DIving Lake Rawlings and Key West

I went diving this week at Lake Rawlings, a "scuba park" off I-85. It's south of here and about an hour away. I dove with my friend, Debi, who is a divemaster and with two other folks, both members of the Richmond Dive Club. It was lovely to be underwater again.

I find that I am still pretty lousy at setting up my equipment. That may be more a function of not doing it very often. Familiarity is something that will only come with time.

A trip to Key West in October is ahead. I'll try to get in a couple days of diving and hope to dive the USNS Vandenberg. The ship, recently sunk off KW, is now the world's second largest artificial reef. Really looking forward to that.

As I look forward, I think diving may be the thing that allows me to meet "like minded" people-a community, if you will. That can't be a bad thing. I am chasing my "bliss".

Wish me luck!

Enter-diving

On my way to being a certified scuba diver. So much to learn and such a big payoff. I am in class with 2 other women and a guy. I figure he will be my "buddy" for the water section of the class, as we were seated next to each other. We had to read aloud during a quiz portion last night and the guy has a very hard time. Words like "narcosis" became "nausea". I think he may be guessing. That would be scary if you were partnering with him in the open ocean. I wondered last night how people can "fake" reading for an entire life. He's not illiterate. He just has some real deficiencies in vocabulary. The instructor didn't say anything or correct him. I don't think that was because he didn't notice. 

I figured out last night that one reason I may really love this extreme sport is that it's very "gear intensive". Always cool things to dream of adding to your gear. You guessed it: I bought a new mask last night. I told myself the one I have is old. It is. :D