you get all phlegmy in the nose? Pair that with being previously congested and it makes for a disgusting situation. Clearing my mask was basically the equivalent of blowing my nose into it. Fortunately most of the time it left with the initial clearing. But gross nonetheless.

There was a neat beaver dam that we hung out at to observe fishes for awhile, but other than that the dive was pretty uneventful. No medallion. Ted found a tire to bring to fill a garbage back with for an additional raffle ticket. I’m not quite sure how he managed to get it up the hill.

I was the first one to scale the hill, already weakened from the dive… it made it probably more difficult than necessary. That and I’m wimpy in general. I mostly crawled up on my hands and knees, destroying the path for everyone else. I was so caked with mud by the time I got to the top it was more disgusting than the nose blowing. I decided it would be easier to rinse off if I didn’t take everything off and haul it to the pit across the street, so I left all my gear on and waddled across the street, across the parking lot, down the boat launch and back into the water. It’s probably the most exhausted I’ve ever felt in my short diving career. And hot too. I rinsed myself off, caught my breath and trudged back to the vehicle.

Of course, we later found out there was a nice staircase where we saw the mother and child.

**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.

Feigh Downaway, Feigh, dive 22

Dive Fest 2008, part 1