OK, the last time I was able to get out and into the water was
December 20 which was the last day of Fall. Today was technically the first
FULL day of Spring? So the Winter Dive
Nazi’s decided to not allow me any winter dives! (ok, I can’t TOTALLY blame the Winter Dive
Nazi because right around the holidaze, my mother in law got that nasty flu, and
my wife and I were pretty busy running between Hummelstown and the Wilkes-Barre
area to see her in the hospital, and take care of other family affairs for her…then
when she got out, we “re-celebrated” the Christmas Holiday with her, which
happened to be the weekend that Rob and John went out, the next weekend was
when the quarry froze over, and apparently there was still a nice chunk of ice
on top of the bowl as of Thursday, so we were holding our breath (which is a
no-no for divers) to see if the ice melted…it DID and we were able to dive this
weekend!
Since this was my first dive of the year, I had to get my
membership fees taken care of for 2015, so since I had a little business in the
Middletown area on Saturday, I figured I’d take a quick run down and drop off
my money. I also wanted to see what the construction was that a few friends of mine were
talking about down near where the Giant Market is located, so I killed a few
birds with one stone on that trip. On my
way down to the quarry, I noticed a sign that I THOUGHT might have said “Conoy
Township is NOT a Gun Free Zone” But I
wasn’t sure, and since I would be driving back there today, I made sure to look…IT
DID, and has apparently been on even the NATIONAL news… (I’m oblivious to most
things, so I missed it)
I was able to get up pretty early with the excitement of
getting back out diving after a three month (and two day) lay off. I was meeting
a friend for dinner last night, and as I was leaving, I put my doubles in the
back of my car, only to stop myself with the rest of the gear thinking “you’re
parking it in a public place, and it’s probably not a great idea to leave
X-amount worth of dive gear in the parking lot of a bar/restaurant where people
would be drinking a lot because it IS College Basketball Playoff time! So I waited until I got back home to load
the rest of it and did it fairly quickly…then worried most of the way down because
I didn’t make sure everything was in the car this morning…thankfully it was,
and it wasn’t long before I was worrying if I’d remember how to assemble it,
and that everything worked after such a long layoff.
As I assembled everything, I double checked that it went
where it was supposed to go. I also had
to analyze my breathing gas, so I put my regulators on my tanks, then turned
them on and calibrated my analyzer. As I was analyzing, my primary regulator
started to trickle a little, so I asked Rob (who does annual service on them)
to give them a quick look. He made an
adjustment, and we tried it again. Same thing so after the third adjustment, he
said “use your back ups and bring this over to the shop tomorrow when you come
to get your fill” So I used my Zeagle
primary after swapping the transmitter between first stages.
Since it was our first dive of the year together, and we
figured that the visibility would be decent, but we pretty much kept our
options open for where to go. However, with the amount of people out today, we
had a feeling that the “pristine visibility” (well pristine for this quarry) that we
THOUGHT would be there would be a little kicked up, so Rob had his plan, back
up, and contingency in his mind. I was
just worried about things not working right, or forgetting how to do this after
a three month (and two day) lay off! We
dropped in from the steep access, and met at the 20 ft. tree to check for
bubbles, we continued on and swam through the trees past the Dolphin Tower, and
over to the pipe. We followed that until
we saw the CAT, but saw someone coming up the hill in front of the CAT just
kicking the living crap out of the viz, so Rob opted to go a little more
towards the right, and down the steeper part of the hill to the Deep Boat. At the Deep Boat, he continued a little more
to the right, and we soon found the line that goes to the debris pile that was
a building, and followed that (well not until Rob gave me Hell for kicking up
my own little spot as I reached the bottom of the hill, he was just mad the
other guy screwed up his original plan)
We followed the line, and we were soon staring at the debris pile, and
the tool box. We checked in, and
followed between the tool box and Step Van, and swam along the ridge back to
the pipe, then started up the slope. We
were both starting to get a little cold (my right hand was freezing, at this
point I figured that I had a slight leak, since I couldn’t warm it up) so we followed the ridge out to where the
Aqua Adventures Truck is located, then around the back and through the trees,
past the crane arm, and the boats, and took our safety stop amongst the
algae. Both of us got leg cramps at this
point (In the same upper part of the leg) so we did our own job of kicking
things up at that point. We both settled
into our spots, and finished our stop.
When we were done, we exchanged OK’s and made our way to the exit, and
finished our dive.
Duration: 39 minutes
Deepest Depth: 93 feet
Coldest Temp: 35ยบ
Not too bad for the first time out in a while, a few minor
adjustments needed, and I have to make sure that my glove doesn’t have a hole
in it (it doesn’t I filled it with water and it didn’t leak…I have a few other
options…besides just not screwing the glove on correctly) When we got out of the water, John and Ron
were about to dive, but Ron had a catastrophic hose failure, so Rob loaned him
his set of primary regulars, so he would be able to dive. They were still in
the water by the time we finished packing and headed to lunch, so we guess they
had a decent dive…(other reports would be nice...hint hint)
After we packed we went to PizzAtown for a sandwich and a
beer. I won’t be in the water next
weekend since I’ll be in Secaucus for Beneath the Sea, but there’s always that possibility
we’ll be out the following weekend (well on Saturday, since Sunday is
Easter) I’ll keep ya posted.
Ok, 2015 is off to a great (and late) start, just a few
short months until Wednesday night diving, can’t wait!
