Welcome to Thunderdome

Dramamine is more likely to cause drowsiness. May want to try bonine ahead of time to see how he reacts to it. Supposedly less drowsy. Knocks my ass out, but so does dramamine.

Wife uses dramamine for open water activities, and sometimes winding roads as well, she recommends it.

We did a bunch of free diving classes followed by a spearfishing 101 class in Hawaii.

Was a lot of fun, you really get better rapidly when you understand the technique and why you do things the way you do them.

Saw a ton of green sea turtles above and below the water. Didn't take any fish, though we stalked a few. I only got to shoot the guns a few times underwater in practice.

I'll be interested to read a trip report on your Wilmington dive, my dad and brother were/are certified and have done a few dives in that area.

SO here's the trip report from the recent vacation.


I drove to Huntsville, Alabama and spent the night, and the next morning went to the NASA Rocket Center to pick up my kid who was graduating from Space Camp.

My kid is in red under the "we."



That day we drove 10 hours down near Gainesville, Florida, and checked into a shitty little cabin at The Blue Grotto. It's a freshwater spring and looked like a cool dive.... and it would be our first solo dive without an instructor watching us. Scary stuff.

Also stressful as hell, for me.

- I didn't know if they would give us a hard time about him only being 10.... there was another spring that told us "got to be at least 12, we don't care what certifications you have."
- I didn't know how crowded they would be on a Saturday morning... my guess was "very."
- I didn't know anything about the logistics of putting on gear and diving.... no one to show us the ropes, and totally newb at it.
- I didn't know how hard it would be to rent tanks, if at all, and get them refilled...
- And icing on the cake, a tropical depression had formed in the Gulf and was heading right for us, it looked like it was going to hit Monday morning, right in the middle of the vacation.

Just a shitload of noob uncertainty. I was flying by the seat of my pants, planning an entire dive vacation without hiring a guide.

I just didn't know shit about shit, and the plan was to be at another dive site after noon, and it was just a lot and on top of the previous stress of trying to get certified, described in a previous post, I was feeling a lot of stress and didn't sleep well that night.

ANYWAY.... the fact I didn't sleep well was good, because at first light I was up before the alarm and looking around outside, and yeah, people were already gearing up at 7am, and you couldn't dive until 8. I saw someone go into the office early, and long story short, they had no issues with his age and rented us tanks that we could even take to the next site. They didn't GAF. Then they told us we could do stuff WAY beyond what our instructor told us we were allowed to do... and that was interesting.

So we did our first solo dive as a team, all scared and uncertain, and I didn't set my GoPro camera date properly, and I didn't mess around much to get any still shots, and the 75 pound kid with very little body mass was unable to maintain body heat even with a 3mm wet suit in the 72 degree water, and at 35 minutes he was shivering and we called it a successful dive.

Here's a turtle we saw during our safety stop at 20 feet, on our way up. The kid is there next to me, the dude sitting on the ledge is an instructor watching his noobs on their checkout dive. After we were out and dropping gear, he came over and asked us how old my kid was, and said he was impressed by his skills. That was a neat compliment on our first dive. Soon after a different guy came over and asked where we were from, because he ran a "youth diving club" in Tampa, and said Will would be a great addition to it.



So we broke for lunch, and found a neat little diner in town where the air conditioning was broken, but that was fine, we needed to warm up, and we pretended it was 1930 in the deep south.

After a great cheeseburger we went across the street from Blue Grotto to Devil's Den. This ended up being the best dive of the trip..... so good we snuck in another dive several days later at the end of the vacation, on our way north. It was about 2pm when we got there, still Saturday, and was busy as hell... mostly snorkelers. Scuba divers seem to be kind of "elite" in this crowd. We were chatting with some millennials at one point before our dive when we were scoping out the area, we took pics of them, they took pics of us. I asked if they were there diving, they said, "No, we're not that cool, just snorkeling." One of the girls said she liked my shirt.


