Mostly About Diving (but about the weekend, too!)

3-8-09 This week was action-packed. I say that rather literally. I went back to school on Tuesday, but still wasn't feeling incredibly up to par. Wednesday dawned, and I did feel better. I also ended up in the lagoon, trying to make up my Underwater Navigation dive. I'm still a bit shaky on the usage of my compass, but I do have a little confidence in my counting of kick cycles. Thursday was even better. We had two dives planned--the first to a plane (or what's left of it) in the lagoon, and then a dive for about an hour later, after the sun had set.

Yes, I did just say after the sun set. Part of the advanced dive course is at least one dive at night, and our night dive was on Thursday night, after we had swapped our almost-empty tanks for freshly filled ones and munched on a roll or two while the sea-breeze blew and chilled us. I was equipped with my normal gear, plus a heavy-duty flashlight. Oh, that is one sweet flashlight! Hideo told me that he has been using it on the same battery for three months already, and the beam is still very bright. We suited up and stood on the beach, waiting for everyone to arrive so that we could get into the water, go down, and have a look around.

Being underwater at night is entirely different than being underwater in the day. It is both terrifying and thrilling (and I would not have missed it for anything!). We had our lights on and went down about twenty feet so we could look for fish and see the coral. The coral opens up at night to feed, so it's nothing like the hard branches we see during the day, but rather the polyps are like little fingers raking food out of the water. If I had turned my light off, I would have been in utter dark. Inky pitch-black dark, the sort of dark where you can't see your hand in front of your face. It's rather disorienting because a diver cannot use the sea floor as a guide to depth, and can never be quite sure where their hands, feet, and fins are. Happily, bubbles provide an up and a down. As it was, the lights only illuminated so much. We swam. I made sure to keep close to the group because I wanted to (and we were supposed to try to, anyway). I saw a fish that looked quite similar to Gil from the movie Finding Nemo (except that he was a good deal larger than my hand (or so it seemed). Some of my fellow divers saw a shark, but I didn't. Before we had gotten into the water, I had not wanted to encounter any sharks (it did not help that Lorraine was humming the theme from "Jaws"), but as we were diving, I realized that I really did want to see a shark (and still hope to see one before May).

Friday Emily and I had vespers. She arranged the song service (and got Jordan to play guitar), and I spoke. I've been reading 1st and 2nd Kings for my personal devotion, and I was really struck by some of my thoughts that I had concerning Ahab, king of Israel. Despite God trying to reach him through prophets and warnings, Ahab decided to be focused on the negative and to be "sullen and displeased." (The NKJV states that exact phrase at least twice!) To get his mind off of what God's men had said, he decided that he wanted to make a vegetable garden, and, for convenience, he wanted it right where Naboth's vineyard was. Naboth was completely within his rights to refuse the king's request that he give the king his vineyard, but Ahab goes home and sulks about the fact that Naboth would not give up the vineyard. Jezebel saunters in, tells him that he's the king and should be cheerful, and promptly goes out and arranges things so that he can have Naboth's vineyard. My point was that sometimes we humans decide to not deal with our issues directly and try to divert our attentions elsewhere (and sometimes those diversions are thwarted, because God wants to draw us closer to Him). I told my own story about having to choose between keeping Sabbath or going to a band contest, and ending up challenging people to listen to what God says and to draw closer to Him. Then we closed with a song and prayer and went our merry ways.

Jordan and I (though I must admit that it was mostly Jordan this week) planned for our AY program. We hit upon the idea of seeing how well people at the program knew each other, and so we had this list of random things and had pairs of people try to guess what the other person's favorite this or that were--and were not surprised when most people failed at even some of the most basic things. Then we doled out Scripture verses and had people read them and report on what the verses were about (and they were all about how God knows everything about us). Our challenge was that, even though God knows us so very, very well, we don't know Him as well as He would like. To get to know Him better, there are a few options: Bible study, prayer, nature, learning about Him from other people. The challenge was that we should try and get to know Him because of how well He knows and loves us.

