It has been a busy few weeks for me (Paul). I was miserable for over a week with the flu and had poison ivy on top of that. I'm not sure how I got poison ivy in my ear, but I don't recommend it to all of our loyal readers (all three of you). I'm also not sure how I got the flu, unless it was a computer virus. I don't even see my students anymore and yet they still transmit all their diseases. Despite being miserable, I still enjoyed catching up on my video games that have been feeling neglected lately. So many things that need attention and so little time; my guitar is calling to me right now since she hasn't felt my loving embrace for several days.
I've come to realize that SCUBA diving is awesome. This past weekend I finished my certification course so I can now go diving all over the place without any annoying instructors telling me to 'put on my goggles BEFORE going under water' or 'take out your regulator (mouthpiece) after surfacing'. They can be so naggy. For those of you who don't really know how SCUBA works, you have a vest that you can inflate with air from your tank, a regulator that gives you air from the tank to breath, a backup regulator in case your primary doesn't work, 16 pounds of weights, and a mask with a snorkle and fins. We also got to wear super-sexy wetsuits.
This weekend, we went to Lake Jocassee which looks like this:
It's several hundred feet deep and crystal clear (visibility is usually over 30 feet). The first day we planned to just go over everything we learned in the pools at around 15 feet of depth. I got all of my gear set up and sat down to wait for the rest of the class to get ready. My buddy (you always dive with a buddy in case you run out of air) turned my air on for me and we were surprised to hear a hissing noise coming from where my tank was attached to the regulator. I naturally assumed it was some sort of snake, but my instructor was nice enough to ease my fears by saying "that's just an O-ring that is going bad". I stared at him waiting for him to tell me what to do to remedy our little life-threatening problem but he just moved on to another student. Later he flippantly told me that there is nothing to worry about as long as I monitor how much air I have left. By this point I was feeling a little nervous, but he seemed to know what he was talking about so I followed him out to deeper water. As a class, we let the air out of our BC (vest) and sunk slowly to the bottom. Unfortunately, the result of 9 people coming down on the bottom and kicking our flippers stirred up the water and visibility went down to about 4 feet. I was feeling okay, I popped my ears and slowed my breathing and was totally ready for all our little exercises. Then my partner calmly swam over and pointed towards my tank and somehow mimed that there were bubbles coming out. Sure enough, there was a steady stream of bubbles leaking out of my tank and I could barely see well enough to check how much air I had left. I was a bit nervous. Luckily, the instructor only kept us down for about ten minutes and the water cleared a little. When we got to the surface, I had gone through over 1000 psi of tank pressure and everyone else had gone through less than half that. The instructor once again told me that I'd be okay, so the rest of the dive consisted of frequently checking my air supply and hoping the O-ring didn't give out in one giant suffocating explosion. We went through all of our exercises where we let water into our goggles and then used air from our nose to clear it out. We also pretended to be low on air (I was really good at that by this point) and my buddy had to give me his regulator and help me to the surface. It was a ton of fun, but I could have done without the nervousness.
On Sunday, we went back to Jocassee for a fun dive and to finalize our certification. Our first dive was down to about 30 feet, which was by far the deepest I've gone. On the way down I struggled with equalizing pressure in my ears and blowing out through my nose so that the mask doesn't suck my eyeballs out. We all made it down safely and followed our instructor to where a sunken boat should have been. Visibility was much better but when we got to the spot, there was no boat to be found. We hung out for a while while the instructor looked for the boat and it ended up being about 100 yards further out. Somebody must have moved it. It was kinda disappointing to not be able to see that wreck, but the next dive made up for it. We surfaced and hung out for 10 minutes to let our bodies recover then went back down. There was a rope to follow to see all the stuff that people had put down there. We dove down to about 45 feet and then followed the rope to see a cemetery that someone had put there (there aren't really people buried there), a sunken sailboat that we could swim around and look inside, and some skeletons in lawn chairs just chillin'. It was really cool to float by and see all the fish and how different everything looks underwater.
After the dive I was exhausted and hungry enough to eat Cris' cooking. We're going back to dive again sometime in the next couple weeks. The cemetery at the end of the movie 'Deliverance' is underwater somewhere as well as several bigger wrecks, so it should be a ton of fun.
Despite being sick, life here is still totally awesome. Cris and I went swimming with Achilles again yesterday and the water was still close to 80 degrees. That's right, warm swimming in October! Achilles can now keep up with me while swimming for a tennis ball, so I need to either get in better shape or break one of her legs.
Work is also pretty good. I just got assigned another class with 50 more students. Now I'm up to 220 students with three classes to prep for. It's still the least stressful teaching job that I can imagine so I won't complain.
We are planning a long weekend by the coast to catch some shrimp, crabs, and maybe oysters. My goal is to catch a fish, some shrimp and crabs and then immediately cook them over a campfire. It should be a lot of fun, and a friend might come along too. Super exciting.
There were also a lot of other places where we went off the trail (don't tell anyone) to see other waterfalls. Cris always looks super sexy in her giant guys hiking boots, so I have a hard time staying on the trail. 
