An
Odyssey of Self-Contained Underwater Breathing.
Day
one of my SCUBA open dives was a blast. We met at the Blue Grotto Dive Resort
in Williston, Fl. It’s about two hours north of me in a much more quiet, much
more rural, North Central Florida. No Tampa’s, no St. Pete’s, no Miami’s, no
Orlando’s. Just big country, small cities, and religious radio. Though I did
find a classic rock station from Gainesville. The Jesus stations didn’t dare
bleed into it.
We
donned our gear and felt immediately like some designer meal prepared by a
gourmet galactic chef on Fifth Avenue. You know, the kind that make drinks with
liquid nitrogen in the cherries or sear sheared stakes using saflower oil
torches? Neoprene Neapolitan Human, steamed in its own anaerobic juices. With a
compote of heat exhaustion and a hint of asphyxiation.
We trundled down to the
grotto, which was created by the gradual crumbling and flooding of soft stone, like
every other cave system on the east coast. They are ubiquitous. Once we had
done our buddy checks to ensure that our gear was engaged properly, we took the
big step off the pier and into the water.
It
was cold. Refreshingly so, for one from New England where ‘cold’ is a lot
further down the mercury column than for native Floridians. But it felt good.
And I quickly got accustomed to it. My dive buddy, Ryan, was shivering for a
while. I’ve got enough New England clam chowder and whale blubber under my skin
to preclude that, thank Neptune.
We
all met Virgil, the Friendly Turtle. Kyle wouldn’t let me bring my camera until
our second dive, but I got some pics eventually. We went down fifteen feet or
so and practiced our safety procedures. Checking our air supply and signaling
that to our buddies. Feigning being out of air and needing to share our buddies’
air supply. Filling our masks with water and purging it. Tossing our regulators
over our shoulders and retrieving them. Equalizing our buoyancy to the ‘just
right’ stage where Goldilocks rose slightly when she inhaled and sunk slightly
when she exhaled. A controlled ascent so our lungs don’t burst in our chests. All
of the I-Want-To-Live 101 stuff we all need to be able to do automatically. It
worked fine in the pool. Now we needed to try it with turtles drifting by and
laughing at us.
There
were several other groups around us and I sometimes had a hard time knowing
where my buddy was. I intentionally took a tank what was pink. Say what you
will about me and my pink tank, but I bet you will know which black suited,
foggy, blurry, aqualung out there is me. Some of the divers got covers for
their mask straps so they had their names blazoned on the back of their heads.
I never was at a loss for where AMY or JENNIFER were. I like the idea.
We
went down a little further. Thirty feet, forty, into a cave which was overhung
with a solid ceiling. The surface was further back, not so clear. Silt was
being kicked up by us divers overcompensating, overcorrecting our buoyancy, and
drifting down into the muck. Once I found myself overcompensating on the up-side
and dragged my tank along the ceiling for a bit. I had to learn that changing
buoyancy doesn’t show up immediately. If I am sinking too fast and I keep
adding air to my buoyancy compensator, I might suddenly start bobbing like a
cork. Add some air and wait. See what happens. Add some air and wait. See what
happens. Take a deep breath and slowly release it. Blow as much air out of my
lungs and see. Your lungs are your best buoyancy compensator. I’m slowly
getting the hang of hanging, buoyancy neutral, in the water with minimal thrashing
about. It reminds me of astronauts doing space walks. Kinda. Except they have
nothing to push against.
We
went down to about sixty feet and into a craggy, narrow, trough two thirds of
the way down. If my viscera were ever contemplating panicking, it was here. It
was dark. It was cloudy. It was claustrophobic. It was hard to see the other
divers. It was lacking a clear direction of what was the way out. When you are
neutrally buoyant, up is ambiguous. But I took a deep breath, let it out, made
sure I was steady, and gently swam through, under, back up, and out again.
Finding my buddy, I checked that he was OK, plenty of air remaining, what about
them Yankees? and all was well.
Kyle
brought us back up to about thirty feet so we could, I forget what he called
it. It was called ‘decompress’ back when I first got my diver’s certificate in
the 70’s. He called it ‘adjust’ or something like that, I think. These young
people are always making up different names for the same things. It makes them
feel smart, I guess.
Basically,
breathing compressed air of different gasses, such as our atmosphere, means
that your lungs are filled with different compressed gasses and that each gas
contributes a part of the total pressure. Partial pressures, which, according
to Dalton’s Law, means that our blood has gasses at partial, but increased,
pressures dissolved in it as well. Nitrogen contributes 80% of the pressure.
Oxygen 16%. Carbon Dioxide about 4%. Trace gasses less than 1%. (All textbook
definitions.)
But
as you go deeper, each component has a larger quantity in the blood, even
though the percentages are the same. At 90 feet you still have 80% nitrogen.
