Hanging on to August!

Wow, hard to believe its August 31^st already!   Where did the summer go?  Usually my wife and I are either up at my in-law’s or at a Penn State football game this weekend, but since the football team played their game in Dublin Ireland, and we had a friend passing through town, we decided to stay home Saturday and Sunday, and take a run up to spend the day in the pool tomorrow.  So the option was given to me to go diving, and who am I to pass up a chance to get wet!  I put a bug in Rob’s ear on Wednesday night, and after running into him Thursday while getting a fill, we decided that it would work!

After spending most of Thursday and Friday cooking for the weekend, I woke up early Saturday to watch the game, then take in a day of college football!   The plan was to meet Rob at the quarry at 10:00 and we were right on schedule!   Not as many people down there as I thought, but a decent amount none the less!  My 130’s and my pony bottle are all up for their annual inspection, so I decided to tear the 130’s apart the other day and use my pony to try to get the air out of it.

We had a pretty loose plan and were soon staring at each other at the tree at 20 feet.  All systems looked good so we kept going.  We swam past the trees and a boat, then over the pipe that leads towards the CAT.  As we were getting close to the CAT Rob turned to me, and looked at me sort of strange, (well more so than usual) and motioned for me to move my arm up. He was messing with something, I thought maybe I had something tangled, he couldn’t seem to fix the problem, but moved my back up light out and pointed, I must have bumped it, and turned it on… So I shut it off, and we kept going down to the Deep Boat.  At the Deep Boat we checked, in, and Rob pointed out towards the wall, I agreed, and we started swimming in that direction. One of my tasks this dive was to attempt to get a little more OFF of the bottom, and I had my good moments, and not so good moments.  We soon passed over the trench, and kept close to the wall until we hit the outcropping of rocks.  I started keeping an eye out for the tripod tree, and soon enough there it was, meaning that the Outhouse was not far away.  Finding and passing the Outhouse, we went over to the big boulder.  We checked in, and turned back, over to the Outhouse, and back over the boulders to the Pump House.  Remembering that he was in a different place, I moved the little lobster back to his usual perch, and Rob did something with one of the rocks.  Rob gave me the option to either go up the hill from there to the Aqua Adventures truck, or back out towards the Deep Boat. I had just looked at my computer and saw we had a pretty decent amount of bottom time left, so pointed towards the Deep Boat.  We passed the Deep Boat again, and started slowly up the hill to the CAT.  We paused at the CAT for a minute, and then kept going up and into the bowl.  We passed the Pennsy, and turned around the back, and followed over the rocks and other bottom debris to the boats.  At the boat with the fuzzy caterpillar, Rob dusted it off, and gave me the thumb up sign, and I agreed.  Since I had the pony, I got the regulator ready, and turned it on, once we were at 20 feet, I switched to my 40%.  I tried changing the gas on my computer, but couldn’t get it to work, so I just gave up. Wasting the time trying to do that made the time go a LOT quicker than the usual safety stop, and I was soon at two minutes.  I could see out of the corner of my eye that Rob was contemplating doing a valve drill, but seemed to abandon that idea.  After the five minutes passed, Rob gave me the OK sign, and we were soon finding our exit point, and we were done!

Deepest Depth: 95 feet

Duration: 46 minutes

Coldest Temp: 37º

Except for not fixing my placement in the water, it was a pretty good dive!  I felt comfortable most of the dive, and didn’t use a whole lot of air.  I wasn’t able to suck my pony bottle down more, so I’ll probably use it again on Wednesday night.  My glove issue from Wednesday seemed to resolve itself, so it was just a temporary mishap.

We packed, and then made our way to PizzAtown for a quick lunch.

Wednesday night starts the last run of evening dives, so get there while you can get them in!   Hard to believe we’re in September starting tomorrow!   See you soon!!