Cave 2 Report

Last week, Rob and I took a slightly stealthy trip to Florida to take Cave 2 with David Rhea, but not as stealthy as the ultimate stealth trip for Cave 1. This was to be (I hoped) my last GUE class ever! Since we couldn't talk Ted into taking the class with us (super lame), David found a kick-ass third team member for us, Antonio. We didn't know him, but we bumped into him at EE in December. He noticed our names on some gear and put two and two together, so we knew right off the bat that he had excellent situational awareness :) The rest of this is day by day. I did a horrible job of taking pictures during class, so prepare yourself for disappointment in that area!

Day 0: Ginnie Shakeout Dive
Day 1: Ginnie Springs
Day 2: Peacock Springs
Day 3: Jackson Blue
Day 4: Hole in the Wall and Twin Caves
Day 5: Ginnie Springs
Ginnie Springs: Hill 400 Line
Peacock Springs: The Grand Traverse

Ah, what are relief to be finished. I was just telling Rob at the gym today that I am never practicing another breath hold swim again. Actually I immediately back-pedaled on that and said "well maybe someday, but not because you tell me to" :)

Thanks to David and Antonio for a great class. We couldn't have chosen a better third team member ourselves. And now we have a buddy in south Florida to go wreck diving with sometime! I have said many times how happy I am to be finished with GUE classes "forever", and I think I went out on a high note. I definitely had some jitters about the class because I didn't want to look like an idiot, but the diving in the class was actually quite fun! The "stress" of the failures and scenarios really didn't spoil that at all for me.

And of course, thanks to the guys at EE and Edd's for all of their help.

Cave 2, Day 5: Back at Ginnie

We got up early and headed out of Marianna a bit before 8. On the way back to High Springs, we took our final exam. David told us the night before that we could take the test as a team, but then for some reason he changed his mind. I think he was worried Rob was going to eat bon bons while Antonio and I slaved away on the exam, because that would be totally like Rob. He gave us one last chance to ask any questions after he made this announcement, and I confessed that I don't know anything about cave geology. He told me some more stuff about that, which of course was utterly useless to the test. We eventually made it back to High Springs. We swung by EE, to pickup some gear and decided to grab lunch at the Station Bakery and Cafe, which is basically across the street. I'd never been there before, but Rob mentions it every now and then. Man, I can't believe I waited this long to check it out -- it's a great lunch spot! And they have some very tasty looking cakes and pastries. And ice cream too. Okay, next time I'm just going to skip lunch and go straight to dessert. Plus I finally found out where I can buy a goat around these parts.

Once we finished lunch, we headed to Ginnie Springs for a couple of dives. When David was explaining to us why he wanted to go back to Ginnie for the last day, he said something along the lines of there being a super cool dive that we could do. The super cool dive was a circuit that started out a lot like the circuit from the first day, but instead of jumping back to the mainline, we would go up the "mud tunnel" and when that ended, we'd jump back onto a line that was heading back toward to the mainline, near the maple leaf. I was not that excited about having to schlep a stage through the flow at Ginnie. I was even less thrilled that it was my turn to lead. I didn't think that schlepping a stage would magically transform my mediocre line running skills into anything better :) Before I even had a chance to whimper about this, David said that since Rob felt he had been "robbed" of his chance to lead on the downstream dive at Hole in the Wall, he could lead this dive. I thought this was a nice way of David acknowledging that I am a flow wimp and that making me run the line with a stage bottle through the flow would be mean. On the previous day, my light had crapped out (all on its own) prematurely. I thought it could be the battery -- I had two batteries I was alternating between and one of them I knew the burn time on, but the other I didn't have any good (recent) data points. So Antonio loaned me his spare light (his wife's light actually). I figured I could use it for one dive and use my light with the known good battery on the second dive.

We were entering through the eye again. As we approached the entrance, another team was coming out, so we stood aside waiting for them. I tucked against the wall of the eye and put a finger down to hold myself there against the flow. When I put my finger down on the rock, a turtle came barreling out of this little nook next to my hand. Oops! I felt bad to have spooked the turtle, but I was actually quite delighted by the close turtle encounter, since I love the Ginnie turtles! As I spun around watching the turtle, I could hear regulator laughing behind me, which I think was probably David. We finally got to enter and dropped our O2 bottles on the line. Then we headed down the restriction. When I got to the section after the little 50 foot room, where you come around the corner and get pummeled by the flow, the boys were stopped ahead of me. I didn't know what was going on, so I just tried to hold myself on some of the little rocks on the bottom, so I didn't get blown back up the chute. Just then, my light failed. I couldn't imagine that David was failing my light right now, so I reached back and flipped the switch (twice) and it didn't come back on. I pulled out a backup light and signaled the guys. David asked me to flip the switch on the light and I was kind of like "don't you think I already tried that?" :) I guess he wanted to see the light's behavior in hopes of debugging it on the surface without getting out of the water. After that, David swam up ahead and took the reel and tied it into the mainline, and then we headed out. We got to the surface and after a bit of troubleshooting, gave up on getting the light to work. David sent Rob to retrieve my light from the car. I was perfectly happy to hang out in the water while Rob did that :)

After swapping lights, we headed back in, for another pummeling. We jumped to the right at the park bench, and dropped our stages there. The first section after that was quite familiar, but then we got to the mud tunnel. It is small and muddy. The entire time we were swimming through it, I was feeling super paranoid about silting it out, which made the whole thing rather unpleasant. Probably breathing 32% didn't help with that, but I really think it was the class paranoia that made it quite bad. We didn't make it to the end of the tunnel by the time that I called it on gas. I actually thought we had, because Rob stopped ahead, and I thought perhaps he was getting out a spool to put the jump in. But it turns out he just stopped because there was a small area he needed to negotiate. On the way out, David told us to pull the spools, but not until we'd already passed over one. But then I was wondering if Rob had pulled the first one and I just hadn't noticed it. So I was a bit confused by this. It turned out he had not, but it would be easy to pull that one on a subsequent dive. Anyhoo, there were eventually an assortment of failures on the way out. After we surfaced, we each did an unconscious diver rescue from the bottom of the eye. I felt surprisingly unspazzy when I did mine, other than one moment when I almost swam Antonio into the wall and had to push off with my hand :) Afterward Rob told me that my unconscious diver rescue looked good and he might make me demonstrate it in the future. High praise coming from Rob :)

For the next dive, since we weren't going to complete the circuit, we were given the option of skipping the stage and just doing a backgas dive. That sounded peachy to me, so that's what we did. So the plan was to head up the mainline, run a spool to the jump where we abandoned the spool on the last dive, then go retrieve that spool from the mud tunnel. Once that was all cleaned up, we would continue up the mainline and jump to the left at the "roller coaster". I had to lead the dive, sigh. I mentioned that I like being in the back, because I can watch where the people in front go in the gallery. Because no matter how high up I am, I'm never as high as I should be! This is obvious when someone in front of me is higher than me :) But I still got stuck leading. David knew that I thought the mud tunnel was creepy as hell, so I think that's why he wanted me to have to swim in it to retrieve the spool. He's mean. After switching tanks and such, we headed in. At least I didn't have to run the reel :) At some point in the gallery, David actually took the lead so I could see the right place to go at one point. Very helpful. We continued up the main line and at some point, I got to a spot that I recognized, but then didn't recognize at the same time. It was a spot where the line sort of goes down a hill, which I have a very clear picture of in my head. But it didn't look right. The line was running on the other side of a little spit of rock hanging down from the ceiling, which I didn't remember at all. After swimming past that spit of rock, I turned around and looked back down the line, to figure out what was going on. Meanwhile, Rob signaled to me that the jump we were looking for was right there. David swam over and pulled the line back to the side of the tunnel we were on -- ahh, that looks more familiar :) I tied into the line and headed over to the Expressway tunnel. Then I followed the line into the mud tunnel. David followed me and after I pulled the spool, he told me to slow down. I gave him this look like "I just want to get out of here, dude" :) and tried to slow down. After cleaning everything up, we headed back up the mainline. Just as I was approaching the jump we were to take, I checked my gas and realized it wasn't worth putting the jump in, and I thumbed it. I am a bit miffed about how we only made it to 750 feet on thirds when we routinely make it to the maple leaf on 2/9th, but I guess I was screwing around with those spools for longer than I realize.

