Hello my friends!
Another eventful week-end for me: WKPP support, Madison, House moving and Ginnie.
I left work on Thursday afternoon at 6 pm in the rental car. The traffic was good so I made it to Tallahassee before 11 pm. I met Nanci, Erik (my brother-from-another-mother) and Tiffany.We shared a room in Motel 6.
Friday was cool. We got there early in the morning. There was not too
much equipment to take in, but there were a lot of Halcyon rebreathers
-- I counted 5. I did shallow support and actually ended up spending most
of my time underwater dealing with rebreathers and their owners. George
was the first one to remove his at the 50 foot ledge. I helped him with
that and then pulled that huge thing out to the beach. It was good to have
a scooter to help!!! Then it seemed that all the rebreathers
were just waiting for me. I pulled another 3 out. We finished early
that day -- around 7 pm I think. It was the first time that I saw JJ coming
out of the water the same day as when he started the dive. It was also
very interesting to see these guys doing Doppler tests.
On Saturday morning we drove off to Madison Blue Springs, about 1.5
hours away from Tally. We had a quick dive the four of us: Tiffany, Nanci,
Erik (my brother-from-another-mother) and me. This was a dive for Tiffany
to warm up to her class with Ted Cole the next day. I showed her the way
while she was doing all the line work. Nanci and Erik were behind. We jumped
right from the main line 200 feet after the beginning of the main line.
It gets low there for about 200 feet. We got to a T (or short jump) at
the bottom of a medium size room. The left branch leads back to the main
line. We continued straight. It pinches a little, then opens up in a small
room where the line drops in a hole. It's all silt from there. Mainly rock
before. We continued for another 200 feet to find the Gozilla room where
the line drops again and takes us in a large room. At that point I realized
that I forgot to mark the jump with a cloth pin. Damn! Never mind, we'll
go back where we came from. So we continued along the line that goes into
another pinch (20 feet long). After that it opens up, and turns right and
the line ends there. I showed them the
other line in front of us but gave the turn around signal so that nobody
would get confused. As we made our way back I was last. So I started picking
up rocks and catching my buddies up to place the rocks between their tanks.
I got the 3 of them loaded up and consumed more gas on the way out than
the way in! The funniest time was when Erik was hovering above Tiffany
who was doing something with her reel. I came up above him and placed a
huge rock on top of his tanks. His trim was all messed up. But he still
had the rock on when we were in open water doing our 2-3 minutes of deco.
He will know better now when his head keeps going down. Maybe he thought
that he suddenly gained more brain matter... ah! ah! ah!
Nanci and I rushed back to Gainesville so that we could pick up a Ryder truck to move most of her stuff in the storage area into our house. We did just that and went to our 2 friends' place with dinner + a video. Busy day.
On Sunday we all met with Ted Cole at Ginnie Springs. Tiffany was taking a class from him. Nanci, Erik and I did a scooter dive to the Hinkel with a stage. I'm not going to describe Ginnie as I'm running out of time. We made a nice triangle formation at one point during the dive. I just had to mess with my brother-from-another-mother at least once so I cut him off at 2200 feet inside the cave. He never returned the compliment though. We got to the hinkel, dropped scooter and stage there and swam up a little until Nanci turned the dive. The ride back went smoothly. I even managed to pickup some rocks on the fly and drop them between Nanci's tanks. That was cool! Of course that was purely a training exercise to test my scooter handling abilities. We came out through Devil's ear. I hate that exit. I much prefer the slow Devil's Eye. The nice thing that made me feel a lot better than before was that Nanci was using her dry suit. So I did not have to watch her performing her usual Shake Show this time! The end of an era...
Nanci and I rushed back to the house as we had tons of work to do, like unloading the truck and getting the rest of her things from the storage place. Boy! She has so many things! I guess I should not be surprised. She is a woman....Tiffany and Erik joined us for a hot tub and brought dinner. This was my first time in a hot tub... great!
I did my usual drive back to work starting from Gainesville at 5:15 am and survived the best I could on Monday.
This coming week-end I will go to Miami with Nanci. We will take what's left of my stuff there and move it to Gainesville. I'll also stop by George's house to get my long body for the Gavin scooter. Hopefully I should get at least 1 dive on Sunday.
I hope that your week-end was great too!
Take care.
Herve.