7/16/2006 - Everything at once
My life seems to exist in extremes - or maybe that's just my youth kicking in and adding that extra touch of melodrama to all those ohsoimportant events in my life.
As an instructor who's pretty anal about details [Mask off forehead, no tanks standing, dust-caps off means death and, worst of all, pushing that inflate button for an ascent is an INSTANT bad move!], I have to pay close attention to all my own diving practices, attitudes and skills to make sure that I'm not being hypocritical when I send my withering glares at my divemasters, or tell my students off because I catch their regs without dustcaps on.
Still, I can't be perfect everyday [as much as I might try and believe myself to be] and this weekend is an absolutely CLASSIC example of me being totally un-perfect.
I've been using the same mask, fins & snorkel set for the last three years, and I've had absolutely NO problems with them. They've withstood an absolute bashing [a couple of hundred dives a year, and I'm not the best at really looking after them as well as I should] and they've never, ever failed me.
It stands to reason then that it's about time I changed all the straps and appropriate clips and valves, right? Right. Apparently the gear thinks so too...
Let me start at the beginning. I'm at the pool on Saturday afternoon running a rescue session for several students. The students in this class are a pretty mixed bag - most of them I know very well because I trained them from OW and up, and two I'd never met before in my life. One student in particular is one of those people everyone either hates or adores. Most people, unfortuantely, don't particularly take to this gentleman's personality because is rude and crude and obnoxious, but at the same time his heart is in the right place so I can't help but like him anyway [even if he DOES drive me insane, but that's another story]. He's one of those people that always has to be the best, always has to be right and always knows more than you do, even though you're the instructor in the situation.
Given the picture I've just painted, about my own anal tendencies and the fact that these students know me pretty well it's very important that I do everything right when I teach them [just to clarify here, it doesn't mean when I teach unknowns I don't have the emphasis on doing things right, but it does mean that if I don't do things right with these guys they will severely mock me forever and forever and they really don't need anymore ammunition with which to mock me. Really. I'm blond, that should say it all!].
First thing that goes wrong, as I'm in the pool saying "Oh good, so we've sorted out all the gear hassles and we can start the course now" my O-ring blows. In reality this can happen to anyone, but I'd heard my O-ring make a sound when I put my gear together initially, and decided to ignore it when the noise didn't appear to be a continuing concern.
BANG! In the public pool (enclosed building which echoes and echoes) my O-ring went off like a rocket. All my students (budding rescue divers that they are) just stared at me, and some even backed away in a hurry! In the meantime I'm frantically trying to turn the damn valve off but of course I had to be gallant at the start of the lesson and swap tanks with a student who's tankvalve was acting up a little, and turning off that valve was NOT easy.
Anyway, I finally got the valve shut, got the gear off and hauled it out of the pool to where my spares box... wait a minute, where's my spares box?
Yes, that holy of holy box of spares with which I never part company was apparently still sitting on my dining room table where I'd put it when I needed some cable ties.
Brilliant.
WAIT! Being the uber-cool and professional instructor that I am, I just happen to have a small little tank key ring which, you guessed it, holds tank O-rings! [May I just say here and now, God bless Apollo Australia and the genius who designed this little gem. It truly is a lifesaver!].
However, occassionally you get these stubborn O-rings that just refuse to be dislodged from the tankvalve, even though they've blown. I tried blowing it again (no good, couldn't get enough of a seal to raise the pressure). I tried my carkeys (BAD for the tankvalve). I tried a bobby-pin a student scavenged from the bottom of our public pool.
In the end, there was a lady at the other end of the pool doing embroidery who consented to lend me her sewing needle as long as I didn't break it.
SUCCESS!! This entire issue with one stupid little O-ring took almost twenty minutes.
So where, I hear you all asking, if you're so cool, was your spare tank?
I did have a spare tank, but one of my brilliant students forgot to get his filled so he didn't bother bringing it along, knowing that I'd have a spare handy.
Can you tell I was having a good weekend? I haven't even told you about this lots theory sessions, and they were just as full of fun and excitement as this pool session turned out to be!
Anyway, we finally got my gear sorted and ready to get back into the pool, when the next disaster struck. My faithful mask which has seen me through three long seasons of intense diving, finally failed me. Well, I kinda failed it. I'd known for a while the strap was starting to perish but I never actually believed it would happen to me, you know?
But it did. The giant-stride was apparently too much for it and it just snapped. Not good. And of course, as already established, the one day I didn't have my spares kit, or a DM who carried a spare dive shop in his truck, the strap breaks.
