ScubaInChicago
Contributor
So it’s been two weeks since I took my Cave 1 class and I have to say that a not a single day has passed that I haven’t thought about Cavvvzzzz. So here’s a trip down memory lane.
I wanted to take this class for over THREE years. I’ve brought it up to some local GUE-F/T1 dive buddies who always said yes in the past, but either lacked the funds or the time for the class. This year was going to be different, kinda. I started the year asking one of my normal buddies if he “wanted” to take the class which received a prompt “YES”. I put the feelers out there and asked JP Bresser about his vacancies in a dual class with Jarrod. It took a few months to get a solid answer back that we could be accommodated. I went back to my buddy to confirm now that the window was open and guess what, “No Money”, lol.
So back to square one and not sure how I liked the idea of a dual class, I asked Jarrod if there was room to be the third wheel in one of his classes scheduled in October. Jarrod double checked with the two people who would be my teammates to see if they had a third, and I was it. Yeah…
It was now June and I knew I needed to be on my “A” game in front of Mr. GUE himself. I started by letting my friends know my intentions so they could hopefully tell me my trim sucked. We practiced a couple of valve drills here and there. And my favorite, surprise OOG drills while your buddy is using the P-Valve.
September rolls around sooner than I thought, and I hadn’t practiced the dreaded swim test. Time to put the pool privileges to use at the gym and good thing I did, I was worse off than I thought. I planned on doing laps every other day till I could meet the required 400yrd/375m swim in 14 min or less, then up it to the Cave 2 standard which I heard the swim test gets stretched to. Three weeks of swimming and YouTube tips paid off. The breath hold followed in about the same fashion.
A few days before the Sunday start of the class, I departed Chicago with the dive buddy who baled on me earlier in the year. He’s taking a Cavern/Intro class with another agency to save some money. No worries, gives me someone to compare notes with and see what the price difference offers. We stopped off at Gilboa Quarry in Ohio 5 hours away to drop in on a Meet & Greet. We did a night dive and meet up with old friends and a few new ones. Life is good….
We left later that night and drove 15 hours straight through to High Springs where we stayed at Chateau H20 which is a three bedroom house sitting on 10 acres owned by a cave diver and rented to cave divers. It was 10-12 minutes away from EE and 5 from Gennie Springs. The place was awesome and the price was very reasonable at $75 a night.
Day 1: We meet for some formalities, like waivers, and more waivers. We introduce ourselves, and of course, my teammates are already Full Cave from another agency by a well-known cave instructor. Oh, and they’re Tri-mix certified. I introduce myself as a lowly T/1 diver with no cave experience other than some MX caverns (i.e. part of the cave). Then viewed some slides, played on the outdoor line course (in trim of course), and reviewed the itinerary of the days to come.
Day 2: Fundies revisited. The dreaded camera returns.
Day 3: Line work, air sharing, no mask, etc….
Day 4: Line work, lost buddy, air sharing, failures, etc….
Day 5: Ginnie Springs…and HOW NOT TO exit a cave while Jarrod is watching. This was my doing, so I’ll lay it out there. I thought I would aim to put myself in the armchair position, you know, since my teammates have been in Gennie and know how to run a reel. Mmmhhmm, that worked well going in, but somehow the team did not get rearranged on the way out. I tried to peak around the exit to figure my route, mistake #1. I couldn’t make out the whole path so I poked around a bit more just to have my fins caught by the flow and try to spit me out. I immediately grabbed onto a rock as my feet were inverted and hanging upside down. I felt Jarrod grab my leg as my mask was flooding. I didn’t know what Jarrod was doing when he immediately let go of my leg since I couldn’t see. I did a mask clear by breaking the seal as I’ve done a hundred times to clear my mask, mistake #2. NO, it’s not like you’ve done a hundred times before (you’re upside down stupid). A quick realization and I break the seal from my forehead and exhale. The second I did this I see Jarrod’s Halo regulator with the BIG BLUE H in my face with an OK sign. Umm, sure, I’m OK. I crawled back around as my teammate gestured to watch them exit. All is well…Oh, and some lost line, failed light, lost buddy stuff.
Day 6: More of the same, then the last dive. I ask if I can run the real since I am the rookie of the bunch. Jarrod asks what we think we should work on…Lost buddy, lost line, air sharing, with no lights, and no mask sounded like the logical answer. I started the dive, primary, secondary, tie offs/placements and about the do 90* to the gold line when I saw a bolt snap, SCORE, “clip”. Wouldn’t you know, this was supposed to be a fun dive and I didn’t get to work on the lost buddy, lost line, air sharing, with no lights, and no mask, WTF? Dive is over and time to clip off the light, but where’s the clip….Ahhh, what was that, “score!”
Cutting to the chase, I passed. My days consisted of leaving before my buddy woke up and returning long after his class ended. Most of the basics were covered, not necessarily as in depth but more than enough that I did a few dives with him afterwards. My teammates told me they learned a lot in the class and claimed they had gone through Full Cave without ever doing a valve drill, CRIMINAL.
While the class was going on, a couple of GUE Toronto guys drove down and invited me to do a little dive to Olsen Sink in the Peacock system. What a blast, 1800’ there and back without a single failure, imagine that. Throughout my class, I ran into some awesome friends from the boards and got to put faces to a lot new people. The GUE community has been great to me and one of the things I value more than the great training.