Before the dive, David told us that we would do a lights out exit, so when he told us to turn out our lights, just turn them out and don't go to a backup. He asked us if we remembered how to cross the line in touch contact, and we told him that we had each practiced it on Sunday. He seemed surprised, or possibly impressed. Since this was basically the one skill that was new to me in C1, it seemed obvious to practice it before the class :) So, we knew a lights out exit was coming, and could assume it would be a gas-sharing lights out exit, and we were not disappointed. Rob and Antonio ended up sharing gas, and then part way out, I switched Rob onto my long hose. Going through the lips sharing gas was quite amusing. It actually wasn't as bad as I expected. We still had some light at that point at least. Eventually we went lights out. In Cave 1, David told us some scary stories of students rolling off posts while sharing gas. So I was very paranoid about rolling off my left post. There was a lot of clanking against the ceiling as we went through the restriction. Every time I clanked, I did a flow check, and on several occasions, my post had rolled off a turn. So it's easy to imagine how it could eventually roll off completely if one didn't do flow checks. Aside from being terrified of rolling my post off and falling a bit behind on venting my drysuit once, I actually thought it was kind of fun going through there lights out :) However, it was still a relief to make it to the little room at 30 feet. When we got there and got our bottles, Rob made a little motion with the reg he was breathing (my long hose) which made me think he was going to go onto his bottle and I briefly spazzed out for a moment, trying to stop him. But of course that isn't what he was about to do anyway :) It was getting dark out by this point, so even in that room it was really dark. We made our way out into the open water and did our 20 foot stop there. Since Rob and I were planning to dive at Ginnie again over the weekend, we just left the reel in to retrieve another day. When we got to the surface, David told us that looked good, or something like that. I was shocked.

We had plans to meet for dinner with Chris and Doug's C1 class that was going on this week, as well as a few other people. When we got out of the water, we were running a bit behind, so we quickly got packed up to go. David asked if we'd be available to meet in the morning for some final wrap-up. Rob asked if that meant we had to wait until tomorrow to find out if we passed. David said "no, you'll find out tonight". I took that to mean that David was going to torture us and wait to tell us until the last possible moment, which is exactly what he did. He finally gave us the news as we were leaving from dinner, after whipping out some GUE cards at the other end of the table during dessert, and fanning them about teasingly.

We walked back to EE, where we had left our cars, and unloaded a bunch of gear before heading out. As we were driving down Main St, we picked up a police escort, who followed us all the way back to the Country Inn, and parked behind our car. When we got out, he said that he noticed we were milling about outside of a closed business after hours and thought we were robbing the place. Well he didn't say it in quite those words, but that was the idea. Rob told him what we were up to and I proudly tried to show him my brand-spankin'-new cave card, hehehe. He told me that wasn't necessary, and Rob told him that I was so excited about it, I just wanted to show it off. I think Officer Barbrady was amused. Man, we can't get out of High Springs without a brush with the law, but at least this time we didn't owe any money :)

Cave 2, Day 4: Hole in the Wall and Twin Caves

We got started at a pretty reasonable hour today, after a very cold night in the trailer. I woke up at 4 or 5 AM and was freezing, and basically found anything I could to pile on top of me for warmth. I had no idea how to adjust the heat. It turned out that we had accidentally had the AC on instead of the head. Oops. Anyhoo, we headed over to Edd's after Rob lovingly packed us all sandwiches for lunch. When we got to Edd's, our tanks had already been loaded on the boat (sweet!) so we got going right away. We headed to Hole in the Wall. I was leading the dive. The plan was to go upstream first, I think, unless I am confused about which was is upstream and which is downstream :) We went to the right after dropping down the chute. David showed us on a map where we were to go. There was a jump to the right, that he pointed out on the map, somewhere after the 1700' mark on the map. Okay. Once we got to the site, we did some S-drills, which I was totally sick of at this point. Especially in 5 feet of water. I hate being in 5 feet of water; it doesn't matter how many GUE classes I take or how many 6 minute ascents I do, I will always feel on the verge of popping to the surface at 5 feet :) Once that was done, and we took care of some bubbles on my regulator (accompanied by some trash talking about Apeks regs), we got going.

I was really fixated with getting through that restriction, while running the reel, so much so that I forgot to drop my bottle. The boys dropped their bottles, but I didn't until the other side of the restriction at 40'. Oh well, maybe David won't notice ;) I was relieved once I got the reel in, and we got going. This cave has a super silty bottom, so we were warned to be careful in our selection of a place to drop our stages. When I was about to go off of my stage, I found a spot which I thought looked good, and suggested it. Rob didn't like it though. So we kept going, and I kept not seeing any better looking spots, and then Rob signaled and pointed out a spot. It looked just like the spot I wanted to drop at, so I was a bit miffed. Then David swam over and told us not to drop them there. Finally Antonio picked a spot that worked. Phew. I didn't really feel weighed down by the stage, but once I dropped it I felt so unencumbered. After quite a bit of swimming, we came to an interesting spot. Last time we were here, there was a T, or what looked like a T, about 1000 feet in. Today it was a jump. However, I remembered that Keith had said something about that not usually being that way. So, whatever, it was a jump, and we weren't taking it. So I stayed on the main line, which veered left and abruptly got shallower. The last time we didn't make it too far down the line before turning, but I remembered it got smaller. It was supposed to eventually open up into a room. But instead it just got smaller and smaller. Eventually I saw what looked like a crack that sort of headed down ahead of me, and thought "he wants us to go in there? I don't think so." When I got to that crack, I saw the line tied off on a rock, and couldn't see it coming off the other side, so I figured this was the end of the line. And even if it wasn't, I wasn't going any further :) So I turned around and thumbed the dive, stirring up a little silt in the process. Rob told me to back up so he had room to turn around and seemed annoyed when I didn't, but there wasn't really any room to back up. After stirring up a bit more silt, we all managed to turn around and head out, at least some of us on the line :)

On the way out, there was the usual assortment of failures, and I ended up sharing gas with Rob. Then eventually I ended up with two stage bottles, and Rob with zero, and he went flying out of the cave in front of me. Nice... you give the slowest diver in the team two bottles and then start to motor? We eventually ditched some of the bottles on the line before the restriction, and left it to David to tote them out. Bwahaha. Then Antonio and I got to share gas through the restriction, which was fun. The most amusing part was when I got my foot caught between his head and the ceiling :) After an itty bit of deco, we surfaced. We decided not to bounce back down to retrieve the reel right away, since another team was on there way in as we were leaving, and with all that traffic, the restriction was bound to be a bit silty. Not that our gas sharing exit had anything to do with that ;)