The area is frikkin gorgeous. We were under a tree that had massive, dropping branches that would cover a football field.

So I'm getting a sense of the vibe of the community. The dive briefing guy in the office said Scuba peeps have right of way... there are a lot of stairs down to the cavern, and snorkelers are expecting to stay clear of the peeps in the heavy gear. Makes sense and appeals to my innate sense of superiority. The guy also said we could go ANYWHERE under water that wasn't specifically barred off, or had the ubiquitous "cave cert required after this point and you WILL die" grim reaper sign. He said the deepest part was 55 feet and to have fun.

So we geared up and hit the stairs down.

The spring is like a collapsed bowl, there's only one hole in the middle, and they cut stairs down into it, and finished it off with a set of wooden stairs. There are more pics on their website if you are curious.



Still a little shakey, still feeling a little noobish, still screwed up the date on the camera, but at least that time there were a couple stills, on the surface. The camera cost $42 and is water tight, takes 12MP pictures, and records video and sound at 1080P. Lightyears beyond the piece of shit camera I was using in Nebraska 15 years ago.

Anyway, another good dive... my kid was adventurous, which I liked, and did some crazy shit like squeezing through holes between massive fallen rocks, 30 feet under water. I may have linked this before, but here's an embed.



All in all a really great dive.... my kid was shivering again at about 35 minutes, so we cut it a little short again, but I aint even mad. I'm the asshole whose idea this was, I'm not going to push him hypothermic.

After we surfaced, floating round, talking about what we did and saw, a young woman floats over to us, interested in his age, astounded he is only 10, and diving. She said, "Yeah, someday you'll be telling girls 'I've been scuba diving since I was 10, no big deal.'" We talked (and laughed) about our dive instructor in Ohio, and all of the things he said we couldn't do.... he even told us to not go into the cabin of that little boat in the one video of our certification dives, because "Technically it is an overhead environment, and you need to be certified for that." And then we dove Devil's Den. I'll probably not show him these videos.

The stairway in/out was "1 person-at-a-time." I let him haul himself up first, that shit sooooo heavy on his back, but he impresses the fuck out of me.... not because he is so strong, but because he isn't, and still tries hard. When I followed behind I saw an older gentleman helping him up the last few steps, taking some of the tank weight off his back. He was impressed by the kid's age, and sympathetic, he knew the kid was hauling about half his body weight on his back. He laughed and said he wouldn't be helping me.

More compliments topside, too, from instructors. I had no idea people were watching, that he was that unique.

We high fived for a great, and successful, first day of scuba diving. He sprayed the sand out of our wet suits as I packed up the truck. All of the stress I had been carrying for weeks and months melted away.... things were working out just fine, and I was in an outstanding mood, damn near euphoric. We returned our rented tank and pointed the car a couple more hours south for Orlando.

To be continued.

The hotel I chose for the next couple days was in Lake Mary, kind of a northern suburb of Orlando, and near the next two places I wanted to dive, and even had a dive shop close by for tank rental. I planned the shit out of this vacation.

We checked in to the hotel at 5:05pm, were in the room by 5:10 and I went online to see how fast we had to get to the dive shop.... I wanted to rent the tanks that night so we could go right to the springs first thing in the morning.... and the dive shop had closed at 5. And wasn't going to reopen until Sunday at 1 in the afternoon. Fuuuuuuuck. I did a lot of analyzing of the situation, and decided we could still fit in both dives the next day.... we'll just have a lazy morning, get a good lunch, be at the shop at 1, get the tanks, and be diving at the first spring by 2. I was pretty noobishly optimistic.

The dive shop cleared up my misconceptions.

On weekends in nice weather, those springs fill the fuck up REALLY early. We got to the dive shop at 1 the next day when they opened, explained our situation, and they went ahead and called both places for us... both were at capacity, they had lines of cars at the gates, and one car would get in for every car that left. Last dives were 4 in the afternoon. Sunday was a complete wash. We were in Florida to dive, and the only two dive spots within an hour were off the grid.