Thank you GUE family, see you in T/2,C/2…
(Thanks to all my non-GUE friends too
)
Dan
I wanted to take this class for over THREE years. I’ve brought it up to some local GUE-F/T1 dive buddies who always said yes in the past, but either lacked the funds or the time for the class. This year was going to be different, kinda. I started the year asking one of my normal buddies if he “wanted” to take the class which received a prompt “YES”. I put the feelers out there and asked JP Bresser about his vacancies in a dual class with Jarrod. It took a few months to get a solid answer back that we could be accommodated. I went back to my buddy to confirm now that the window was open and guess what, “No Money”, lol.
So back to square one and not sure how I liked the idea of a dual class, I asked Jarrod if there was room to be the third wheel in one of his classes scheduled in October. Jarrod double checked with the two people who would be my teammates to see if they had a third, and I was it. Yeah…
It was now June and I knew I needed to be on my “A” game in front of Mr. GUE himself. I started by letting my friends know my intentions so they could hopefully tell me my trim sucked. We practiced a couple of valve drills here and there. And my favorite, surprise OOG drills while your buddy is using the P-Valve.
September rolls around sooner than I thought, and I hadn’t practiced the dreaded swim test. Time to put the pool privileges to use at the gym and good thing I did, I was worse off than I thought. I planned on doing laps every other day till I could meet the required 400yrd/375m swim in 14 min or less, then up it to the Cave 2 standard which I heard the swim test gets stretched to. Three weeks of swimming and YouTube tips paid off. The breath hold followed in about the same fashion.
A few days before the Sunday start of the class, I departed Chicago with the dive buddy who baled on me earlier in the year. He’s taking a Cavern/Intro class with another agency to save some money. No worries, gives me someone to compare notes with and see what the price difference offers. We stopped off at Gilboa Quarry in Ohio 5 hours away to drop in on a Meet & Greet. We did a night dive and meet up with old friends and a few new ones. Life is good….
We left later that night and drove 15 hours straight through to High Springs where we stayed at Chateau H20 which is a three bedroom house sitting on 10 acres owned by a cave diver and rented to cave divers. It was 10-12 minutes away from EE and 5 from Gennie Springs. The place was awesome and the price was very reasonable at $75 a night.
Day 1: We meet for some formalities, like waivers, and more waivers. We introduce ourselves, and of course, my teammates are already Full Cave from another agency by a well-known cave instructor. Oh, and they’re Tri-mix certified. I introduce myself as a lowly T/1 diver with no cave experience other than some MX caverns (i.e. part of the cave). Then viewed some slides, played on the outdoor line course (in trim of course), and reviewed the itinerary of the days to come.
Day 2: Fundies revisited. The dreaded camera returns.
Day 3: Line work, air sharing, no mask, etc….
Day 4: Line work, lost buddy, air sharing, failures, etc….
Day 5: Ginnie Springs…and HOW NOT TO exit a cave while Jarrod is watching. This was my doing, so I’ll lay it out there. I thought I would aim to put myself in the armchair position, you know, since my teammates have been in Gennie and know how to run a reel. Mmmhhmm, that worked well going in, but somehow the team did not get rearranged on the way out. I tried to peak around the exit to figure my route, mistake #1. I couldn’t make out the whole path so I poked around a bit more just to have my fins caught by the flow and try to spit me out. I immediately grabbed onto a rock as my feet were inverted and hanging upside down. I felt Jarrod grab my leg as my mask was flooding. I didn’t know what Jarrod was doing when he immediately let go of my leg since I couldn’t see. I did a mask clear by breaking the seal as I’ve done a hundred times to clear my mask, mistake #2. NO, it’s not like you’ve done a hundred times before (you’re upside down stupid). A quick realization and I break the seal from my forehead and exhale. The second I did this I see Jarrod’s Halo regulator with the BIG BLUE H in my face with an OK sign. Umm, sure, I’m OK. I crawled back around as my teammate gestured to watch them exit. All is well…Oh, and some lost line, failed light, lost buddy stuff.
Day 6: More of the same, then the last dive. I ask if I can run the real since I am the rookie of the bunch. Jarrod asks what we think we should work on…Lost buddy, lost line, air sharing, with no lights, and no mask sounded like the logical answer. I started the dive, primary, secondary, tie offs/placements and about the do 90* to the gold line when I saw a bolt snap, SCORE, “clip”. Wouldn’t you know, this was supposed to be a fun dive and I didn’t get to work on the lost buddy, lost line, air sharing, with no lights, and no mask, WTF? Dive is over and time to clip off the light, but where’s the clip….Ahhh, what was that, “score!”
Cutting to the chase, I passed. My days consisted of leaving before my buddy woke up and returning long after his class ended. Most of the basics were covered, not necessarily as in depth but more than enough that I did a few dives with him afterwards. My teammates told me they learned a lot in the class and claimed they had gone through Full Cave without ever doing a valve drill, CRIMINAL.
While the class was going on, a couple of GUE Toronto guys drove down and invited me to do a little dive to Olsen Sink in the Peacock system. What a blast, 1800’ there and back without a single failure, imagine that. Throughout my class, I ran into some awesome friends from the boards and got to put faces to a lot new people. The GUE community has been great to me and one of the things I value more than the great training.
Thank you GUE family, see you in T/2,C/2…
(Thanks to all my non-GUE friends too
)Dan
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