Today (Sunday), we again went diving. This time we went diving at Shell Island. We geared up at Hideo's and went to Shell and went diving. Although, it was not nearly as simple as that may seem. First, Landen, Megan, and I were the first three into the water, and when Hideo got in, we followed him out to where we were supposed to be. Then we discovered that Lorraine and Emily F. were still near the shore. Hideo headed back towards shore and told us to wait there. That would not have been difficult except that it was high tide and the waves were decently sized and smacking us in the head repeatedly. I was glad for my snorkel and mask. Finally, he got back out there, and we went under. I descended pretty well. My ears equalized decently, although once or twice I had to kick furiously to stay at the depth I was in order to get my ears to clear, but I finally made it down to 110 feet. We swam around and through the same wreck we had been to before (the time we went diving with Pastor Rich), and then Hideo showed up and it was time to head up toward the shore.

This is the part where it got very interesting. I had been keeping an eye on Emily F. and Lorraine (since at one time or another they were both my buddies), but also kept close to Megan and Landen. However, Emily and Lorraine were together, so I kept close to Hideo and began swimming uphill. We had reached about sixty feet when Hideo asked where Emily and Lorraine were. I looked around and then shrugged. They were together and being buddies, so all was good, right? I looked back toward the ship and saw two shadows emerging from the blue gloom and pointed. Hideo turned and went to them. I noticed that Emily was pulling Lorraine along, and that Lorraine was holding her snorkel in her hand as if it were the Olympic torch or something. The second thing I noticed was that Emily was having to share air with Hideo, and upon wondering why, I realized it was because she had been underwater longer than we were. We swam and swam, and I kept looking back to see where everybody was. The current must have taken me slightly off course, because the others disappeared. I had to surface and look around. Upon seeing them, I re-descended and met up with them. Soon I was at the point where I had to switch from tank air to my snorkel because my tank was getting low.

Once we were back on land, I got the whole story about why Emily and Lorraine had been so far behind the rest of us. There is something that is a potential hazard of diving to depths of 80 plus feet, called nitrogen narcosis. To put it in the simplest terms I can, a diver's brain gets loopy off of the nitrogen they've been breathing under pressure. It can happen to anyone and can be affected by multiple factors like weight, age, experience, current fatigue, wrong breathing, and physical fitness. Scientists still don't truly know why it happens (so says my dive textbook). Divers call it "getting narked." It doesn't (to my understanding; it's what the book said) do permanent damage, but the reason why it's dangerous is because it can impair decision-making, ability to recognize and respond to danger, create undue anxiety (or euphoria) and end up with a diver doing things that they shouldn't. Therefore, it's dangerous not because it damages one's brain, but because it impairs it and could lead to mistakes with permanent consequences.

Well, Emily was running low on air because she had been down longer than the rest of us, and when she buddied up with Lorraine, she informed her of her low air, like buddies are supposed to. Lorraine just hung there in the water. Emily had to get her attention, ended up pulling off her snorkel (that's why Lorraine was holding it like the Olympic torch), and had to drag Lorraine toward the rest of us. She had to share air with Hideo because she was below 500 PSI. Lorraine explained that she had been totally fine when she suddenly was light-headed and couldn't decide where she wanted to go. The thought of sharing air with Emily never even entered her head, even though her alternative source of air was right where it was supposed to be. She just wanted to lay on the sand right there at sixty feet and chill, but decided against it and kneeled instead. (Still not a good thing, by the way.) She said her head did clear once we ascended far enough (ascension's the only "cure" for getting narked) and then felt really stupid, even though it could happen to any of us. (She is completely fine now, by the way. She wanted me [since I said that I was going to write about it and she was okay with that] to tell everyone who would be worried about her that she's okay now.

Now we're gearing up for third quarter final exams. I got my third box and it was very nice to get. Yay for new flip-flops! It's hard to believe that it's almost the end of the THIRD quarter, and that there is only one quarter left until I head back to Michigan City (and then to camp!). More later.