SCUBA Training

One of the things I wanted to do for a long time is to go SCUBA diving, so I
decided that now it was time for it. From home I did a little research and found
that there was a dive center that is in between the two locations I am camping at
in the keys. So I enrolled in the open water certification class at Tilden Dive
Center in Marathon Florida, uppon registration they gave me a kit including a
book to study, so I got down to it and passed 2 days studying. Then we got to the
pool part of the program and I got to meet my instructor, his name is Hayes and I
am is only student so I get one on one instruction, He's a great instructor
always ready with a tip and a pep talk when needed. The theory part of the
program goes as well as it can go. In my case the hard part is the physical
portion first I need to swim 50m under water without equipement it took me 3
tries, then 200m on the surface any style you want, good thing the people around
the pool don't have those scorecards like at the olympics, when I finished this
portion I was so dizzy I had to sit in the stairs of the pool for 10 minutes to
regain my balance. The third part was the deadman float for 10 minutes, for some
reason this exercise was unsetling for me. Today I went for my first ocean dive,
so I got up at 6h00 and drove one hour to the dive center and had a good
breakfast buritos and coffee at McDonald. When we got to the dive site it was
quite an agiteted sea at least for my comfort zone I felt a little nauseaus. I
got my gear on and took the step into the ocean, we dove got buyant with some
difficulty and did a few excercises before the nausea started again. As the need
to vomit came uppon me I was confronted with a problem that I did not know the
answer for, so I managed to resist the urge to barf and signaled my instructor
that I had to surface good thing that he held me down on the ascent because I was
going up a bit fast since that to ad insult to injury my weight belt was falling
off and I had to hold it with one hand. Leaning on the side of the boat the
fishes below were in a frenzy as I was serving them a Hot McDonald Breakfast.
So on that whole trip my total divetime was 9 minutes and I spent the remainder
of the trip between the side of the boat and lying down. Tomorow was supposed to
be my next trip but I just got a call that the ocean will be even rougher tomorow
and that we are going to try for wednesday instead.