Cave 1: Day 0: Shakeout

Sunday we planned to do a shakeout dive at Ginnie Springs. But first we had to go to Gainesville so Rob could retrieve his drysuit from Steve Gamble (he brought another drysuit with him... he's not that dumb). Rob wanted to go first thing to get it, and seemed sad at the idea of going solo, so I got up at 8 just to please him, grumble. Steve's "shop" is just his garage. I waited in the car, but did get a glimpse of him when he opened the door for Rob. Apparently he, like most sane people, thought Rob's suit was in comedically bad shape, yet charged very little to fix a lot (much like Frank). Once we had the suit, we headed back to High Springs to get Oleg and then headed to EE for tanks.

We picked up 3 sets of 104s (ugh) and headed to Ginnie. We managed to escape watching the video, since Rob and I had been there before (though I've actually never seen the video, since I went to the bathroom during it last time). We headed over to the cavern, explained the site to Oleg, and got ready to dive. Walking to the water in 104s was not as terrible as I thought but man were they heavy on the surface (or put another way, my 40 pound wing was undersized). We dropped down and did a round of valve drills and S-drills. Everything looked good, though we had a few sticky posts. After that, we headed into the cavern and back out several times, taking turns with the reel. The flow was a bit higher than I remembered, but I did make it to the grate this time (take that, Kevin!). I eventually got pretty bored of this, but Rob and Oleg seemed pretty into it, so we went in and out 5 times. At the end, we did a weight check. It took forever to dump all of that gas! I thought the highlight of the dives was a turtle that we saw in the basin. He was soooo cute. I wanted to pet him, but didn't know if they bite, so I abstained.

After that, we headed back to EE to get fills and pick up the rest of the tanks. While the tanks were filling, we headed down the road to the Great Outdoors Restaurant for lunch. I had a steak sub, which was very tasty. Rob made us get gator bites as an appetizer. They were fine but nothing wonderful. But now I can say in my memoirs that I've eaten alligator. After retrieving tanks from EE, we provisioned at the Winn Dixie (I am now a proud owner of a Winn Dixie discount card, woohoo) then headed back to our rooms. I actually took a nap, shocking. It was interrupted by a call from Ted, about the cats. Pepper had a battle wound that he was wondering about. I assured him that she frequently gets little battle wounds from tussling with Oreo, and, to date, none of these wounds have proved fatal, so she would probably pull through. Eventually we decided to head to the diner across the street for dessert. Unfortunately it was closed, so we decided to drive around to find a place. After quite a bit of driving, we ended up at Kazbor's. We went there for wings with Kevin during our T2 trip. Rob and I split nachos and a chocolate lava cake (we were craving a brownie sundae, and that was the closest thing). Oleg had chicken fried steak, which I secretly coveted. After we got back to the room, we watched a little Law and Order and went to bed early (for Rob anyway).