After a bit of vacillating and a quick swim in the mill pond (brrr), we decided to go back for a very short dive downstream. David thought the viz would be worse in that direction, and thus it wouldn't be worth our time to do much of a dive, but we needed to retrieve the reel, and we might as well check out some more cave while we were doing that. So we agreed to do a 200 psi penetration (that sounds really lame now that I've put it in print). David had been pestering me about getting a black-skirted mask to replace my beloved yellowing, science-experiment-like clear-skirted mask. I'm pretty sure cave divers were black-skirted masks because they think it looks cool, but David had some excuse about light reflecting off of the glass and night vision and the like, to cover up his vanity. He offered me his backup mask to try. It fit, so I figured why not. We got in the water, and while we were doodling around on the surface, the mask kept fogging. David had de-fog in his pocket, so he re-de-fogged it for me. It fogged up yet again, and we de-fogged it some more. Once it seemed to be fog-free, we headed in for a dive. Do you see where this is going? Before we were even through the restriction, the mask kept fogging and was driving me crazy. I kept flooding it and clearing it, and to add to the annoyance, every time I cleared it, the mask would sort of deform and wiggle around on my face (I think the clasps were a little weak from living in David's pocket for so long, and the strap loosened, which wasn't really helping the situation). We got to the reel, where it was tied into the upstream main line, and Rob picked it up and moved it to the downstream mainline. While he was doing that, I got my backup mask out, and once he was tied in, I told him to wait while I switched masks. I can think of one other time when I have had to actually deploy my backup mask. It was when I was trying out Rob's backup mask, because it was black-skirted and cool looking, and he talked me into trying it. I'm beginning to see a pattern.

Then we got going. My backup mask immediately started to fog, which I can't say I was surprised by. It had been sitting in my pocket all week, not once de-fogged or otherwise paid attention to. But at least I could flood and clear this one without it moving all over my face. After a few minutes, David swam up to me and showed me a note asking if it was okay if we penetrated 400 psi instead of 200. The viz was better than expected, hence the suggestion. I said okay. Then less than 2 minutes later, after David had swum up to Antonio to show him the note, and then Rob to show him the note, I decided that it was time to call the dive. Sometime about having trouble both reading my gauge and seeing the line just didn't seem right :) I thumbed it and told the guys that my mask was "broken" (using the old-style one-handed signal for broken :P). I felt like a dumbass for giving David the okay to extend the dive and then moments later thumbing it :) I was thinking I could really use a failure-less exit, and David was kind enough to comply. Eventually I determined that the only way to maintain a fog-free mask for more than a few seconds was to partially flood the mask and just leave it flooded. This was heaven on my nose and sinuses. By the time I surfaced, I really couldn't clear my mask because my nose was so stopped up! I had been #3 on that dive, and I felt like I had completely squandered my opportunity to be in the back, with nothing to do. Rob, meanwhile, thought he had been cheated out of his opportunity to be #1.

There wasn't much to debrief from that dive, except why the heck didn't I take my primary mask as my backup, or at least de-fog my backup given the higher than usual likelihood of needing it!?! So we headed to Twin for one more dive. I'd never been to Twin; it is the one cave we dove all week that I hadn't been to before. I thought it was super cool. Shortly after entering and going down a little chimney (like a mini version of the Hole in the Wall chimney), there is this really round tunnel that goes for several hundred feet. David described it, before the dive, as being like holding a paper towel roll up to your eye and looking down it. That's a pretty good description. I noticed on the map afterward that it is labelled "Subway" which is also a pretty good description. I thought it was one of the most aesthetically pleasing caves I have ever been in. I told Rob how I thought it was just so cool how it seemed so perfectly round and just went on and on, and he said "most people would call that boring". I love radial symmetry, perhaps to a neurotic degree. I think this cave would be very photogenic. Eventually the beautiful paper towel roll gives way to a vertical crack (this isn't the right way to describe it at all, but I can't think of a better term), where the line Ts into a little circuit. We dropped our stages there and headed right, with the plan being to make it around the circuit before having to turn. You go down the crack and it quickly gets deeper, to about 100 feet for a time. At some point the line takes a greater than 90 degree turn to the left, and there is another line that continues straight on and is like arm's reach from the main line. Seems like a good place to accidentally end up on another line. This is right around the change in arrows. After not very long, you come to another vertical crack/chute and after going up that (and feeling not at all graceful the whole time), you end up back at the T. We picked up our bottles, had a variety of failures on the way out, and ended up sharing gas and with one little Scout light left between all of us. I had the light, and did an excellent job of lighting my way and no one else's :) For some reason all of our 20' stop felt totally awkward and like I was wedged in a crack where I had to crane my neck to see the others.

We got our gear and ourselves back on the boat, and formulated a plan for Friday. The original plan had been to dive at Madison, but reports were that the viz would not meet standards, so we (David) decided to go back to Ginnie. When we got back to Edd's they said that they couldn't fill mix until the next day, so we were going back to Ginnie with 32%. Yay. We left our tanks there to be filled, and headed to dinner, at Madison's Warehouse again. When we came back, our tanks were all nicely laid out and ready to go, and we started the arduous process of loading them all in the truck. I did an excellent job of supervising the heavy lifting. Once that was done, we headed back to the trailer to finish up lecture. This included the deco and gas properties lectures. I snickered during the lectures because I thought they were below me. I am such a bad student.

Cave 2, Day 3: The Longest Day of My Life (Jackson Blue)

We "decided" (more like David decreed) to meet at the pool in Gainesville at 5:30. This meant we had to leave High Springs at 5. This was clearly some sort of hazing. To be fair, David did give us the option of doing the swim at the mill pond instead. When he offered that, I asked if I failed the swim test, would I be allowed to try again in the pool? After that, we decided to just do it at the pool. The idea was that if we got there early, the pool would not be crowded. In fact, it was crowded anyway, and we had to wait a bit for a lane (half a lane, really). One spot opened up and I hopped in to do my swim. Ladies first, right? I did the swim without any problems, and beat my Cave 1 pace by 4 seconds :) By the time that I was finished, Rob was in a different lane doing his swim. I got out, and Antonio hopped into my lane and started his swim. While he was swimming, the other half of the lane opened up, so then we had a lane all to ourselves for the breath hold. Waiting 10 minutes between my swim and my breath hold was a mistake. In the intervening time, I got cold and nervous about the breath hold, my arch nemesis. The breath hold is a subject of much contention between Rob and me. Whenever I practice it at the pool (which I did like once before this class), Rob gets annoyed that I don't make it to the end of the pool, because it is "all in my head". I have no doubt it's all in my head, but I was pretty confident that I would rally in the moment like I did in C1, the only time in the history of the world that I have managed to make it all the way across the pool on a breath hold. After all of the build up, I just had to get it over with, so I went first. A couple of strokes into it, I was not feeling great, I felt like I got a bad start, and really thought I was going to have to abort and try again. Then I decided that would be lame, and I made it to the end. When I surfaced, David said "very good". He is clearly getting soft in his old age. After the boys did their breath hold, we got out of there and headed back to High Springs, to ditch our car and head to Marianna.

