Mike,
I glad you had a nice dive at Lover's. My wife and I were at BW and we had a fantastic dive.
I would like to know what shop encouraged you to dive solo with under 25 dives?
Diving solo was not something I wanted to do and I would not encourage it to anyone else, granted everything went well there were times I felt very odd and I paniced twice.
Let me explain,
I went down to BW to dive with a friend but at the last minute they called me and canceled. I looked at the conditions and they were rough to me and the visibility looked poor.
I then decided I'll go over to Lover's and see what it's like. As I arrived there were no divers and just tourist walking around. I parked the car and went to enjoy the view and really wanted directions to Monestary to film the swells.
As I was returning to my car a diver passed me up and said, "accessing the beach huh?" I replied yeah and walked away, as I got up the stairs there came down a very friendly diver and I started making small talk.
He was there completing some dives for two other divers, one that was going to be going to Panama and needed some more practice.
I told him my situation and he said, "I'm just going to be training and if you want I'll keep an eye on you."
I had dove Lover's point before and made a dive plan to stay shallow no more than 20 feet and I kept to that, just circling around in a circle video taping as much as I could very close to shore.
I had set my computer to return at 1,000 psi and after 40 minutes my time was up and I got out of the water.
The first time I got nervous is when I started swimming around large kelp beds and I started remembering some of the incidents that took place at this dive site last year, where a diver and his son swam and the father got tangled and died as his son triend to rescue him.
As my mind would think that I started realizing I shouldn't be in this water and the incident at Monastery wasn't helping.
As I dove a bit longer something literally grabbed my leg and pulled me back, "I froze and my whole buddy engulfed with fear thought what the hell is that, a harbor seal or something worse".
I spun around to see what was pulling me with my heart rushing and me going through a ton of gas; my camera was not on or else you would've seen the fear in my eyes.
As the fear jetted to panic I clearly now see what had attacked me; a large piece of kelp had attached itself to my inner leg which houses my knife.
I remember my training not to spin like a fork of spagetti and I reached for my bc knife with my left hand, and then with knife in hand I cut the kelp with ease.
Every turn every new breath of air was now in relief that it wasn't a marine mammal or something worse.
It's the psychology of my mind that works against you, not for you when you dive solo in my opinion.
As I got out I bumped into the diver and his two students and as we talked I later learned that he is the owner of a dive shop back in the East Bay. After more small talk his student asked for another dive and he said only if you feel comfortable and I asked if I could join his group.
We suited up and my second dive was full of safe thoughts as I enjoyed the area much further out and under harsher more stronger surge.
Diving with a buddy is just priceless.
MG
I'd come out of the water, hands, feet and face a bit blue. I just thought that's the way it was. Now I know better. 
