Stupid or embarrassing things you did when you where training?

[bash]

Originally posted by Sea Squirt
Bash, you and your instructor must have developed quite an affintiy to each other by now!

They're two different instructors, two different personalities and each of them probably blissfuly ignorant of the impression the events had on me.

I feel obliged to say that my story-telling has enhanced the events somewhat (but only a little bit - honest!)

I actually lost my footing in a series of stumbles as I tried to re-gain my upright position in the pool. It didn't happen so neatly as I've told the story.

I remember the first time I over-tipped, my legs sort of slipped in with the instructor's legs - which horrified me! I was struggling away from him and trying to get upright again, but as I nearly re-gained my footing I slipped backward again and it was the second time that I grabbed onto him with my legs so that I could reach for the pool-side to haul myself up.

Really it all happened in about 5 seconds: quicker than its taken you to read the description. Five seconds followed by a long minute-or-so of mortification while he fixed my weight belt and the others looked on.

My OW instructor is a honey - I've met up with him a few times for dives and social stuff since then. Certainly, our karma sutras don't appear to have injured the relationship.

The navigation instructor... well...(he's a tad dull)

-bash

 

[bash]

This (true, unenhanced) story is both stupid AND embarrassing.

For MONTHS I had problems with navigation; I got a reputation at my LDS for being navigationally-challenged; I even paid for PADI navigation training in an effort to overcome my disability.

A few weeks ago at a dive-club BBQ, I was ranting and raving to a stoic audience about the repetitive advice that people had offered to me in the preceding months as solutions to my navigational problems. I was becoming quite eloquent about the obvious need to hold the compass horizontal, I was adamant that only an imbecile would hold the compass out of alignment with their lubber-line, and my frustration was so spittingly delivered that none dared challenge my ability to comprehend 360 degrees of angle.

Then, out of the surf stepped my hero: square jaw, dashing smile and twinkling blue eyes. He took one glance at my compass and pointed manfully at the ferrous key ring attached to my gauge.

I was humbled.

I had taken the cheep-skate's path to stream-lining my gear. I'd thoughtlessly used a stainless steel key ring in the construction of a lanyard for my gauge panel. The gauge panel contains my compass. The key-ring was located next to my compass. For months it had been distorting the magnetic forces around my compass, screwing up my readings.

Please tell me, someone, that I'm not the only diver who has used a ferrous clip/ring/tie/attachment on their gauge and spent months trying to work out why they couldn't navigate properly? ;-0

-bash
PS OK OK, so the story was slightly enhanced...
...but the essence is true!...and the hero turns out to be none-other than my OW dive instructor on whom I inflicted my first water karma sutra experience.

He is a patient chap.