A Dip in the Pond

 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.