But you have a quantity of nitrogen that is four times the volume at the
surface. If at the surface one breath takes in a quart of nitrogen, at 90 feet
one breath takes in a gallon of nitrogen squeezed down to one quart. And that
one gallon, now occupying one quart, is dissolved in your blood. Our blood is
like fizzy water. If you come to the surface too fast, it’s like popping the
cork on a champagne bottle. This was called Caisson’s Disease when the Brooklyn
Bridge was being build.
Today
we know how to stop it. If you stay down under thirty feet for an extended
period of time your blood will become seltzer water with the cap firmly on it.
If you come straight to the surface the cap will be popped. You know when you
pop the top on a bottle of seltzer and suddenly little bubbles start coming up
from the bottom? Fizz, fizz. Bubbles in the bloodstream cause clots in the
brain and in the joints where small capillaries can’t pass them through.
Roebling was paralyzed because of it and had to watch his grand bridge to Brooklyn
built from his window because of his disability. If you stop at, say, around 30
feet for however many minutes your dive computer tells you to, in our case it
was three minutes, the fizz will fizzle, the gasses will escape your blood
stream safely through the alveoli of your lungs, as is their function, no
champagne corks will pop, no seltzer water seltz, and you will live to dive
another day.
Back
at our pavilion we doffed our gear, ate some lunch, rested, put fresh tanks of
blood fizzing gasses on our backs, verified both our gear and our buddies were
in tip top shape, and took the big step back into the grotto. It felt slightly
more comfortable. And I got to take pictures this time.
Tomorrow.
The Devil’s Den Prehistoric Spring!
But
it was still today. I had reservations in a motel called the Mycanopy Inn. Mycanopy
looks like it should be pronounced as MY-CAN-oh-pe. Like My Canopy. But it’s
actually pronounced MY-can-OH-pe. Probably a Seminole name, I’d guess.
Mycanopy
was about a half hour away, through some very rural country. About twenty miles
on desolate roads and then five on I-75. For several miles billboards advertised
the Café Risque, an adult club where we bare all 24/7! O…K… Fine. An adult restaurant?
I guess they won’t be opening any Café Risques in Downtown Disney. Oh, look. It’s
the same exit as my motel. How convenient…
I'm
in a sleazy, five scar motel in Mycanopy, Florida in Heap O’ Trouble county. Next
door to the Cafe Risque where the waitresses and dancers are buck naked! Even
for breakfast! I’ll have the nipples ‘n eggs with smokin’ hot bottom and a
little something on the side, please. Hold the commitment. And for dessert, a
sweet piece of ass-I’ll provide the sauce. Osha probably requires them to wear
shoes. And warning labels. Bring your own penicillin.
The
room itself is lackluster. Your basic 1950’s, See the USA style motel, like the
ones my father and I stayed in on our trek across America in his Rambler
station wagon. It was 1969. I watched the moon landing from my uncle Chet’s
house in Sacramento, ate Abalone in San Francisco, and had a sarsaparilla at The
Bucket of Blood Saloon. Breakfast at the Kitch’N Camp Café in the dust mines of
Colorado. Gold dust, that is. Dad bought me a Moon-Shot glass from a bar on top
of a hotel in Reno, Nevada. It looked like the command module from the Apollo mission.
He had a gin and tonic and I got the glass.
This
motel was a much deteriorated derelict descendent and unsettled throwback to
the golden age of kitschy, tacky touristy traps, and White Castle burger joints
along the highways across Americana. It didn’t even have Wi-Fi, which made it
even more authentic. The sink counter looked dirty. It had streaks across it,
which I automatically tried to wipe up, wondering if I should don a hazmat suit
first. And an air breather. No, it was some art deco pattern in the linoleum,
probably intended to hide the dirt.
I
was too tired to even care.
The
next day found me unsurprisingly not wanting to tarry too long at the motel.
The
floor looked like the same pattern as the counter. I wondered, is this some
kind of motel cloaking carpet to keep you from noticing how dirty it was? No.
In this case the floor really was filthy. Maybe one or two of the more risqué waitresses
had ended up on it.
I
packed up and left, however early it was.
The
front desk was locked. There was no place to put my key and I wasn’t about to
just toss it on the floor. Who knows how dirty that one is? There was a number
to call with any questions after hours. They didn’t man the helm until 11:00. I’m
sure that says something about the clientele of the place. Someone who sounded
woken up and not too happy about it said,
“Hello?”
“Hi,
I’m checking out from the Mycanopy Inn and want to drop off my key.”
“Just
leave it in the window.”
I had noticed a window in the antechamber, the
air lock between the outside and the lobby. It had been unlocked, but the door
to the lobby was locked. There was a window, like a carnival ticket window, but
there were no instructions on where to deposit a key card. I wasn’t about to
just leave it there without knowing if that is what was expected. What if it
wasn’t safe? Should I just abandon it?
