What was your favorite part of training?

[MNScuba]

Hopefully we'll get a nice variety, but I have a feeling I know how most will vote...

 

[JamesK]

Out of the choices you listed, I would go with breathing underwater for the first time. However, my favorite moment would be a toss up between the following two.
1)Running my primary reel into Devils Ear for the first time fighting a flow of water that you could not see, only feel.

2)Looking up into Pothole for the first time in awe.

Both took place two weeks ago on my Cave Intro training.

 

[Starfish]

It wasn't until the second pool session when I finally felt comfortable enough, and had the class time, to go stand on the bottom of the pool and look up.

To see for myself, in person, what it was like to see light shining down in to the water and watch my bubbles float up to the top was the coolest thing.

 

[Ber Rabbit]

One of the last classes was spent with our masks duct taped so we could see nothing but the back of the tape. We learned to communicate with our hands when we couldn't see our buddy. We learned to do octopus breathing without being able to see too. Once we were comfortable with that we were guided on the surface to the drop off by the deep end of the pool. Our mission was to keep track of our buddy while finding 3 CO2 cartridges per buddy pair in the deep end. We descended and could hear the CO2 cartridges tinkling across the bottom. The next few minutes was spent feeling the bottom with one hand and holding onto your buddy with the other and letting them know when you found a cylinder and how many you had. Yes, you did run into the other buddy pairs but you learned to work through the stress of a mission combined with someone's fin flailing in your face. I really felt like I had accomplished something when we had managed to fend off the other divers and find our cartridges. Once you had your cartridges you surfaced and then you were told to swim to the NW corner of the pool Yeah right! I didn't know where that was when I could SEE! We found out later that part was pretty much for the entertainment of the deck help. The instructor and DM's had their own entertainment underwater in the form of CO2 cartridges on strings! When you touched the CO2 cartridges they usually rolled a little, some of them "rolled" A LOT! I found out about this early in the dive because I grabbed a CO2 cartridge and it started to get away from me so I yanked on it and came away with a CO2 cartridge complete with string! This exercise is the reason I continued to show up at the pool to help with whatever needed to be done. I wanted to get to be the one in the water with that CO2 cartridge on a string! Let me tell you it's VERY entertaining and I haven't lost my "pet cartridge" yet!

Boy that's a long answer for a poll! I'll shut up now!
Ber

 

[JustAddWater]

I enjoyed all of my training, but my final check out dive in Catalina was my favorite part. From that day I was hooked.

 

[tchil01]

Out of the choices, I marked breathing under water too. But the best part of class for me was the last pool session. They had us swim around and work on our buoyancy. As we did, the instructors or TA would come along and undo parts of our gear, turn off our tanks, pull off our mask or things like that. We would have to stop and fix whatever they did. The best part I remember is setting on the bottom of the pool reattaching my tank, fixing my fin straps and clearing my mask because three of them had ganged up on me. It was just way too cool because I didn’t get stressed at all and I could do everything without a problem. One thing I did learn that day is that your mask leaks when you grin like a big idiot.

Ber, your class sounds like a lot of fun too. I heard about an instructor who used to have the class doff and don all of their gear with their eyes shut. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like a good skill to have.

Ty

 

[socaldiver]

Breathing underwater was what I picked also, but my favorite part was completing the final skills of OW and receiving my temp C card.

 

[Ron Brandt]

Passing my Instructors Exam

Ron

 

[Bob3]

I liked the part where we swam laps in the pool, turning each others air off, yanking masks & fins off.:mean:

 

[landlocked]

Holding hands with my buddy. (very low vis.)