How Did You Find Your First Scuba Class?

[Trace Malinowski]

My family was on vacation, but I was stuck at home sick. I was staying at my grandparents' house about 20 minutes away. When I felt better, my grandfather and I drove to Dunmore, Pennsylvania to get Kentucky Fried Chicken. I spotted scuba gear in a store window on East Drinker Street. Turned out there was a dive shop in PA!

When my family returned, my mother took me there with the intention of buying new snorkeling equipment. My black rubber mask, fins, and snorkel had always come from Kmart or Sears. I had never been in a dive shop. We found out that Scuba-America was the retail facility for the PDIC training agency's HQ. I could start taking the open water course as a Jr. OW Diver.

How did you find your first scuba class?

 

[HantsDiver]

I was a student at a fairly decent university and played rugby quite seriously. As part of that I and my teammates used to using certain medicines to aid our performance. Someone found out we could buy these over the counter from a pharmacy in one country rather than using dodgy homebrew stuff.

So a group of us went over during our 12 week holiday to a small island and planned to consume our medicine and train in the gym. We ended up having a very nice time and to our coaches dismay came back heavier due to the beer and recreational drugs rather than the intensive training.

We had an incredible time. We rented two apartments on the island. We partied like mad and ended up drinking most nights at a certain dive show bar. I also decided I'd have a go at strapping a tank to my back and going underwater and quite liked it. So I ended up doing my open water and advanced open water.

It wasn't how we planned it. But I had the best 10 weeks of my life. We slept with a huge number of girls. And generally life was good. I ended up falling off a bike on the island whilst drunk and injured my shoulder two days before going home. After that I never played competitive rugby again. I can't say I regret one bit of it.

 

[rhwestfall]

Long time dream became a reality with a gym class offered at my college. Instructor was a staff member, and established a curriculum for credit (YMCA cert). School had all equipment. Get this, it only cost $25 for the "lab fee"!

 

[BreeAbyss]

I had just started my first career type job after graduating university and a girl I worked with wanted to get her OW for her upcoming trip to Mexico. She didn't want to take the class alone so asked me if I wanted to do it with her. I had always wanted to dive but was too poor and also didn't have a lot of free time until that point. I don't live by the ocean and didn't know that people dove in lakes around here, so just kind of assumed you needed to go on a trip to do the class and never seriously looked into it. We both passed the class but she never actually dove on her trip, I heard she didn't even pick up her cert card. Now a few years later I am obsessed with diving. I would have taken up diving on my own but probably not right away so it was a good thing she asked me! I definitely had the wrong impression that you had to travel to tropical places to dive which made the hobby look way too expensive for me at that point in my life.

 

[DiverDownD3]

I've lived on the NC coast my entire life (except for college). Diving was something that always interested me, but I gave the typical excuses (sharks, claustrophobia, etc). Anyway another engineer I worked with ended up getting his certification and ended up having the dive shop set up a discover scuba class at a local pool. That's all it took, a month later my brother and I were getting certified. I regret every day not doing it much sooner

 

[Scott]

My parents had a friend who would dive while we were vacationing at our lakes, so outside Jacques Cousteau and Mike Nelson that was the only diver I knew but was always intrigued with it.
Fast forward several years
Driving around with my girl friend, now wife, she said she needed to stop by the dive store and talk with the owner/instructor about a rescue class. I was thinking S&R at the time
While she was chatting in the office, the owners sister was talking to me diving.
Timing was right, I would have a buddy, price was right $69 plus snorkeling gear, so I enrolled and the rest is history.

 

[Aviyes]

I had done Discover Scuba at different times in my life and wanted to complete my OW cert, but never got around to it or could never find another person to take the class with. Finally, while at some training in Mississippi, one of my friends threw out the idea and I jumped at the chance. Had a blast diving at the Florida springs and completed my AOW as well, while I was there.

 

[DepthCharge]

Standing in line @ Burger King. Overheard two women talking about scuba lessons, found out where,.................the rest is history. That was 29 years ago.
Later,
John

 

[TMHeimer]

12 years ago we moved to the Halifax area from northern Manitoba. I was in the city getting our RV worked on and had a few hours to kill. Walked down a hill and ran right into the LDS--and basically the only one for like 100 miles. Did OW couple of months later. I had figured to get into scuba since we bought a house right on the ocean, but figured to be doing a search on the internet, not just accidentally flopping into the only place around.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Back when I was married, my wife and I used to go to the local YMCA after work. She'd go do her jazzercise class and I'd head into the gym to play basketball with the boys. Being an aging fat guy, I'd inevitably hurt myself trying to keep up with guys half my age and two-thirds my weight. One day as I'm limping out of the gym, she starts going on about how I need to find something safer to do. Just as she's telling me all of this, we pass a sign on the wall that says "LEARN TO DIVE" ... and the class starting date on the sign just happened to be my birthday. A random neuron fired in my brain, and without even thinking about what I was saying I blurted out "OK, buy me scuba lessons for my birthday and I'll give up basketball". It never occurred to me that she'd take me seriously. But she turned right around, headed to the counter, pulled out her credit card and told the young man behind the counter to "sign him up" ... pointing my way. I started my OW class on my 49th birthday. I'm 65 now, and have logged nearly 4,000 dives.

Haven't picked up a basketball since that evening ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)