So the plan was that we would do our best to dive both sites super early Monday morning.... we were due in Orlando at 1pm for a scheduled thing. I was optimistic we could dive both if we were at the farther one when it opened at 8am. I took this pic that afternoon. Two big tanks were the rentals from Ohio, the two little ones were the ones I rented at the local dive shop.... and I didn't want to leave them in the car all day, in the Florida sun and heat, because I prefer my scuba tanks to NOT explode in my truck. It was just all so sad, 4 full tanks and nowhere to dive.

Then I had a thought.... maybe I could reschedule Monday's thing for that day, Sunday, instead? I made a call, and they were awesome, and we could do it THAT day at 4, and then not be in a rush Monday morning to do our two dives super fast.

So we drove on down to Orlando to this place



and did this



Why yes, as a matter of fact I AM in the running for "Best Dad, June 2016." And yes, that woman was as hot as she looks.

And after we did that we went to a pirate dinner that was like Medieval Times except with pirates. Pro tips: YES do the VIP package, but NO do not upgrade to the T-Bone steak. Just do the quarter chicken. Or don't eat at all and fill up on hors d'oeuvres in the VIP lounge before the show.

I wrote up the steak review on facebook:

Since this photo was taken I've literally not had the ten minutes I knew I would need to write a proper review of the meal I ate at this Pirate Dinner Theater. We got back to the hotel room late and I started packing, we were up at 6:30 and checked out by 7, scuba diving all morning, drove to the hotel at Universal, movie, etc etc. That brings us to now.

Let me begin by saying that the adult ticket was in the neighborhood of $70, and the dinner was chicken or pot roast... which could be upgraded to a "t-bone steak" for an extra $15. I upgraded to the steak.

Now, let me take a moment to explain something, I'm 44 years old, and I've been around the world, often eating stuff. I've eaten steak in Greece garnished with cucumbers and tomatoes. In Jamaica where I wondered if it was actually beef. In Japan where I was shocked by the huge bill... the menu was in Japanese. In Malaysia where it was dry and overcooked. I've even eaten steak on Marine military bases, and on US Naval ships.... really bad, in general. I say all this not to brag, but so you fully understand my meaning when I say....

The steak I was served at the Pirate Dinner Theater in Orlando was the worst steak I've ever eaten. It was thin, possibly a quarter inch thick. The bone was not in the shape of a "T." It was gray. They couldn't possibly have boiled it, could they? It was so bad that I suspect the cow from which it was cut had a sad, depressed, and possibly tortured life. I imagine it bullied by the other bigger, cooler, more attractive cows in the cattle yard. I imagine its father expressing disappointment in it, and its mother never showing it the affection she gave to its siblings. I imagine it sullen and withdrawn and never joining in the cow games. Going to the slaughter house was a delight, to this cow... and on its last day it ate a bunch of cow shit on purpose just to taint its own flavor.

The steak was really bad. Don't order it. The chicken quarters looked edible, though.

On the other hand, my kid, the pickiest eater on Earth, fucked up the Swedish meatballs in the VIP lounge, before the show.

That evening was about $200 and NOT werf. Your mileage may vary, but that really was the big dud of the entire trip.

But we'd had really good weather all day, when we could have been scuba diving, and it started to rain that night. My wife, already stressing about her baby scuba diving, started double stressing about the incoming storm... she knew I would dive rain or shine, and she was certain that lightening would strike us and would be upset if it killed her son. So I was getting a lot of shit via voice and text from her. But I looked at the weather website that night, and it looked like a 7 hour window of no rain, for the morning....

Morning came, and it was raining at 7am when we left the hotel room, and when we arrived at Alexander Springs at 8am when they opened, the rain was done. And we were the only ones there. We had the place to ourselves.

When we were geared up and ready to start walking to the water, a fucking family of armadillos came out of the brush and came at us... a momma and three babies. It was the damndest thing. One even walked across my foot.



