The classroom training was informative and taught by a long time drysuit diver who has flooded his suit countless times for various failures and reasons. I learned quite a bit there. The next class was all pool work.
The pool temp at the dive shop is 88 degrees, so we didn't wear our "undies" under the suits. I had on a pair of zubas sports pants and a long sleeve tee shirt. We started out doing the "air in, air out" exercise and then went on to learning to recover from an overinflated condition. This was kind of neat, dive to the bottom of the pool, grasp the 40 lbs of weight there and the instructor starts inflating your suit. When your feet and legs get really big, he taps you on the shoulder, and you do a summersault and get your feet under you and get the air off before reaching the surface 16 feet above. Each time we tried it, he added some more air, until you tried to blow off a fin or two.
There were four in the class, and two of the guys were in 'borrowed' suits that didn't fit all that well. One of the guys was having a terrible time with the venting drill. Would find himself on the surface with fat feet and legs, thrashing around. Finally someone noticed that his weight belt was cinched up so tight that the air couldn't move to his upper body. We loosened his belt a little bit and he was fine. At the end, I put my fuzzy suit on and tried it for weight in the pool. Looked like I needed 20+ lbs to get down without my knife or light.
Having completed the training, I decided to get in some real time in the water before the checkout dive. So I called up my buddy and he and I met at Lake Fenton, south of Flint, on Saturday afternoon. We suited up and walked into 41 degree water. At first, I couldn't get below the surface, not enought weight on the belt. So I walked up to the truck and put another 5 pounds on. That took care of that. We dove the Diveshops 'training ground' with several sunken boats, connected by lines. Visability was about 20-25' except where I was stirring up the mud when I fooled around with my bouyancy. Saw a sunken pontoon boat that they use as a training platform, two sunken powerboats and a MINE CAR of all things. Max depth was about 36' and average temp was below 40 degrees. My hands (in 5mm Wetsuit gloves) began to get a bit cold. Near the end of the first dive, as we started up the incline into shallower water, I made a mistake and didn't vent air soon enough! Found my feet getting light, so I did a backwards summersault to get my fins below me, and started venting my suit. But added to the air in my wing, I was headed for the surface 12' above. I was low on air, so I just went ahead and surfaced. Dave came up a minute later and check on me and we did a surface swim to the shore. The second dive went better. Same temps and a bottom time of around 36 minutes. By the end of it, my hands were getting really cold (dry gloves are now on the list!) but I'm a little more aware of the suit, used less air in it from the beginning and we swam the incline to about 3' and just stood up and waded to the surface.
Two good dives. Drysuit and my new backplate/wing arrangement are both working well. Openwater checkout on the drysuit is supposed to be this weekend on Sunday....
and to get my drysuit training out of the way. Well, FINALLY, the training starts tonight! I should be making my first openwater dive in my new Viking Xtreme Drysuit (many thanks Bob3!) on Saturday after classroom and pool training tonight and Friday night. 
