The thaw is coming and in preparation we are loading up a few more discover scuba experiences. I always love doing these because of the enthusiasm of the new students. By no means does that mean that experience divers are less enthused, but there is something about that first time hitting the water. Our next one is Saturday 3/19 at 1:00 pm. If you are interested then shoot me an email or check out our website www.freedomscubausa.com and we will get you in the water. Also there are some dry courses you can take that same day. There are 2 conservation classes and 1 Nitrox class (I love that class) so if you’re interested give us a look.

Once I started diving I realized that even without traveling I could escape the weather with a solid dive in the pool. Especially if you’ve never dove, the pool and taking classes really let’s you focus on warmer weather. This also goes for anyone who is already certified. With over 100 inches of snow now is a great time to sign up for a refresher class or even better start a continuing education dive class. We can help you with any interest just shoot us an email. Stay warm!

Yesterday we had a great discover scuba. 5 people got their first taste of scuba and it seemed like all 5 liked it. It really makes us happy to be able to share our love of diving with people. We have another discover scuba experience next saturday and would be happy to schedule a time for anyone who is interested. Just send us an email and we will get you set! Have a great weekend.

All of my tests are done. Good scores on all. Confined water and classroom are good and done. Skills done too! Only thing left is open water tomorrow. This was a great experience. I would defiantly continue to take classes with PADI and Oceandivers. I can’t wait to start teaching. Have a great night!

So far I got a 24 out of 25 on my skills and then a 5.0 on my confined water and a 4.3 on knowledge review. All scores are out of 5 so I am very happy. We have 2 tests at 3:30 and then open water tomorrow. There are 2 presentations in the open water tomorrow. Wish me luck! I am posting pictures monday on freedomscubausa.com under gallery. Check them out monday night.

We just got our assignments. I got dive management as my classroom presentation. For confined water I drew scuba unit removal replacement. In the open water I got neutral buoyancy using the low pressure inflator hose and rigging and lifting an object with a lift bag.

Sorry for the delay we had a few internet issues and i was exhausted. The IDC is going great. Oceandivers and Georgia are amazing. I feel very prepared. I felt like I could pass the Instructors exam (IE) if we started it 2 days ago. This course is an amazing way to really take diving to the next level. The weather here is pretty rough with Bonnie just getting here but it was fine. We have spent ton of time in the water but the water is 89F so no worries. We did an 84 min dive on nitrox just the other day. I really like nitrox and it really helps keep you fresh. Basically if I can dive nitrox I will from here on out! Have a great day.

Ok, so yeah I’m at the IDC and that’s great and all but we got to log a dive in a chamber today! Very interesting. We did dive theory all morning which was just a dive master review session. However, after lunch we got to meet dick rutkowski who gave us a dive in the chamber. To give you an idea PADI started issuing instructor numbers starting at 1 and he is in the low 500s and I am around 240000. He basically has a museum here.
The chamber dive was crazy. We “dove” to 100 ft for 15 min. on the way down it started to get really warm. There go those crazy gas laws again. As pressure increases so does temperature. There is a way to talk to the people outside however, air is more dense under pressure. Basically you sound the opposite of sucking in a helium balloon. Once again it caught me off guard but made complete sense once i thought about it for 1 second. On the way up the temperature obviously changes and drops pretty good. Overall it was an amazing experience. Not only was the chamber amazing but there is a foam cup there that got compressed when a submersible took it out underwater and a plate from the Andrea Doria. I posted pictures on http://twitter.com/Jaymeany
Time for bed I have a busy day tomorrow.

Today I did the Emergency First Responder Instructor course. A very good course overall. It really helped taking the EFR course pretty close to the EFR Instructor course. There was a large amount of material I remembered from the course I had taken previously. I did very well on the test with a high 90%. The issues I had were stupid mistakes. Once we finished the EFRI we did the Emergency Oxygen Provider Specialty Instructor course. That was really easy. We had all had Nitrox certification so the students understood the precautions needed for pure Oxygen. Tomorrow is the Dive Theory review class. I have a pretty solid understanding of this topic so I’m excited fro the next step. More tomorrow night!!!

So far travel has been fairly painless. The plane from syracuse to JFK was small so I had trouble with carryons but I worked it out. This underwater camera rig is very heavy. Much so more then I thought it would be. Of course I got screen at security because the camera look suspicious. Oh well that’s the breaks. I am currently waiting for my bags to show up on the belt so I can get my car and get to the keys! Ill write more tonight.