I routinely test my old gear in the Clackamas River, Gladstone (near Portland), Oregon rathre than in a pool. The only pool I have around here is a great one if I can get into it. Scuba is only allowed on Sunday between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM, and only if there is no other event around (we dive with the kayakers above). But this is a major events pool, and more times than not the pool is closed to scuba (Oregon State Swim Meet, Water Polo, etc.). So I go to the river.
Today, I had my twin 45s in the water with a USD Mistral and a Dacor Olympic 400 as my backup (twin post manifold). The Mistral is normally a great regulator, but today for some reason the exhaust valve was stuck, and exhaust was pretty hard. It was very unusual, in that I could exhale okay, until I exhaled hard and then it became very difficult. Usually that goes away with a bit of water, but not today. Whenever I cleared the mouthpiece (I did this on purpose several times thinking the duckbill was stuck together) it became almost impossible to exhale. Only if I did the exhale very slowly would it come out, and it was somewhat position-dependent. If I rolled with my left shoulder down, it was easier. I've got the regulator downstairs now and will tear it apart to see what happened. However, without much exertion, and normal breathing the regulator was working okay, so I continued to use it instead of the Dacor Olympic 400.
The salmon smolt are in the river now, as is a number of other species. Red-sided shiners are schooling with the smolt. And I found what looks like a pearl ear ring today (kids jump off the High Rocks area, and hit the water hard). I observed the large-scale suckers on the bottom for a while, and then tried doing it with the Olympic second stage. I could not get quite as close with the Olypmic blowing bubbles around my face, but they were not too detoured by the bubbles--just kept about a foot further away.
I found an interesting stick with most of the bark stripped off it, and pulled it out of the bottom. I took the rest of the bark, and then took it with me on the dive. 'Got a fishing lure and a pair of swim goggles too.
One other story, since we're talking about weird things happening. I always go down to talk to the lifeguards and tell them I'm going in the water, what I'm going to do, and where I'll be when. I then go back to tell them I'm out of the water. Today when I was talking to the lifeguard before the dive, he told me what happened to him yesterday. One of the kids yelled out that someone was drowning, and pointed to bubbles coming up. The lifeguard jumped in, swam over and surfaced dived down 15 feet (he asked me how deep it was there). He did this despite wearing a PFD (they do also wear fins--Churchills). He got down, reached out and grabbed, but got something and had to surface. He surface dived again, grabbed the individual, and started hauling him up. The diver fought him off, and he realized the guy was alive. He had grabbed the diver's face mask the first dive, and apparently pulled it off. When he surfaced, after the second dive, the diver came up too, and told him he was diving there (probably told him more than that). I told the lifeguard about the ol' days of dive instruction where they had "pool harassment" and the instructor pulled the regulator out of the diver's mouth, the mask off, etc. I said maybe they should restore that type of training, as it may be needed sometime.
I also told him that he had done a good job (it was dark, and he could not identify that this was a diver). Getting that deep is difficult for these lifeguards.SeaRat
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