Thankfully this hassle was quite quickly solved - this local pool is quite active with "Underwater Hockey" and have a few club masks on premesis - one of which I ended up borrowing.
So. Try again.
I managed to get into the water and inflate my BC without anymore dramas, followed closely by going through a few exercises. Havnig these hassle-free exercises felt pretty good in my book - the students were definitely keen to learn and put everything into learning it thoroughly. It's love to have that sort of attitude when you're teaching.
Anyway, back to the drama.
Apparently those exercises weren't as drama-free as I'd thought they were. Sometime during the course of rescuing panicked divers and being a paniced diver, the clip-and-tie system I used for my dive slates must have gotten snagged on something and it broke. For those of you not familiar with the PADI Rescue Diver course instructor slates, there are LOT of them. Really. And by the time I realised my slates were missing they were all over the pool, especially given it's a public pool and you the annoying 7-20year old age group of boys who keep hassling you because "YOU'RE SCUBA DIVING, AREN'T YOU?" These boys had seen my slates falling, and turned it into a game apparently to collect as many as possible while annoying us, and trying to ignore them as much as possible and only really playing around on the surface, none of us noticed what they were doing.
It was a HUGE dilemma trying to locate all those slates!
And then, once I'd finally rounded them all up I discovered had another problem - how was I going to keep them all together and use them for the rest of the course without my handyspares kit to fix the problem?
I hadn't even solved this problem yet when I discovered the next bit of equipment failure - the same clip-and-tie system I used on my quick release for my occy had also gotten caught somewhere and snapped in a similar manner. While this was bad news for my 'streamline and dangle-free appearance' it was good news for my slates - I managed to salvage a very awkward and not very practical method of clipping a few slates to me at a time. The occy I finally just jammed into a D-ring.
By now I was feeling fairly frazzled - stupid delays, annoying public pool users, gear failures that I probably could have prevented if I wasn't quite so blase about them and the fact that it was getting very late and I'd had a woeful morning. Quite pathetic whining, really, but I wasn't having a good day. Poor baby, you're all saying? Bah to you too - a good dose of self-pity is lovely every now and then, and does wonders for the soul.
So the last failure of the day happened at the end - thank God! We'd pretty much finished off the first session for the rescue course when suddenly one foot felt strangely light.
Somehow my fin strap broke. It just broke. While I was bobbing around on the surface. And I promise you, I'll concede to ignoring the perishing of my mask strap, but at least I'd noticed it. I examined my fin straps quite often because I KNOW they're getting old and I KNOW they're under stress given how I just yank them on and off, and I never ever ever saw any sign of tearing or perish. Yet, it just snapped. Bang.
Thankfully this wasn't too big a deal given it was the end of the session and it didn't really matter, but it still doesn't look good for an instructor to have so many gear problems in one day, does it?
Still, I guess some days things just go wrong, and given I'm sitting nice and warm and dry in front of my computer at the moment I can actually laugh about it and shake my head in resignation at the day I've just had. My DM friends certainly enjoyed hearing about it, and while I know they'll tease me for a while (good naturedly) about being blond enough to leave my spares kit at home today of all days, the day itself wasn't too bad. In the future when I continue with these soon-to-be rescue divers (once they finish their course) and when we dive together as buddies or friends, we'll always have something to look back at and laugh about.
"Do you remember that day when you were doing our rescue course and everything just went wrong? That was classic!"
And me, what have I learnt from this?
My spares kit will now have sewing needle added to it (probably with some thread because that's just downright useful), and I will make SURE that I DON'T leave the kit behind again. I'll also make sure I don't just put off changing straps thinking "It's okay, I've got spares in my spares kit (which I do) because inevitably I won't have the spares kit with me when they need changing."
And also - most people are scared shitless when an O-ring blows with an almighty bang and a fountain of water on the surface. Next time I will endeavor to have an underwater handycam with me and film their reactions because that will more than make up for the flak I'm receiving for this weekend!!!
Ps - in case anyone was wondering, I use Apollo Biofins (XT version - will get spring straps SOON!!), an Apollo Medusa mask (only a cheapie with a huge profile and not a huge field of vision but it's my mask, damn it!) and some cheapass snorkel I don't even remember the brand of! The biofins in particular are bulletproof - they still look very new even after all this time! Am very, very impressed with them, and the added stiffness of the XT means I feel like I'm finning and I still have that initial thrust you get with the solid fins).
PPS - I apologise for any spelling/grammatical errors but it's been a VERY long weekend (pretty much in the same vein as this pool session I've outlined) and I'm headed STRAIGHT to bed! Night all!
| 
