Monday night was round two of SCUBA training. In preparation for the class, I was to read another chapter from the manual I was supplied. It pains me to say but, all my teachers, guidance counselors, principals, and others that were in charge throughout my crappy Omaha Public Schools education, were right. You really do set the stage for your study habits and learning skills during those first 13 years of school (almost 14, always the underachiever). Yes, much like when I was in school, I waited until the last minute to do my reading, and didn't get it all done, and just had to skim over the last dozen or so pages to find the important stuff. Yes, and also much like when I was in skool, I muddled my way through when I had to. I only missed one question on the test and I was good to go back in the water again.
Once in the water, things seemed much easier and more natural this time around. We went through a few training exercises, most of which were pretty easy. What I am starting to notice is, they train you on one aspect of safety, such as how to share air with your buddy should you run out, and then start adding on to it. This time, instead of just pretending we were out of air, the instructor went and turned off my tank. I then signaled my buddy I was out, and we were to "ascend to the surface". Being that we were in a pool only 8 feet deep, we swam the length of the pool to simulate the ascent and then we were to just swim back to the deep end to get into another exercise. When we got back to the deep end, we were to stop sharing the air and I would use my own regulator. I grabbed my regulator, and broke off from my buddy's spare regulator. Now, when you put a regulator in your mouth that has been dangling in the water for a while, it's full of water, so you have to blow out the water before you can take your first breath. So, I went to exhale the water out of the regulator but I had made a mistake. When I broke away from my buddy's regulator, I had just exhaled. It's a little difficult to try to blow the water out of your regulator with no air in your lungs. I pushed every ounce of air out of lungs to try to get the water out of the regulator and then breathed in... water. Fortunately, we were in only 8 feet of water, so I just pushed off the bottom and launched myself to the surface, coughed the water out and everything was fine. But I think the instructor thought he was going to have a panicked student on his hands. He came up and immediately was trying to calm me down, when I think he was the one that was freaked out. I could see him thinking, "Did I remember to have him sign that waiver that releases me from all liability?" But I was fine, my parents had a pool when I lived at home, so I knew what to do when I accidentally sucked in some water. But, he did remind me what I could have done differently. You see, there is a purge button on the regulator that will open up the valve and release air. I could have just pushed that button instead of trying to blow the water out of the regulator with no air in my lungs. In fact, I think from now on, I am just going to push that button instead of trying to blow it out manually. It's just safer that way.
Other than that little incident, everything went pretty smoothly. We even had a little time at the end of class to goof around and practice some of learned skills. That's right, I gots skillz!
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