Dive! Dive!

As I mentioned previously, Jess purchased a pass for an exploratory dive lesson at Dive Utah for me for Fathers Day.  We bought another pass for my brother as a graduation / birthday / getting caught up on whatever else we owed him gift.  Dive Utah was offering to extend the same special price to anyone else who wanted to come along with us, so my sister joined us, too.

Once we arrived, a nice guy named Doyle had us fill out some release forms and then took us back to a classroom where he explained what SCUBA stands for (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) and that the most important thing in SCUBA is to just keep breathing.  We got our equipment, hopped in the pool, and learned how to clear and breathe through the regulator, how to purge the mask, and how to equilibrate the pressure so your head doesn't feel like imploding.

After learning the basics, we swam over to the 12 ft deep portion of the pool, where we hung out underwater, tossed little dive toys at each other (harder than you'd think underwater), and enjoyed the fact that we were breathing in a place that previously was only accessible with the price of intense inner ear pain and aching lungs.  A very cool experience in all, and something that I think I'd like to pursue later in life.  Only bummer was that I felt a little dizzy when we were all done.  Small price to pay.

Here's the video summary:

(From The Life Aquatic, one of my favorite edited movies. My apologies about the poor video quality.)