David is one of those people who is a skilled enough driver that he can do other stuff while he is driving. I can barely turn the volume up on the radio without swerving into the next lane. So on the drive up to Marianna, he lectured at us. I was sitting in the back seat, which was quite dark and cave-like, and looking at the slides on his laptop, which was perched on the center console in the front. An hour or so into the drive, the slides went a little blurry and I realized I was having, or about to have, a migraine. I very rarely get migraines, so I am generally quite bad at recognizing one until it's really bad. But this time I actually figured it out, and managed to pop a pill with some assistance from Rob. I was pretty much debilitated for the rest of the drive. I think Rob thought I was having a stroke, which I assured him I wasn't, in as few words as possible. I moved to the front seat and just bobbed my head in agreement from time to time for the duration of the lecture. I guess it's a good thing that the lectures are the same in every GUE class. When we got to Marianna, we stopped at Walmart to get some provisions, and at that point, I didn't think I could dive in my current state. We went to Edd's to dump our gear and load it onto the boat, and then headed to the trailer. We did some more lecture, then had lunch, and by then I had recovered enough to dive.

For some reason, we went to Jackson Blue after all. At the time I didn't know why, but I suspect it was because we got a late start, and it would be faster if we didn't relocate between dives. We were diving stages for the first time, woohoo. We got to JB, and it was quite a different scene from the last time we were there, when there were like a thousand screaming kids swimming there, because it was super hot. We did our gear checks and stuff and dropped down for a round of S-drills, which was only slightly confusing because we were already on our stage bottles. Somehow we managed to only do two S-drills and in both, I was the recipient. That was slightly confusing too :) After regrouping on the surface, we headed down, and then noticed something was bubbling, so we immediately thumbed the dive. We hadn't done a bubble check, and once we did that, we found a variety of bubble sources, including my drysuit inflator, which was quite bubbly. Luckily I had a cheater hose, and had 32% in the backgas. Once we took care of all of the bubbles, we headed in again. We got delayed on entry again for some reason but eventually made it to the mainline. Then, very shortly after that, as we were heading down to the first deep section, Antonio signaled that he was having a problem with his drysuit inflator. He thought it wasn't connected properly (or at least that's what I thought he was signaling), so I reconnected it for him, and it still wasn't working. Then Rob took a crack at it, and in the end we decided that his Argon bottle was just empty. He didn't have a cheater hose on his backgas, so David passed him his Argon bottle and David used backgas. So in the end, there were a lot of delays. The flow was way down, thankfully. I don't think I pulled at all on the entire dive, whereas when we went there before, I was all about the pull and glide. I eventually turned the dive based on time, not that time was really a constraint, but based on what we had discussed on the surface. We had made it just a couple hundred feet past the T. Given all of the delays that we had on the way in, the exit was way faster. I don't know if we had any failures on the way out, but if we did, they were pretty minor. I think David thought I called the dive on confusion or stupidity or not feeling well. What was I thinking, sticking to the dive plan? :)

After a quick debrief and a bit of bickering on the surface, we decided we had enough gas to do another dive. Even our stages still had a bit of gas, since our exit was so fast, so we brought those along for more practice. I inquired about the length of the dive because I had to pee, but decided I could last another hour :P We didn't have that much gas. We obviously didn't make it quite as far on this dive, but had some interesting failures on the way out, interesting because now we had the stages in the mix. Everyone made it out alive, and was less moody after this dive :) One thing that I thought was particularly cool about both dives was all of the fish at the opening of the cavern. I guess the last time we were there, they were scared off by the thousand screaming kids. But as we were exiting, there were a zillion pretty fish at the mouth of the cavern. It was really cool.

We made it back just in time to not get lost on the pond in the dark, and got our spent tanks off of the boat to be filled. Then we headed to dinner at Madison's Warehouse. I had the pork chop, which I almost never eat, because I can't resist pork products paired with apples; it was really really good. I think even Rob liked it, and he would never order a pork chop :P We were sad to find out that they didn't have key lime pie. After dinner, we headed back to the trailer, and David lectured at us a bit more. Eventually we were excused and allowed to sleep. It wasn't actually that late when we finished, but considering that the day started at 5, and there was the one hour time change, it was a freaking long day.

Cave 2, Day 2: Peacock Springs

We met at EE around 8 to start filling tanks. Once Zack got our gas fills going, I asked if he could take a look at my leaky drysuit leg, and he did a leak test while we waited. It turned out there was a pretty non-subtle gouge on the top of the foot. It looked like a pretty good bet that that was the culprit, and Zack patched it up nicely (it was slightly less nice by the time we left, after Rob basically stuck his thumb in the aquaseal before it was completely dry... but it held anyway). Because of this and that, we didn't end up heading to Peacock until about 10. But we made good time getting there and after a short discussion of the dive plan, we got into the water. The plan was to do another circuit, going up the Pothole line, across the Crossover tunnel and then on the second dive, completing the circuit via the Peanut line. David made the Crossover tunnel out to be some tiny little silty passage, which sounded a bit intimidating. It was my turn to lead and I was mad with power. David made us (well, me) run the reel down past the sign, which I don't usually do there. But I think it went okay.

The viz was really good, much better than it was in C1! We headed up the Pothole line, almost to Olson, just beyond the little "window" in the wall where the line turns leftish. We got to drop lots of cookies, and you know, I love dropping cookies :) There were the two changes in arrows, and a jump was installed, and the jump that we installed. Yahoo! When we got to the Crossover tunnel, it was not nearly as small as David had made it out to be. It was silty, but I felt like you could drive a Mack truck through there; well, most of it anyway. We made it to the Peanut line with gas to spare, so we recalculated gas and headed up the line. After we turned it, we once again had a variety of failures on the way out. I noticed during gear checks that my left valve was extremely stiff. I used my powers of pattern matching to divine that I was likely to get a valve failure on this dive, and was just hoping it would be my right valve. David answered my hopes, technically, by failing both of my posts, so I ended up sharing gas on the way out. When he failed my left post, I had a ton of trouble turning it. I literally tried to close it, and it wouldn't move; so then I tried to open it and it wouldn't move, so then I tried to close it harder and it finally moved. It seemed like I was sitting there for ages without actually making any progress toward closing it, but no one else seemed to notice the eternity that passed before I closed the valve. Going up the chimney sharing gas was interesting. We ended up not exactly in the configuration I wanted to be in, but it worked. In the debrief, David suggested yet a different configuration that would have been slightly less awkward.

We had lunch and switched out tanks, and then headed back into the water. By the time we got into the water, we were in danger of not making it out of the water by 5, which is when you must be out of the water. So we actually ended up more constrained by time, not gas, on this dive. We headed down the Peanut Line, and and a little before 300 feet, just before the line makes a hard left and goes into the "peanut tunnel", we encountered some shenanigans. I don't know exactly what was going on, because I was in the back, but basically there was another team coming out, so we moved aside and waited for them to come out. But instead of coming out, they started dicking around for no explicable reason. I think it may have been a class doing some strange bottle drills. After several minutes they finally signaled for us to go ahead and we did. After that, things went pretty smoothly and we made it to the jump we had installed with enough time (and plenty of gas) to continue up the line for 5 more minutes. Once we turned the dive, we were greeted by the usual assortment of failures, ending in a gas sharing exit. It was a reasonably long gas sharing exit, so it made sense to switch the out of gas diver (Rob) halfway out onto the other person's long hose (that would be me, the leader at that moment). As we were swimming out, I just knew that Rob would jump the gun and start bossing me around and tell me to put him on my long hose. In fact, I was practically counting down the feet as we swam out, because I knew exactly where halfway was, but I knew that Rob would get antsy. Rob has this annoying habit of not giving me the opportunity to do things right, and instead assuming I will do things wrong and trying to "help me out". Sure enough, about 150 feet early, Rob started signalling and told me to give him my long hose. I looked him right in the eyes and rolled my eyes at him. He gave me this questioning look, and then I handed him my long hose. The exit was otherwise uneventful. When we got to the chimney, we tried orienting ourselves as David had suggested and that worked pretty well. After cleaning up reels and such, we surfaced with like 5 minutes to spare before we had to be out of the water. I mumbled to Rob about how annoying his behavior was and he was like "oh, sorry" and realized that David probably wasn't going to be too pleased with it either, which he was not.

