I think that on this dive, there were no scooter shenanigans of any sort, so we actually managed to make it past 400' without having to switch scooters :) I guess because it was the weekend and there were a lot more people out diving, there were gazillions of lines running in through both the ear and the eye (I think I counted 4 in the eye and 3 in the ear). And we did encounter a few teams in the cave too, though not as many as you might expect considering all of those lines! So, we headed way up the mainline, with nothing too interesting happening on the way. Rob wanted to visit the Insulation Rooms on the way out, so when we got to the jump, he went off the trigger to drop a cookie on the line (I guess he thinks it is easier to find the right spot on the way in?). Since we went off the trigger there, and he was dropping his cookie right where the line ran atop a little rock ledge, I decided to drop my bottle there. So then once we got going again, we headed pretty much straight to the 2900' turn in the line, where we agreed to go a bit further before dropping scooters.
Once we dropped the scooters, we continued on by kick. Oh my did I jinx things by suggesting that the swim past that is not that tough. Woowee was the flow up back there. So there was a bit of huffing and puffing, and blowing through gas faster than usual! The flow died down by the time we got to the Henkle, but there were a few spots where it really picked up again, and it actually took some strategizing to figure out how to move through it (okay, mostly it just required watching Rob and either imitating what he did, or doing something different if he got thrashed by the flow). I have been up to the jump to the left around 3400' before, so I will skip to the "new" part. I suppose that we went through the scraper restriction. We went through this boxy rock restriction, which was quite distinctive (and quite cool) looking. But I'm not sure how accurate the name is; perhaps it was once more accurate. It's a restriction for sure, but I didn't really feel like I was just scraping through it. Shortly after that restriction, the passage gets low and a bit messy on the bottom. It isn't consistently super low, but there were periodic "underpasses" where it was a bit of a squeeze to get through, then it would open up (relatively speaking) a little into little rooms. There were some really nice clay banks on either side of the line in those little rooms. Eventually Rob had switched off of his stage, and there was pretty obviously no good place to drop a stage, nor was it a great place to have to be carrying a stage. It would have been better to drop it earlier. Anyway, at the point where he stopped and tried to decide what to do, I turned it, since I was getting close to turning on gas anyway.We headed back out and when we got to that jump to the left (now the right) where we went last time, Rob asked if I wanted to go up there. I passed, since I didn't think the gas I had left would make it worth going up there. The ride out from there was great. There was enough flow that I barely had to kick, more like just steer with my fins. So I just drifted out and watched a really nice view go by! On the way out, we also poked our heads into a couple of jumps that might be worth checking out in the future, for instance the Henkle bypass. Once we got back to our scooter drop, we headed straight back to the insulation room jump. Rob put the jump in and we ditched our extraneous gear before heading in there. We went the counterclockwise direction today. It's weird how the fluffy "insulation" seems to be more concentrated in different rooms at different times. Today it was thickly blanketing the floor in the first room (from the direction we came from). It was pretty cool how the blanket draped across the line. When we got to the last room, with the tannic dome, Rob disappeared into the dome. After he came back down I decided to disappear into the dome. I didn't go up there for long but when I came out, Rob was exiting the room. What the heck? We headed back to the mainline and picked up all our stuff and headed out.
On Thursday, Rob wanted to complete the Bone Room circuit on the way out. I had waved him off and told him we could do it another day. So today I told him we could do that on the way out. I have never completed the circuit. It's not too long, when you are on a scooter anyway :) We paused near the Wonder Tunnel jump to pay homage to Ted's antics. When we got back to the mainline, I led us through the cornflakes, and then decided to take the keyhole bypass, since I know Rob loves it. On the way up the slope, he bumped my fins because I wasn't going fast enough. Not cool! I am all for a fin bump to signal that you are right behind me, but this was totally gratuitous. From there we had a pretty uneventful exit. With all of those lines entering through the eye, I thought it might be a mess getting out. But there were 4 lines, and they were run really nicely, with two running on one side and two running on the other, not at all in the way. Excellent! When we got to the deco ledge, someone was on it. Since there is room for two there, I figured I would start ditching my gear on one end of the ledge and then scoot onto the unoccupied side. By the time I had ditched my scooter, the other guy on the ledge left. Sweet. After a whole bunch of deco, we exited through the eye, and there were divers raining down on me! There was some sort of class (OW I'm guessing) descending into the basin to do skills in the sand. I curled up against the wall to finish my ascent.
We managed to get out of the water at a sort of reasonable hour for lunch. We headed to the Station Bakery, where I tried the new BBQ pork sandwich. It was good, but I'll probably go back to one of my old standbys next time. It strikes me as the type of sandwich that Rob or Ted would really like though (very meaty). After lunch, we even had time for some downtime before eventually heading to dinner with Kyle and Kirill. The dinner conversation was dominated by discussion of the flutter kick ;)
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