It
was. I did. And left as soon as I could. I wondered how things were doing in
the naked breakfast place? Just get me to Williston.
My
Google maps shrugged, sleepishly, as I punched the coordinates for Devil’s Den
Prehistoric Spring into it.
“OK,
already. Head east, past that porno restaurant you were googling last night,..”
“I
was just curious!”
“Whatever.”
“I
didn’t even try to peak through the windows.”
“Fine.
Then take the south ramp onto I-75. And don’t pester me!”
“Alright.
I’ll call you when we’re near civilization.”
“Be
still my throbbing head.”
I
had breakfast at Melanie’s Restaurant in Williston. I had Mel’s Favorite:
Blackened fish, 1 scrambled egg, collards, grits, sliced tomato with wheat
toast. It came with a jar of hot sauce for the collards. I expected a red sauce
in a small bottle labeled, Hot Sauce, or Ass Burner with a picture of a donkey
on it, or something like that. Instead, it was a simple cylinder filled with
what looked like little green worms soaking in some liquid, Tequila, I suppose.
I shook a few drops into the collards and tasted. Like spinach. Stronger.
Overcooked, but that’s my culinary background. I like my veggies al dente. I’d
have to acquire a taste for it. The fish was good. Stronger than a fresh water
trout I once had from the angler streams around the Grand Tetons. Grits. Well,
grits is grits. No complaint there. The coffee was good. The floor was clean.
The waitresses were dressed. You can’t have everything.
The
Devil’s Den was decidedly different then Blue Grotto. More given to alliteration,
for one thing, and a lot more claustrophobic. Whereas the Blue Grotto was
completely open and accessible by wide wooden stairs with large platforms on
which to assemble, install gear, put on your fins, and goose step to the edge.
And BIG STEP! The Devil’s Den was accessed by descending a narrow stair through
a natural crack in the limestone. There was barely room for one heavily
equiptmented diver, let alone two traversing in opposite directions. At the
bottom the stairs just kept going into the water to an underwater platform where
you had to put on your last piece of gear, the fins, and scoot off into deep
water.
OK.
Every dive site is different. Live and learn. That’s how you live to learn
again.
Today’s
dives, like yesterday’s, were to run through the checklist of skills we needed
to master (sic) before we could be a diver. Removing your weights and putting
them back in again. Taking off your buoyancy compensator and putting it back on
again. Breathing air instead of water. Not drowning. Basic stuff.
We
dropped down to a platform and practiced a few more skills. One of which was navigating
by dead reckoning. That’s where you can’t see where the hell you are going but
you bloody well better get there, anyway. Kyle gave us a destination. Go over
there and come back here without getting lost. It required using our compasses
and exploiting an obscure law of nature: North Is Always In The Same Place.
That’s how Santa Clause can always get home after visiting all of the good
children on Christmas eve.
We
had practiced it above ground and I already knew the concept, having learned it
in sailing class. But under water, thirty feet down, with a tiny hole far above
providing scant light, and a compass that I could barely see on land without my
glasses, well. Do the reckoning…
I
had a plan. Get my buddy’s attention, since he has a light, smart fellow-a good
buddy to have, by the way-and have him light up my compass so I can get the
reckoning that I need to keep from getting the dead that I don’t need. I waved
at him, pointed at his flashlight, pointed at my compass. He didn’t understand.
I tried some other aqua-miming. Unsuccessfully. I made flashing signs with my
fingers, pointed at my eyes and at the compass. No comprende.
I
psychically shot at him: I NEED YOUR FLASHLIGHT!
I
got back: I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN A BETTER BUDDY!
OK.
I swam up to him and finally got it. I pointed his flashlight at the compass,
lined it up with where I wanted to go, set the bezel over the north arrow and
started swimming, making sure that north was always under the marks on the
bezel. It brought me to the foundation of the entry platform. I turned around
and reoriented the north arrow with the opposite mark on the bezel and swam.
By
some odd coincidence, I came back to the platform with all of the divers. And
they were my divers, too! What do you know?
We
tested a few other skills that needed testing, during which time we all forgot
that we were adjusting our buoyancy as needed and keeping an eye on our
buddies, it was starting to become natural. And then we were done. Class
complete. Requirements met. Kyle applauded and OK’ed us all, and hand signed us
to go explore. Have fun. So off we went.
For
about the next twenty minutes we explored the cave, going deeper down, to maybe
sixty feet, and through caverns and narrow choke points, searching the floor
for interesting rocks, bones, lost gear, or odd formations. Routinely adjusting
our ears, masks, lungs, and equipment for optimum comfort and efficiency. It
was sinking in.
And
then. We were done.
Back
to the platform where Kyle was waiting for us. He shook our hands and clapped.
He pointed up. We could now be certified.
On
to the dawn, young aquamen.