We headed back to EE, which was technically closed by the time we got there, but not really. However, the trimix pumping capability was closed :) The plan was to head up to Mariana the next day, and dive Jackson Blue. We wanted 30/30 for that, but just got 32 instead, and decided we could dive Twin and Hole in the Wall on Wednesday and then get 30/30 from Edd and dive JB on Thursday. After getting gas, we packed all of our gear into David's truck, which suddenly didn't seem quite so cavernous. Once that was finished, the three of us headed to dinner, agreeing to meet David insanely early at the pool tomorrow. We went to Great Outdoors for dinner, and shared a slice of key lime pie for dessert :)

Cave 2, Day 1: Ginnie Springs

We arrived at EE a little early so we could fill tanks, and eventually David showed up. When he saw our rental car, a sedan, he was very disappointed in us. Strike 1. But we decided the (very large) premium to rent an SUV or van was not worth it, since we knew Antonio had a giant SUV, and told us we could stash tanks in there. We did some paperwork, and somehow managed to escape the dreaded "introductions" where we have to say who we are and why we are there. I despise this part of GUE classes; to me, it's like one step removed from sitting in a circle and talking about our feelings. I'm here because I want the training, do I really have to make it more flowery than that? Anyhoo, after getting all of our tanks and such, we headed to Ginnie. We started out doing a long field drill on installing jumps. Rob thought this drill was a bit too long, but I thought it was quite useful, at least after the fact. When it was my turn to install a jump for the first time, I remember thinking, I'm glad we did all that practice in the woods earlier.

By the time we were done with that, we decided to have lunch before getting in the water. Then David briefed us on the dive, and we looked at the map. The plan was to setup a circuit that involved four jumps. I was thinking this was a standard GUE class, where you go from never having done any jumps, to doing 4 jumps on the first dive :) But it wasn't too bad. The first jump was the one after the Cornflakes, which I have swam over and looked down many times. The last jump was back onto the mainline at about 650'. If we made it all the way there, we were then to recalculate gas and head further up the mainline (after noting the time and gas required to make it that far). Otherwise, we would drop a cookie on the line to mark how far we made it before turning. Oh and we brought O2 bottles too. We chatted about how we would typically plan deco for such a dive (since we were all T2), and I confessed that we had a rule for dives in this range, but that I could probably count on one hand how many times we'd actually done deco dives in this range (shallow and long with O2). We were going to enter through the Eye. David asked about what we had done on Sunday and who had run the reel, and after we told him that Rob had run the reel into the Eye, I was sure he would say one of the other of us would have to run it today. Instead, he said Rob could run the reel, since he had just practiced it. Phew. David is getting soft in his old age. That put Antonio in second and me in third, since that was the order we were in during our field drills. David assured me that he didn't put me in third because I'm a girl; I didn't know that was the customary position to put the girl, so I made no such assumption :)

The dive went pretty well, but then I didn't really have much to do :) My only complaint was that the pace was rather tiring to me. This was largely because I was swimming in passages were I would probably normally pull and glide, because I was in the back and saw the boys both swimming (frog kicking no less) without looking particularly tired by it, so I figured I should be able to swim too. That was pretty silly logic though :) We made it back to the mainline, and up the mainline another 200 psi before I turned it on gas. The exit involved a variety of failures, none of which were particularly tricky to deal with. When we got back to our bottles, we found a nice little area at 20 feet, which I had never really noticed before, to do our deco, such as it was. After surfacing and having a bit of debrief, we got out to switch tanks, etc. I realized that there was quite a bit of water sloshing around in my right boot. Grumble grumble. It had been completely dry the day before! We headed back in to complete the circuit, with Antonio leading this dive, so I was #2. Once again, we planned to recalculate gas when we got to the "last" jump of the circuit, and head further up the mainline. Once again we had about 200 psi to head up the line with. Once again, on the way out, we had a variety of failures, not too different from the first set of failures, except now we had some decisions to make about pulling spools and what-not. As #2 on the dive, I actually got to help with pulling spools and the like, and after some team reordering I even got to pull some spools myself. We did a bit more deco on this dive, since it was our second of the day, and then once again we had a bit of debrief after surfacing. By the time we got out, I was wet up to my hip on the right side. I figured I would dry out the suit as best I could overnight, and then hopefully someone at EE could do some magic the next morning.

We were finished surprisingly early, before 7, and agreed to meet at EE at 9 the next morning (giving us time to get there earlier and get fills), with the plan to head to Peacock. For dinner we went to the Springs Diner (formerly the Fleetwood Diner, formerly Floyd's Diner). Sadly, it basically sucked. We were all disappointed by what we had. The night before, at Great Outdoors, I mentioned my love of key lime pie, so we decided to get a slice at the diner. It was pretty good, so at least one thing we had did not disappoint.

Cave 2, Day 0: Ginnie Spring Shakeout Dive

When we met Antonio during our trip in December, it was at the end of our last diving day, so we unfortunately didn't get to dive together. Instead, we planned to meet up on Sunday before class and dive at Ginnie. This plan was put in jeopardy when we got screwed by American Airlines and ended up staying overnight in Dallas. But we got to High Springs around noon with plenty of time to do an afternoon dive at Ginnie. We were relieved to find all of the gear that we expected at EE, including two shiny new sets of 104s -- the shiniest sets I've ever seen! Actually I think they are technically HP130s. We also each left a drysuit there in January. I left mine with Steve Gamble for a new zipper, and he was kind enough to drop it off at EE; Rob left his in a bin in Doug's garage, and the bag it was in had some interesting new flora growing on it. And we'd shipped a couple of boxes of gear there as well. Once we found everything, we headed to Ginnie.

It was kind of toasty, a bit warm for being on the surface in a drysuit with a 400gm undergarment. We specifically picked February to avoid the heat, but it was unseasonably warm. Still, 80 degrees was a lot better than the 95+ we had in July (or the 90 degrees in T2). Antonio had been diving the day before, and had practiced running the reel into both the Ear and the Eye, so he left the joy of reel running to us. I said I wanted to practice running it into the Ear, and Rob wanted to practice running it into the Eye. So we planned to do two dives, one through the Eye (first) and one through the Ear (second).

I hate the Eye, because it takes so dang long to get through there, even though it is a bit more gentle of an entry than the Ear. But we went in there without too much drama, and when we got to the Gallery, it seemed like the flow was a bit down, although I think I made up for that with poor technique :) The first dive was pretty uneventful, other than Rob doing his best to leave me in his dust, and stopping every now and then, giving me an okay, and after I had NOT returned it (because I wanted a moment to catch my breath), continuing on anyway. Classic Rob. We got up to the Maple Leaf-ish area, though I don't think we actually made it to the Leaf before turning. But we definitely made it to at least 800 feet. (I knew during and after the dive where we made it, I swear, but some time has passed and now it's foggy.) Once we were past the Cornflakes, I could pretty much frog kick most of the way, which I typically can't, so that tells you how much the flow was down.

