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CLUBS…BATS AND LEAD WEIGHTS!
Groucho Marx said that he didn’t want
to belong to any club that would accept him as a member, and for roughly
my first thirty years or so it sounded like a pretty good plan, after
all Groucho knew all sorts of things.
When we learned to dive the idea of
joining a club and going to meetings to talk to people about diving,
sounded; at best…goofy. This simply meant we didn’t, really know ships
from shinola when it came to diving and especially the special feeling
one gets from sharing a special, unique and otherworldly experience with
other people.
Recently (last October) my
buddy/wife/best friend and I took a driving trip up to Pensacola to do a
couple of dives with some of our fellow club members Chris and Jeff
Cross on the largest artificial reef in the world, the famous “Mighty O”
the U.S.S Oriskany!
If you decide to visit, we suggest you plan your
first day as a beautiful drive through the picturesque Florida
countryside of rolling hills, Spanish moss and orange trees. After
you’ve driven for a long, long time, almost to a point when you think
you should be getting there…make a left and drive for a few more hours
until you pull up outside your hotel room. After a short break to get
your local legs, head over to one of the growing number of dive
operations in the area to check in for your trip, meet the good folks
you’re trusting with your life, and of course buy a souvenir hat,
t-shirt…maybe a sticker or a safety sausage.
The nice, life in their hands people will
tell you where to be and when to be there and since you’ve driven all
this way you say (with a big smile) O.K so you want us at the dock at
7:30 ready to load up and go, we’ll be there! Then go back to your room
and relax for a while, sleep and dream about driving thru the
picturesque Florida country side of rolling hills, Spanish moss and
orange trees…all night long…individual results may vary.
In the morning, after some dock stuff and about an hour
and a half of boating stuff you end up at (what the locals call) the
Great Carrier Reef and it was time for some diving and the diving was,
well, truly awesome. But…these days awesome can describe a lot of
different things and this time it describes the experience of roughly a
million thumb sized jellyfish who were hanging around waiting to greet
us in the first thirty feet of water. Cute and mostly non-aggressive
they danced around our faces and stung us only when they wanted too,
some posed for pictures and as we headed down to the ship, they didn’t.
Mooring lines (and of course lead weights) make the
trip down an easy no-brainer, unless there happens to be a lot of
current that day, then as you pull yourself down the line it can
certainly be a more physical no-brainer. Soon you spot a truly super
structure, and at first glance it is hard to determine its size. The
best words I can think to use are huge or massive but even they fall far
short.
Moving slowly thru the now glassless openings of
the Captains Bridge gave me an overwhelming feeling of stepping/swimming
back into time, into a hallowed place where some of our history and the
ultimate sacrifices were made, an even finer point is put on this when
you swim out and see the Stars and Strips and the M.I.A P.O.W. Memorial
flag waving in the current from lines strung from the ship…incredibly
moving. Slowly, (maybe on your second dive) you start to make contact
with this sunken city and you may begin to see why it took thirty years
and thirty million dollars to put this retired ship back to work as an
artificial reef. Years of effort went into removing a long list of toxic
substances and eliminating some of the potentially perilous diver
related conditions. Of course some aspects of diving deep into any
underwater overhead structure are inherently dangerous and can not be
eliminated; only training and experience can lessen the risk and in
turn, enhance the fun.
A few weeks later at our regular club meeting
(during our dive report segment) we listened to those of others and told
our own dive tales and shared our first hand and first time experiences
of diving on a spectacular piece of history with our friends in the
club. After the meeting, (in a strange way) those dives got even
better; at least they did for me, one of our long time (founding)
members, Dick Jones (we call him DJ) came up to me after the meeting to
mention that he had landed his jet fighter a number of times on the
flight deck of the Oriskany during the Vietnam war and that when he was
landing and first spotted the ship from the air it looked the size of a
postage stamp, then only minutes later you were touching down at full
speed and slamming to a stop at the end of the cable. As he spoke,
almost instantly the strong connection between the ship, the history and
this man all came together, I could hardly speak and later I realized
that all this I was feeling had come from being in a special kind of
club and having an opportunity to share our experiences diving with
great people.
Clubs like ours allow for a lot of story
telling, travel stories, kids, life and family stories and of course
dive stories (perfect for me) and in our club, once a year, those who
aren’t out diving that day, get together to play a little softball game
for fun and charity. Subsequently once a year I get to write a fun
little softball game for charity story and include it in the meetings’
minutes, and this year we had a great game, a great time and have a
great little story to share with others.
Let’s, play ball!
Finally the day of the final game of the
dive club season was upon us, with a warm breeze and under a cloudless
sky, the players trickled slowly onto the field for the April Sunday
morning classic.
The teams of nine were picked from a jar
and their captains laid out the game plans for the day. Unofficially the
Yankees and the Red Socks took turns risking life and limb, mostly limb
while at the same time swinging, running and, if you can believe
it, sliding around the bases for more than an hour while a gang of
paparazzi took close-up pictures of every wrinkle of the action. The
runs came in short bursts with the score see-sawing back and forth as
the innings passed. A short timeout was taken to remove an injured Guy (Willin)
from the field; “mostly so no one would trip over him” and at last
report an x-ray was recommended for that player by the clubs medical
team. Gary ran into an immovable object on the field then hit the
ground…un-hurt he was also able to drag himself to the next base.
Unfortunately after all was said and done…both teams ended the season
without winning a single game, but everybody left the field determined
to try again next year. Then; a great meal fit for hungry ball players
followed the game with everyone coming out a winner. But most
importantly before all the fun, sun and excitement…the blood and glory
and the smell of old leather (the gloves not the players) is the fact
that this was all done for the sake of others, with a mission to raise
money for the Harlem Heights Foundation Summer Camp For Kids Project.
Another one of our long time members Kathryn Kelly is the executive
director of this fine foundation. The final numbers were not in at press
time but the preliminaries looked really good.
Finally I believe a good time was had
by all…especially those that could still walk away under their own
power, so until next time this is your diver for life Joe Arcuni.
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