I would like to announce that the Baton Rouge chapter of the Semi-Organized ScubUNO Association of Divers (SOSAD) has had our first field trip. Two of us (*almost* three, but hey) went up to Alabama Blue Water Adventures in Pelham, AL. After making several cardless dives, it was decided that on the last dive of the weekend, we would bring the equipment for a nice, relaxing safety stop.
Of course, we couldn't let a little thing like actually going somewhere else in the quarry take away from our game time, so we entered the water and went directly to the 15' (well, 17' when we were there) training platform, which just happened to be conveniently located adjacent to the entry dock. (They think of *everything*.) We proceeded to tie one on... er... the bag, that is. We tied the big bag (with all the cards and everything else) onto the platform, and then each of us (okay, both of us) took a bungie cord and made a nice tie-down (generally, we kept an arm under the bungie to make things much less floaty-drifty). Once we were all set, the bag was opened, the snap rings were dispensed, and it was time to start playing. (By the way, the draw and discard snap rings were attached with a super-jumbo 5-or-so-inch paperclip to small snap rings clipped onto opposite sides of a 2-pound hard weight.)
First on the list (since we have to uphold the fine tradition of the charter chapter up there) was obviously UNO. It turned out to be a rather quick run, so we continued on a played a second game with the remains of the deck. Then we clipped that deck back together and tossed it in the big bag.
Next, we grabbed a deck of standard playing cards and played a game of Go Fish. (Okay, for practicality, we used a standard draw-pile instead of the more Go-Fish-y jumble, but if that's too terrible, we'll call it "Go Spearfish" instead.) Communication during the game went swimmingly thanks to the large school of fish checking us out (okay, the first time I pointed to a fish, it took a minute for Rachel to catch it... the concept, not the fish... but after that we were fin... er, fine). We used one-handed numbers for 1-10 (1-5: hand up, palm toward buddy, like taking an oath of office [counts as number of fingers]; 6-10: hand across front, palm toward self, like rubbing your stomach [counts as five plus number of fingers]), and for jack, queen, and king we signaled "face-1", "face-2", and "face-3", respectively (point at your own face, then give corresponding number). It was a blast, except that Rachel is either has telepathy, x-ray vision, or an eidetic memory -- almost every time I went fishing, she asked for the card I picked up... and it wasn't a reflection in my mask, either).
Who could stop there? We played a simplified rummy... it was a lot like gin rummy, but without knocking and laying off and all. You had to go "gin", or whatever you call it, i.e. you had to have all your cards melded in sets of runs, and then you show them and have won. We didn't bother scoring or anything else for that matter. Rachel won that game, too, so it was time to move back to something at which I had better apparent luck. We tossed the used deck in with the used UNO deck and the one from Go Fish, and out came...
Why, the other UNO deck, of course. Yet again we managed to get two games out of it, which is quite nice (considering how inconvenient underwater shuffling would be). By the time we finished UNO round number four, we were quite adept at handling the snap rings and using the weight to hold cards while drawing, playing, and making faces. Eventually, though, we played out the UNO cards, and lacking a third UNO deck, it was obvious what had to come next...
If you guessed, "another game of Go Fish", you're really strange. That said, considering we had already played one game (and rummy, and UNO four times), we're certainly in the "strange" category, so playing another game of Go Fish is precisely what we did. It went even better than the first time around. Most of the fish had left, making it harder to find one to point to, but we knew how to use the weight to hold cards temporarily, which significantly reduced the need for excessive clip-unclip-clip-unclip dances.
It was during this game of Go Fish that a group came by. I think it was the instructor who had lent me his pick to get the remains of Rachel's old HP spool O-ring out of her pressure gauge the day before, but it could've been someone else who looked similar and was all tech-diver-ed out with doubles and the rest. Anyway, whoever it was, he came over to us (as the rest of his group bunched up on the opposite end of the platform and looked suspiciously at us) and asked to see the cards (which quite intrigued him). Rachel gave him a hand (her cards, that is), and he seemed fascinated at the thought of plastic playing cards (you could almost read his mind as he thought about those long deco stops). I drew an imaginary target on the platform and indicated that's where to get the cards, and he thanked me and was about to swim off. I quickly waved him back and grabbed my mesh gear bag to show him one more thing -- when he saw UNO cards, his eyes lit up and he immediately draw a target and pointed at them. I said yes, indeed, and off he went with an almost mask-flooding grin. (So, without actually saying anything topside, I may have spread the phenomenon.
)
Anyway, we finished Go Fish, but wouldn't you just know it, we still had one more deck of playing cards. I asked Rachel what to play, and we decided to go with War (also incorrectly called "battle", but not by us). We played the altered variant I made up a long time ago, where the winner (i.e. player with the higher card) keeps his card (or cards, if it was a war) putting it back on the bottom of his stack, but the losing card (again, or cards) is discarded instead of being given to the winner. This makes the game much faster, as you don't recycle losing cards. I call the variant "Quick War" or, more elegantly, "War of Attrition". It was a fun game (we used a goodie bag for the discard, which was faster than a discard ring but did require restacking the cards onto a ring afterward).
Well, as we only had two UNO decks and four decks of standard cards, that must've been it, right? Of course not! We played quite a few games of hangman (a few in between decks, even, but more afterward), and we even threw in a game of tic-tac-toe for completeness (although one was enough of that). Eventually, though, air was running low and it was time to surface, check out, and go home. Still, it was quite a fun dive, indeed.
Oh, and how long was our fun-and-games 100% "safety stop" 17-foot dive?
167 minutes!
(Yep, Rachel and I played around for two hours and forty-seven minutes on a single tank each. I used 3000 psi out of a borrowed AL100, ending just over 300 psi, and she used 2400 psi out of an AL80, ending up with 600 psi.)
Well, anyway. Oh, and we also told the guy who works there about our playing UNO and various card games. He said the thought had never occurred to him, but you could tell the thought was most certainly occurring now.