After a brief chat on the surface, we swam over to the Ear, and it was my turn to lead. The brown river water was covering part of the Ear, which is too bad, since last time it was totally clear which was really cool. I dropped down to the little alcove at 30 feet, and proceeded to flounder while trying to do a primary tie here and there. Then Rob pointed out the best primary tie ever (which I will henceforth remember, because it's that good) and I tied to that. I made a second tie before heading down the chute, and it would actually have made a pretty decent primary tie too. Once I got down the chute, running the reel was pretty uneventful. We got to the main line and we were off. I felt like a monkey humping a football, as Doug would say, in the Gallery. I wasn't quite high enough, even though I was trying to be as high as I could, there is always more room above me than I think! I really prefer not leading through the Gallery, so I can watch and follow my more spatially-aware buddies :) We made it somewhere beyond the Cornflakes, but obviously not as far as the first dive, since we had less gas. Pulling the reel went pretty well, which was good, since the last time I did this at the ear, it was mildly traumatic. This time, the only drama was when I got almost to 30 feet, Rob was trying to be a little too helpful, and I eventually had to shoo him away so I could have the 30 foot spot while I did some final cleanup of the reel. I guess he didn't want to head to the log until he was sure I would not need his assistance. I met them on the log, and found that the log is kind of annoying with 3 people. I was flopping around next to the log even though Antonio had offered me a spot on his end of the log. Then he offered again and I took him up on it that time :)

After that, we did some valve drills and S-drills in the spring run. Then we ran a bit of line, and we practiced gas sharing on the line, and crossing the line with the long hose. Rob and I had practiced that a bunch a few weeks before at the SJSU pool (along with quite a bit of no-mask breath hold practice, since I epic failed that drill in C1), so it went pretty well. After that, we packed up and headed to dinner at the Great Outdoors. We sat on the patio, which I've never done before. I got soup and salad. I don't recommend the French onion soup; it was super salty.

C1 Class Summary

Considering what an epic story this series of posts turned out to be, I felt like I had to summarize (for those of you who skimmed/skipped the other posts :P). I guess I will summarize it as follows. I am glad we did it in Florida. I now have no anxiety about going back to Florida and diving in a high flow system, and also no anxiety about diving in Mexico (although the entry into Temple of Doom sounds terrifying). If I had trained in MX, I know I would have still been really scared of diving in the flow in FL. So I guess this allowed me to get all of the anxiety out of my system in one trip.

And Oleg was a great teammate. We knew we were taking a risk when we signed up without a third teammate, but we got really lucky!

And of course, I would highly recommend David as an instructor. Even though I made up the part about the action figure.

Thanks to David, Doug, Oleg, and I guess Rob for a great class.

Cave 1: Day 5: Ginnie Springs

David gave us the option of swimming in the pool or at Ginnie and of course we chose the pool (which Ted tells me is super lame). So we had to meet him at 7 in Gainesville. He asked us if we wanted to swim or do the breath hold first and we told him the swim (so I could mentally warm up for the breath hold). He said we had 14 minutes to swim 400 yards, and if it came in at 14:01, we'd have to do it again. No pressure though. I wasn't worried about the swim, since I somewhat regularly swim 500 meters to start off my swim workout, so by math, I knew I would take somewhere in the 8 to 9 minute range, and that's what I did. I felt like I was going really slowly though, because I shared a lane with Oleg, who was quite speedy. Then we took several minutes to recover before doing the breath hold. David asked us to go to the end of the pool (75 feet) and after the 14:01 comment, I did not think this was negotiable. I was super nervous at this point, since I can never make it to the end of the pool when I practice (though our pool is in meters, so a tiny bit longer). In T2, I think I made it about 70 feet before popping to the surface. But I sucked it up and went for it, and made it to the end. I was quite pleased. By the time I swam back to the other end, Rob had already told David and Doug that I had never before made it to the end of the pool. Rob was amused at how much better I perform when David tells me to do something versus when he tells me to. Rob has on a few occasions tried to motivate me to make it to the end of the pool with some fictitious scenario where Pepper is drowning at the other end of the pool and I have to save her. I have never quite understood why, in such a scenario, I would have to make it to the end in one breath (not to mention how Pepper would end up at the Oracle pool, since she is a strictly indoor kitty).

We headed to Ginnie after a stop at Starbucks (where I learned, thanks to David, that Starbucks has oatmeal! This could be the beginning of a whole new era of pre-dive eating when we stay overnight in Monterey and my normal granola and yogurt is not convenient. The oatmeal even came with little packets of my favorite oatmeal fixins'... nuts, dried fruit, and brown sugar.) We got geared up and in the water. I was having some serious sinus problems and generally feeling like crap. We were entering through the eye today, so again, Doug played #0 and ran the reel to show us how. On this dive, we made it about as far as we did yesterday before turning on gas. There were a variety of failures including a lost diver and eventually we ended up sharing gas on the line with no lights, fun fun. It felt like a cluster, especially crossing the line (which I had not, up to this point, practiced while tethered to another diver via the long hose). When we got to the little room at 50', David cut the drill and we exited on backup lights. When we got to the surface, David said we had a lot to talk about (cringe). During the debrief he asked if we knew why he cut the drill, to which I replied "because we were spazzes", but it was actually because of the short restriction just ahead. Phew. We had one last OW drill to do and David gave us the option of doing one more short penetration first. We would get to do the afternoon dives by ourselves (sans instructor, not solo). We decided to do another dive so we could at least retrieve the reel. We made it to just before the keyhole. I don't think we had any failures on the way out (which makes sense, since it was an optional dive).

David wanted to do one more OW drill which he told us was not required for C1 but he liked to do (I didn't, at this point, understand if that meant that he required it to pass or not). He setup a line and we had one person on one end with his back to the other person on the other end of the line. That person takes off their mask, then takes their reg out and follows the line to the other diver, and finds their reg, takes it, and then swims back to the other end sharing gas in touch contact. Basically this simulates having to find a breathing source in zero viz when you have absolutely no gas left. This drill terrified me. While I am moderately comfortable with no reg or no mask, the idea of being without both freaked me out. Rob went first and I played the donor. Then David told me to go. I was on the verge of a panic attack (well, that may be a slight exaggeration) which of course makes the breath hold impossible. Needless to say, I epic failed this drill -- twice. I gave up quickly (Rob claims I made it only like 5 feet), came to the surface and literally started whimpering to Rob that I didn't think I could do it (when I told this to Ted, he quite aptly said "there's no crying in cave diving"). Rob gave me a small pep talk which went something like "just go back down and do it" and assured me that he wouldn't let me drown (in 3 feet of water). So I went back down and tried again. I made it marginally further/longer before giving up this time. Then I swam back over to Doug and David, who told me that this wasn't required for the class but I should work on it. Phew. I tried once more with my mask on just for my own enrichment (since I've never really worked on my breath hold in full gear) and did make it to the diver (but didn't take the reg, etc.). After that, David said we could get out, have lunch, and then do a dive or two without him. I assumed this meant we had passed, but he didn't make it official until we were back on dry land and out of our gear.

Rob, Oleg, and I had lunch and then headed back in for a couple of dives. As I mentioned earlier, I was quite fond of the turtles that we kept seeing in the water at Ginnie. After lunch, I was headed to the bathrooms, when I saw a little turtle waddling along on land. I got the guys' attention and told them to come over and bring the camera. Only once they got there did I approach it, since I didn't want to scare it away before they could see it. He was totally covered in mud. Very odd, but very cute. Anyhoo, on to the diving... it was Oleg's turn to lead, so he bravely manned the reel. We went in the ear (at David's suggestion). I was behind Oleg and I was just thinking I was glad I didn't have to run the reel. We didn't make it that far in because of the reel installation taking time. We made it further in on the second dive, basically about as far as we had made it on some of our earlier dives (just a bit past the park bench). Rob led that dive, because he wanted to bring up the reel. I finally managed to feel somewhat in control on the ascent (particularly at the 30' stop). Rob on the other hand... well, he got the line out without wrapping it around us or his manifold, so I guess we'll call it a success.

