. . . and the class isn't until November.
So today is going to be my maiden voyage with BP/W, which NW Grateful Diver has been kind enough to lend me. We are meeting this afternoon to go over getting it properly adjusted and doing the first dive with it, but I decide I am going to get at least the first approximation of adjustment done at home, with the help of my books.
I've already cinched everything up a bit over my down jacket, but this afternoon, I don undergarment and drysuit (in my 70 degree house) and put the BP/W assembly (sans tank) on to check the fit. It's actually pretty good -- snug around the shoulders but enough to get a hand in when bending over. I check the length on the waistband, which needs to be cut down, and go to take the harness off so I can cut the webbing.
This is where the problems start. I can't get it off. I can't chicken-wing my right arm through the strap, and I can't slip the left arm off because of the dry suit valve. Hmm. I remember a thread about this, and somebody said the trick was to put the tank down on something and allow the harness to slip up. So I back up to the back of a chair and try this . . . unfortunately, I don't have a tank, and the bottom of the plate slips off the back of the chair and I almost go down on my butt in the middle of my living room. This is not a good strategy, obviously. Maybe if I let the whole assembly slip down as far as it will go, I'll be able to reach over and pull the harness forward to let the valve free? So I try that. The result is that I have now pinned both of my arms behind me and can't reach anything any more. What's worse, I now can't sit down at the keyboard and try to find the thread that described how you get out of this mess.
And I am, of course, alone in the house, rapidly getting uncomfortably hot in my undergarment and dry suit and very frustrated that I can't get this plate off my back. I visualize driving to the dive site in my gear and confessing my problems to Bob . . . not a good image.
Back to the dining room, and try to catch the bottom of the backplate on the kitchen counter. This works! I have now lifted the plate and harness up, and I try to slither down out of it as I have seen my DIR friends do. Only my slithering technique is clearly faulty (do they cover this in Fundies?) because the danged valve hangs up again and I pull the whole assembly off the counter and back onto my back. My face is now getting rather flushed, and I wonder if I ought to go outside to pursue this further, or face heatstroke in my kitchen.
Back onto the counter, and carefully reach across my body and grab the left strap by the D-ring (you knew they were good for something!) and gingerly inch the valve, bit by bit, under the strap, without dislodging the backplate from the counter. My orange cat is watching this procedure with stunned disbelief. Of course, there isn't enough slack to get the left arm completely OUT of the harness without getting the right arm out, too, so I have to let go of my D-ring and try slithering again.
To my infinite relief, the BP/W goes one way, and I go the other. The face that the harness assembly then knocks over my full teacup doesn't even bother me at this point.
And I have a month to go before it gets worse . . . sigh.
So today is going to be my maiden voyage with BP/W, which NW Grateful Diver has been kind enough to lend me. We are meeting this afternoon to go over getting it properly adjusted and doing the first dive with it, but I decide I am going to get at least the first approximation of adjustment done at home, with the help of my books.
I've already cinched everything up a bit over my down jacket, but this afternoon, I don undergarment and drysuit (in my 70 degree house) and put the BP/W assembly (sans tank) on to check the fit. It's actually pretty good -- snug around the shoulders but enough to get a hand in when bending over. I check the length on the waistband, which needs to be cut down, and go to take the harness off so I can cut the webbing.
This is where the problems start. I can't get it off. I can't chicken-wing my right arm through the strap, and I can't slip the left arm off because of the dry suit valve. Hmm. I remember a thread about this, and somebody said the trick was to put the tank down on something and allow the harness to slip up. So I back up to the back of a chair and try this . . . unfortunately, I don't have a tank, and the bottom of the plate slips off the back of the chair and I almost go down on my butt in the middle of my living room. This is not a good strategy, obviously. Maybe if I let the whole assembly slip down as far as it will go, I'll be able to reach over and pull the harness forward to let the valve free? So I try that. The result is that I have now pinned both of my arms behind me and can't reach anything any more. What's worse, I now can't sit down at the keyboard and try to find the thread that described how you get out of this mess.
And I am, of course, alone in the house, rapidly getting uncomfortably hot in my undergarment and dry suit and very frustrated that I can't get this plate off my back. I visualize driving to the dive site in my gear and confessing my problems to Bob . . . not a good image.
Back to the dining room, and try to catch the bottom of the backplate on the kitchen counter. This works! I have now lifted the plate and harness up, and I try to slither down out of it as I have seen my DIR friends do. Only my slithering technique is clearly faulty (do they cover this in Fundies?) because the danged valve hangs up again and I pull the whole assembly off the counter and back onto my back. My face is now getting rather flushed, and I wonder if I ought to go outside to pursue this further, or face heatstroke in my kitchen.
Back onto the counter, and carefully reach across my body and grab the left strap by the D-ring (you knew they were good for something!) and gingerly inch the valve, bit by bit, under the strap, without dislodging the backplate from the counter. My orange cat is watching this procedure with stunned disbelief. Of course, there isn't enough slack to get the left arm completely OUT of the harness without getting the right arm out, too, so I have to let go of my D-ring and try slithering again.
To my infinite relief, the BP/W goes one way, and I go the other. The face that the harness assembly then knocks over my full teacup doesn't even bother me at this point.
And I have a month to go before it gets worse . . . sigh.
