Dive Logs

News-Press Waves Article - February 2007 - Cherri Wood

Photo - Cherri Wood

The dozing instructor in this photo is currently a member of the Caloosa Dive Club - any guesses?

Images of past years starting flashing through my mind – well maybe flashing doesn’t describe it since I was still working on my first cup of coffee and stuffing oatmeal into the wide open mouth of my grandson who doesn’t have the patience to wait for me to relive the past. It was more of a shiver that ran down my back and that took me back to where … Willow Springs Quarry, Myerstown, Pennsylvania on a very early spring weekend.

When we lived in Maryland we belonged to the largest dive club in the North East United States, the Atlantis Rangers Skin & Scuba Club. At one point our membership topped 500 avid divers and their families. Back in the 1970’s our local dive shops weren’t as much involved in Scuba instruction as the shops of today. With a slate of active dive instructors and assistants, the Atlantis Rangers spent the entire winter on the training of new scuba enthusiasts. We were fortunate enough to have the use of an indoor pool located in the town of Columbia, Maryland that was large enough, and deep enough, to handle classes of 30 or more Scuba diving students. Classroom sessions were held weekly in a classroom on the spacious campus at the University of Maryland and the academic dive training in those days was rigorous. Armed with flip charts and blackboards (yes they really were blackboards with slate & chalk), the instructors took turns lecturing on topics such as Boyle’s Law, Physics & Physiology of Diving, medical aspects and first aid. Dive tables were not only an entire 3 hour session; they were a separate section on the final exam where a failure was unacceptable. We lugged projectors, screens and trays of slides down icy sidewalks and into the hallowed halls of education. Every Sunday the students, instructors and helpers shivered their way into the pool locker rooms and groaned while they dragged on their bathing suits. Those of us with small children pulled them out of bed and eventually dumped them into the kiddy pool to amuse themselves during the 3 hour pool sessions. We all looked forward to the time when we could climb out of the pool, get a hot shower and head to the local breakfast nook or even better to a member’s home to share food and watch the Redskins on TV.

By early spring the students had finished up their pool sessions, classroom work and had passed their final exam leaving only the checkout dives before they became certified Scuba Divers. That was the only level of certification during those early years and it covered many levels of education including decompression diving and many of the other subjects that are now individual classes such as Advanced Diver, Wreck Diver, Cave Diver and so on. Many of these divers finished up their checkout dives and their first actual dive might be on one of the numerous Atlantic wrecks at 80-90 foot depths.

The actual number of students waiting to checkout might number 80-90 by spring time so their checkout dives were scheduled on different weekends in a flooded quarry in Pennsylvania, somewhere between York & Reading. Most of us were on pretty tight budgets so motels were not part of the equation. Instead, we stuffed our vans with canvas tents, Coleman stoves and lanterns, air mattresses and the warmest sleeping bags we could find. Spring in the Northeast United States is often wet – after all, they have all of those green, leafy trees that need water to survive. We usually left work around 4 or 5 pm, headed up the Interstate in groups, arriving at Willow Springs well into sunset. The kids ran around looking up their friends and eating whatever snacks they could dig out of our bags of food while the adults cursed their way through finding the right tent supports and tent pegs while trying to keep everything dry. Thankfully, we had some enterprising ex-boy scouts who would build a fire and eventually we managed to gravitate toward the warmth with the beverage of choice in our hands.

Dawn arrived too soon and it seemed always with a drizzle of rain or grumbles of everyone complaining that they could see their breath when they poked their heads out of the sleeping bags. Before the actual checkout dives could start, the instructors and helpers had to meet and discuss the details of getting the students geared up, into the water and out again safely. We would drag a bunch of picnic tables together, get a fire and coffee going and everyone would throw in some items for a huge breakfast while the planning went on. Everyone had an assignment – safety watchers, time recorders who checked every diver – instructor and student both – in and out of the water, volunteers who would set up lunch and runners who traveled back and forth from our vans and cars with pieces of equipment that got left behind. Students were struggling with rented gear, wetsuits that didn’t always fit, and the general nervous anticipation of facing “real water” instead of the comfy, clear pool water of a few months ago.

Surprisingly, things worked in a fairly orderly manner and by Saturday afternoon, the instructors were reviewing the performance of their students and looking forward to some relaxation and adult beverages that appeared around dinner time. It would be fair to say that almost everyone was tucked in their tents and out for the count by 8:30 or earlier on most evenings. Sunday morning was mostly a repeat of the previous day although there were always a few students who needed additional dives to finish up exercises that they didn’t complete the day before. The weekend ended up with a presentation of cards and certificates to the graduating divers and the pack-up of muddy tents and soggy sleeping bags was the signal that we were all headed back to the warmth of our car heaters and of course a stop at one of our favorite diners for a meal that wasn’t cooked on a camping stove and served on paper plates.

This scenario was repeated several times during the spring until all of our winter trainees were done and excitedly planning their first “real dives”. Thankfully, by late spring, the weather improved, the sun was warm enough to enjoy the outdoor activity and we all knew that the diving season was soon to begin. In the later years there was an additional course available called “Sport Diver” that didn’t involve classroom time but did take us back to the quarry for some practice in underwater navigation, lift bag use, advanced first aid and CPR techniques along with more in-depth diver rescue exercises than were included in the Scuba Diver Class.

By that time, Gary and his partner had created a company called SUDS – technically known as Safe Underwater Diving School and sometimes listed as Save Underwater Driving School and even Safe Underwater Divine School. For our families, that meant earlier dates at the quarry and a longer season of checkout dives since they were doing training for huge numbers of students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. At the same time, the kids and I had experienced the thrill of camping in cold, wet, windy and downright miserable conditions for long enough. We invested all of the money we didn’t have and purchased a 20’ Mini-Motor Home and our weekends became much easier to handle. We no longer had to trudge through the mud to the bathrooms (and that is a generous description of the facilities). We had hot showers, cold beer and meals cooked on a real stove. Blankets replaced sleeping bags and comfortable mattresses supported our tired bodies at the end of the day. We did still occasionally wake up to gloomy, rainy days with clouds that seemed to hang over us like magnets and we did still have to put on wet bathing suits and cold wetsuits and jump into water that seemed as cold as the Bering Sea but we felt that we could do anything if we could just get warm at the end of the day.

So, that is a long story to explain why my brain cells were standing at attention this morning as I watched the rain fall splotch my window panes and I dug into my dresser drawers for a toasty pair of socks to slip on my icy toes. As bad as it sounds, thinking about those good old days just warmed my heart.