Shannon and I took Scuba lessons over the weekend.
Saturday was all book work which we had studied for all week. Out of the class, we were the most prepared even though we hadn’t done any of the eRDP stuff. Turned out that that was way easier than we thought it would be and knocked it out in the half hour before class started. The rest of everyone had to go over that stuff anyway, so we ended up being way ahead. So we got done about 3pm instead of 4… rock on 
I ended up with 100% on 3 of the quizzes, 80% on one, and then missed 3 on the final. The final questions I missed were dumb.. I knew the answers and totally marked the wrong thing or misread the question… dumb mistakes.
Sunday was doing all of the 5 confined water dives at the Blue Springs pool from 8am to noon. That was the real fun.
It started with 8 laps up and down the pool with mask, snorkel and fins. It had been a long time since I went snorkeling so the whole breathing and putting your face in the water thing was a little crazy. I’m not sure I’ve ever used fins before and so that was a little weird.. but I got more and more used to it. We ended up doing 10 laps instead of 8 because another guy said 12 so we just split the difference. I used my arms during this time.. putting them below me in a V and then shooting them out like a torpedo in front of me and then pulling back and that shot me forward, but turns out that you aren’t supposed to used your hands at all.. so my arms were sore as hell unnecessarily.. oh well
Then we tread water / floated for 10 minutes.. that was much easier than I though it would be… it was over before I knew it.
Then we donned our Scuba gear and got to it. It was really easy to breathe out of the regulator… much easier than I thought it would be. Of all the tests, it was pretty freaky to remove that from my mouth, but the rest was ok.. well .. after I got used to it.
The initial problem I had was kinda two things… one was sitting on my knees.. even weightless underwater I still had trouble… I just kept creeping forward or couldn’t sit still or whatever.. and that made me kinda freak out and breathe harder, which made me really uncomfortable… this was fixed by sitting on my fins and kinda laying straight horizontal in the water and “holding myself up” with my hands.
The second was that I kept blowing bubbles under my mask, which hit my nose, which is almost totally CO2.. so that would make me feel like I couldn’t breathe. Problem there was I was exhaling too much… basically hyperventilating… which, with the kneeling thing was making it worse cuz I was freaking out… but I got it fixed by the end… breathing IN slow I got, but had to do the same out too.
So by the end I was pretty good.. pretty comfortable with everything. I need more practice of course… more maneuvering under water, but I think the biggest thing.. the being able to breathe underwater part I got down.
Talking with Jon today, we didn’t do the scariest thing.. buddy breathing. You take 2 breaths and I take 2 breaths from the same 2nd stage. I dunno if that is by design or what. They did say that’s the 4th of 5 options in emergency no air ascent situations, so maybe they just leave it out now.
Case in point, Jon had to use the spare 2nd stage on Dad’s equipment in Belize… not buddy breathing.. Jon ran out of air at depth.. and then they ascended too fast… big rick of DCS, but they were ok… Dad didn’t get it until later on another dive.
Anyway.. some scary shit can happen .. but a lot of it is in your head.. and you are your own worst enemy.. the rest is pretty easy .. I totally love it.