With two (very very puny) post-class cave dives under our belts, we packed up and headed back to EE. We managed to get back to GUE just before they closed, so I went on a little GUE logo-wear shopping spree (yes, I know it's lame that my idea of a shopping spree takes place at the GUE store). I found a hot pink and white t-shirt on the clearance rack for $5 -- what a steal! It matches my drysuit, so I know Clinton will like it. Back at EE, we ran into Mark Messersmith who had a C1 class that had just started. We chatted with him and his students briefly.

Friday night, we went to David's house for pizza and beer and to play with his pups. They are two of the cutest doggies I have ever met. They are like real live ewoks, but cuter.

Cave 1: Day 4: Ginnie Springs

We met at EE to pickup tanks and then headed to Ginnie. Doug gave us some tips on where to be at various points in the cave to dodge the flow. Once we met David at Ginnie and got signed in, he told us that for the first dive, Doug would lead us and run the line, and that we should just try to imitate Doug in terms of positioning in the cave. He also gave us tips on how to deal with specific areas, like the entry (we were entering through the ear) and the lips. I was super nervous before the dive, probably more than at any point during the class. I was pretty terrified as I dove head first down into the ear. The entry was difficult but actually kind of fun. I was "leading" behind Doug (I dubbed Doug #0 so I could still be 1 :) ). I did my best to zip around corners and across the cave the same way he did. We made it past the keyhole and just a bit beyond the left turn in the line before turning it. The ride back was pretty fun.

I noticed Doug's light was gone shortly after turning the dive, so I started doing the usual "where's my buddy" antics, and got the move along hand signal from David. Then I caught Doug in the corner of my light, with his light turned off. Apparently during the briefing when David said "Doug will lead you into the cave and be part of the team (muffle-muffle-mrph-blah)" (I was sporting the 12mm hood), he really said he wouldn't be part of the team on the way out. But I think Doug was amused that I cared enough to look for him. We had no failures on the way out, which was shocking. David said he never does that but was feeling nice (I bet he says that to all the ladies). When we got to the surface, I said it wasn't as bad as I expected, which got a laugh from David and Doug. We did two more dives, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with the usual assortment of failures.

During lunch, we did the lost line land drill where we closed our eyes, got spun around and had to search for the line. That was fun both to do and to watch the others do. While I was searching for a place to tie off to, I found the line. So I felt like I didn't quite get my money's worth on that one. On the last dive of the day, we practiced the lost line protocol in t. I totally sucked at it and took almost twice as long as Oleg and four times as long as Rob. But I eventually did find the line and was quite relieved. At some point after that David made some comment about how I seem to have spatial orientation issues, hehehe. Well at least I can find my way out of a carpark. Rob told me that it would have been more effective to spend the 18 minutes just waiting for the flow to spit me out of the cave :)

At the end of the day, David asked if we should do Friday here or at Peacock and I quickly said here, and got laughed at.

We had one funny incident today. At some point we all lost our primary lights in quick succession. I put my hand on the line as a reference and waited for Rob to get out his backup and cleanup the primary. When I looked up, he had two backups in his hands and was trying to give me one. I found this annoying, since it implied to me that I was too slow at deploying my backup, so he'd give me his (it's a lot like when he times my bag shoot, which is, you know, my favorite thing about diving with Rob).

We had the night "off" so that we could take the final exam together. We went to Great Outdoors for dinner and did the exam there. Oleg said he thought it was more of an English exam than a cave diving exam :) After that, we headed to the inn to get to sleep early, since we had the early swim test on Friday.

Cave 1: Day 3: Peacock Springs

We met at EE in the morning to fill tanks, then headed to Peacock. I was pretty terrified to go into a real cave. We looked at the water and had a briefing. The plan was to dive, lunch, land drill, dive. But at the end of the briefing we inundated David with questions about cookies and line arrows, so he decided to do land drills first since, as he put it, we were apparently all afraid he was going to leave us in the cave :) We went over lost line and lost diver protocols. Doug did the presentation, then we practiced it a bit on land. By the time we were finished, it was lunchtime, so we ate and then got in the water. Peacock does not have civilized facilities, just a port-a-potty, which I found surprisingly un-gross. On the other hand, they have a gorgeous wooden deck path to the water which is better than having to step over tree roots (and they have those cool tank benches too, though they are too tall for me). When we got in the water, the basin was pretty green. But it wasn't as yucky as David had described it and had a distinct lack of dead animals floating in the water (he thought it would be worse, from the rain).

The diving was pretty much like the day before, with us doing a dive as usual and then being hit with failures on the way out. It was pretty spooky in there. David estimated the viz at 40 feet. He said the viz there is usually like 100 feet. It was very brown and dark feeling in there (yes, I realize all caves are dark, but this was more mucky feeling). There was also a touch of flow -- enough to notice, but no more than that. We did two dives and managed to not foobar anything up too badly (and remember our flow checks!). We did have one memorable blooper. At about 25 feet, right at the cavern exit, I lost my second post and went on Oleg's long hose. When we got to our 20 foot stop, suddenly I see Rob's reg in my face. He wanted me to switch onto it, because he had more gas. Afterward I told Rob that I was wondering for a moment if that was his reason, or if he just didn't trust Oleg to bring me up on his long hose. Rob was not very pleased when I told him that during the debrief. We finished the day with yet another round of valve and S-drills, right at the cave opening, to get experience with the flow. Rob had to be a showoff and orient himself so he was back kicking against the flow.

After that, we headed to EE for lecture and gas. Before we left Peacock, David asked if we wanted to do another day there before we headed to Devil's to dive in flow. I said I would rather do Peacock. I let it be known that I was terrified of the flow. Doug did the lectures that evening, on dive planning, deco, emergency procedures, blah blah blah. At the end of the lecture, David re-proposed going to Devil's the next day, and said that Rob had said "we" wanted to train in FL to learn to deal with flow (I think Rob botched the communication on that one) and assured us that they would show us how to deal with it, and if we didn't like it, we could go back to Peacock on Friday. Then they left the room and let the team decided. We decided to go to Devil's, since we knew we would have more time in the water on Thursday than on Friday, and wanted a full day to work with high flow. This meant that Doug had to refill the tanks, since we wanted 30/30 (we're so high maintenance). So David used that time to finish up the lectures.

When that was finished, we headed to the Fleetwood Diner for dinner. Because of class nervousness, I had trouble eating normally up to this point in the week, but on Wednesday this reached a tipping point where I was feeling totally hungry and ate a ton of food for dinner plus this adorable little chocolate cream pie that I found at Winn Dixie, and finally felt like I had some energy!

Cave 1: Day 2: Blue Grotto

David decided we should come back to Blue Grotto for day 2, because the recent rain meant that Peacock's viz might be too bad to dive. Rob was worried we were staying at Blue Grotto because we sucked too much to move on (that's so Rob), which David assured us was not the case. In the morning, we went over all of the permutations of valve failures on dry land and then got in the water. We again did valve and S-drills to start and then did more scenarios where we ran line and eventually various failures occurred. This is pretty much what we spent the day doing. We got down to the more cavey area of Blue Grotto which was pretty neat. I felt like a spaz every time we went down the chute thingy to get down there (I really don't like going head down in 104s).

