I'm back in town on Monday, Matt. Would be happy to hook up with ya and let you check it out.
Today was just one long dive. We took one AL80 stage and our 95's for back gas, plus an O2 bottle ... so adding some tanks increased the complexity just a bit. I found myself breathing a bit harder than normal, and we ended up dropping the stages just about 50 feet short of the first T (more like a Y to my concern). We kicked to about the 1900 foot mark, then took a jump off into this narrow, but steep canyon. First time I've ever seen a pink jump line, but it was easy to notice. The canyon is very cool ... sometimes just about as wide as me and my cylinders, but dropping down through what looks almost like layers of openings ... hard to tell where the bottom was, actually. I loved the sections where we had to go head down and turn sideways to get through the opening ... it was just neat.
We dropped the cookie about 2200 feet in, and headed back out. Once back on the mainline, Rob signaled for me to head back up the mainline. I still hadn't reached turn pressure yet, so why not. We went maybe 100 feet or so and he showed me the memorial to Richard Mork. After that we turned and headed out.
Picking up my stage, I forgot to turn it on ... put the reg in my mouth and got nothing. So I switched back to my right side reg till I could sort it out, pushed the purge button, and created an interesting freeflow. Well, now I know I can shut down a post during a real freeflow without any issue. Waited a few seconds, turned it back on, and it worked fine. Hmmmm ... gotta pull the cover off that reg in the morning and see if there's sand in there or something (duckweed, perhaps?). The rest of the dive was uneventful.
I'm still struggling a bit with buoyancy, and tend to find myself boinking the ceiling every once in a while without really comprehending why it's happeninig ... but as I get more dives and familiarity I'm sure I'll get it figured out.
Our dive today was 27 seconds shy of 100 minutes ... I just couldn't bring myself to "dog" it till the clock flipped.
Tomorrow we complete the circuit ... I'm really looking forward to getting more practice with the stage.
After the dive I was telling Rob that the next time I hear somebody saying that OW folks like me are learning sidemount for the "cool factor" I'm gonna point out that diving sidemount really IS cool ... so what's their point? This whole experience has been a huge amount of fun ... and ain't having fun the whole point of diving? I'm anticipating a whole new level of "fun" once I get back home and the dryglove rings go back on my suit ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)