We broke for lunch, switched doubles, and then headed back in for more. At some point during the afternoon, David told me that he had a suggestion but he didn't think I was going to like it (go sit in the corner while the boys finish the class?). He suggested I ditch my gaiters so I could put more gas in my legs to hold them up. I was actually perfectly happy to try this -- when I got my current suit, I suspected I didn't really need the gaiters with it, since it fits so well, but figured why mess with something that works? So I had never tried diving the suit without the gaiters. So I ditched the gaiters for the rest of the class. It took about a dive to get used to it, but in that suit, it was fine without them (though I still maintain that I need them in my pink oompa loompa suit). At the end of the day, we did another no mask swim on the line in touch contact, this time sharing gas. Since I felt like I had totally biffed it yesterday in front, I went in front again, and Rob and Oleg shared gas. I think we did a way better job this time, but we were allowed to keep our eyes open, so I am sure that was a bigger factor than actually improving since the day before :) After packing up, we headed to the Aquatic Center in Gainesville, which is EE's recreational sister store. We did lecture there for several hours. Since lecture ran late, we got to start late (at 9) again the next morning. We stopped at the Texas Roadhouse in Gainesville for dinner. By the time we got to High Springs, it was time for bed.

Cave 1: Day 1: Blue Grotto

We met at Blue Grotto at 9 on Monday morning. We did our introductions and then did some gear review. David randomly asked us questions like "why do we put this on this post?". It's a good thing I sat in on one of Rob's practice lectures on equipment recently, or I totally would have made a fool of myself (and maybe still did). Then we did some line drills on land and practiced following a line in touch contact with our eyes closed. We also each practiced running the primary reel to the fake mainline that was setup. By the time we were finished, it was about time for lunch, so we ate lunch (or for those of us with first-day-of-class jitters, nibbled on a little piece of sandwich) before gearing up and getting in the water. I think Doug was a little worried I wasn't going to make it to the water in the 104s, but I was just pacing myself for a long week of walks to the water :)

Doug and David ran a little course in open water and we practiced all of our kicks around the course, plus back kick and helicopter turn on one of the platforms, while Doug video'd us. It was like fundies all over again! Then we did valve and S-drills and came up to debrief. After that, we did 3 short dives into the overhead, so that we could each get some practice running the reel. During these dives, there were some minor failures in the cavern zone (e.g. lights going out). After that, we practiced line following in touch contact in "zero viz". That was simulated by taking our masks off and flipping them around so the straps covered our eyes. I was mildly terrified of this drill, since I am not a big no-mask fan, even less so when I can't see. Between that and how long we'd been in the water, I figured there was a 50/50 chance I would pee my pants during the dive :) The no-mask thing actually didn't bother me -- I guess there's a big difference between 70 degree freshwater and 50 degree sea water. The drill was, however, a total cluster and took forever. When I felt the reel as we got to the end, I think I yelled "thank god" through my reg.

After a debrief, we cleaned up and headed to the parking lot to watch the video in Doug's van. I was shocked to find that my trim in 104s is actually reasonably good. But David said I extend my legs too far back (which I think is because I feel like I'm about to do a headstand in 104s, but I realize this is probably 90% psychological). After the video debrief, we were done for the night (shocking). We stopped at the BBQ place in Newberry for dinner and then headed back to the country inn. Doug was kind enough to take our empty doubles back to EE and fill them for tomorrow.

Somehow we managed to spend two days at Blue Grotto without getting any pictures -- lame, I know, but talk to the team photogs. So I am reusing this pic from T2 :)

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).

Cave 1: Day -1: Travel

We had a pretty uninteresting journey to Florida. Unlike our T2 trip, we opted for a not-super-early flight -- the whole thing was quite civilized. We had a 2.5 hour layover at DFW, which was just enough time for lunch and a fro-yo cone. We got into JAX just before 10, and found our class buddy Oleg (previously unknown to us) by the luggage carousel with a sign, as promised. We really should have taken a picture of him with his sign, but we were clearly not thinking straight from the long flight. (Oleg's trip was 22 hours, so I don't know if ours actually qualifies as "long"). After retrieving luggage and the van, we headed to High Springs. It was a longer drive than I remembered. We got to the Country Inn around midnight, but I wasn't that tired due to the time change. I finally managed to get to sleep after 1.

The trip definitely wasn't quite as much of an epic journey as the trip to Florida for T2 was. I guess it's because it was just the two of us, whereas traveling with all of Team Kitty was just more of an adventure. It was like the pilgrimage to Mecca. Plus since we had a really early flight for T2, Kevin stayed over at our house the night before so it was like a slumber party! This travel day was also not nearly as well documented from a photographic standpoint as our T2 travel, hence the lack of pictures :P

The Great Kitty Cave Adventure

After a couple of years of talking about and putting off taking a cave class, Rob and I finally decided to do it. We decided to do it fairly last minute -- I think we actually put the plan in motion in late January. Part of the deal was that there wasn't going to be practice and preparation for the class. I told Rob that after taking T2 fairly recently, if I couldn't make it through a C1 class, then I must be so stressed out by the cave environment that I wasn't meant to be a cave diver. So I just wanted to do some easy dives in the month beforehand, so I felt confident going into the class, and that would be that. Rob wasn't that good with sticking to the plan though, so he insisted on running line for practice on a few dives. But other than that, I think we maybe did one valve drill each, plus a session in the Wallins pool to figure out our freshwater weighting (in the dreaded 104s). But I would say the most important preparation of all was sticking to the Ted-training regimen, especially given that we were diving the beasts.

We decided to do the class in Florida for a couple of reasons. First, because I wanted to take the class with David Rhea. (You know, for every class you take from David, you get a stamp in your David Rhea fanclub book, and when you collect all of the stamps, you can send it in for an action figure.) Second, going to Florida just didn't seem like as big of an ordeal as going to Mexico. I am, as Rob likes to say, an extreme visualizer. It's easier for me to sign on to a class in a place I know with people I know. Rob also had some desires to take the class in Florida so he could learn to dive in flow. He wanted to dive in both Florida and Mexico after class, so he thought that training in Florida and then diving in MX would be an easier transition than the other way around. Personally, I didn't really see it this way -- I was willing to take the class in FL despite the flow, not because of it. There was much pre-class whining ("what if the flow is so scary I never want to dive in caves again?") on this matter, and also the matter of diving 104s for a week. There was some initial whimpering about whether I could dive other tanks, but in the end I decided to just suck it up.

And so, without further ado, the class/trip report. I'm going to do it day by day (since I'm sure Blogger has some sort of per-post length limit that I would no doubt exceed if I tried to put it all in one post). As a disclaimer, Rob apparently no longer approves of posting class reports on the web. I think he's nutty, and I would be a traitor to the cause if I didn't.

Day -1: Travel
Day 0: Shakeout Dive
Day 1: Blue Grotto
Day 2: Blue Grotto
Day 3: Peacock Springs
Day 4: Ginnie Springs
Day 5: Ginnie Springs
Post class day 1: Peacock Springs
Post class day 2: Ginnie Springs
Class summary

Most of the pictures in the report were taken by our teammate, Oleg Butov. I am too lazy to go through and label each picture (Blogger really doesn't make that easy, or if they do, I haven't figured out how :P). So if a picture is good, you can assume it was take by Oleg. There are a few iPhone-quality pics taken by Rob or me. Rob put up a gallery of more pictures from there class here.