On our way to the water a couple more cars showed up, but they'd never catch up to us at that point. We literally were the only humans in the water for our entire dive.

We were feeling like pros at this point... our second day of diving, not rushed, not raining, all alone, and I even set the camera date correctly.



It's a pretty basic dive, basically a big bowl where water shoots out of cracks in the rock, only 27 feet at its deepest... but it's neat, and it is where I learned to dive about 30 years ago, and now my son has memories of it, too. Most of the local dive instructors certify their noobs here, because it's simple.

We had fun.



Unfortunately, a bit dull. Once you have stuck your head in the 4 or 5 places where water is shooting out of the rocks, you've pretty much done it all. 30 minutes down, he was getting cold, we called it.

Google maps navigated me to the next site down 7 miles of orange clay washboard road, and that took about 30 minutes because it was so fucking bumpy, but finally we made it to our second dive spot of the day, Blue Spring. The guard at the gate who registered us for scuba diving said he'd never seen anyone as young as my son diving there, but our certification cards were still valid.

This was the other place I learned to dive, and when I was 16 I actually went 120 feet to the bottom. I would have taken my son that deep, if he wanted to... but he didn't want to, and I didn't push. He'll want to next time.

Anyway, this spring creates a river where manatees winter, so it can't even be dove when they are there. Sea World releases rescued manatees in this place.

This was our most boringest dive. The spring itself is basically a hole at the bottom of a pool that... basically... goes down really far, with some rock shelves at different geological layers. We discussed the plan beforehand (always have a dive plan, and dive your plan) and my kid only wanted to do 50ish feet, and as I said I was fine with that.... but what do you do after the 5 minutes it takes you to hit that depth? We explored the shelves a bit, and I snuck down to 65 feet to get a pic of the grim reaper sign.... which of course is when my camera battery died. So live and learn: the camera I mentioned can record 5 hours of 1080P video, but the batter lasts less than an hour, so change it between dives.



The downed trees were at about 17 feet of depth.

Weird thing about Blue Spring... other places, the more I dove, the more graceful I was getting, especially after the rocks of Devil's Den. With minimal movement I could glide between obstructions, able to propel myself forward with just tiny flicks of my fins. But in this place there is a column of water shooting up the middle of that vertical shaft, and depending on your location in the shaft it messes with your buoyancy and makes you look like a fucking newb, bouncing around off of shit.

We surfaced at 20 minutes, literally nothing else left to see with our depth restrictions.... the stern guard at the gate told us that our certification allowed us to go to 50 feet PERIOD and we weren't allowed to take dive lights PERIOD. Rules which, of course, I chose to ignore.... but I did tell my kid to not take out his light until we were below 20, so no one topside could see. And then I went to 65.

SO we popped up and about 30 snorkelers are there all impressed by the scuba divers, and they are asking us questions like what did we see, and how deep did we go? I look at this group of people I didn't know, and I answered, "We went as deep as we were legally allowed to go, of course." I don't think any of them got my inference, I just got blank stares. Oh well.

Eating a late lunch at about 3:00.... we would have missed the 1pm iFly stuff, if we hadn't rescheduled.... it started to rain. My accurately predicted the window of no rain, and we had our second successful day of diving.

To be continued.

Great write-ups and vids - thanks for sharing!

Are you using a go-pro(or other camera) mounted to your mask?

Since we had so much fun freediving in HI, I'm tempted to get into freediving/spearfishing on the west coast as well. Only - visibility is bad as a rule (5-10 feet), and kelp beds kind of freak me out. I'm still pondering it. I'll probably go check out the dive scene in San Diego in the late summer. I also don't want to have to buy a pair of 7mill wetsuits.

I almost bought a mask with the camera mount, but then I didn't... and after diving, I kinda wish I had, to free up my hand. I went back to the dive shop to look at that mask again, and it was $90. Maybe someday.

Now, I mentioned the wife already had anxiety over her son scuba diving, so she kept trying to make her own, safer, plans for us during the dive vacation. If it had been up to me it would have been 2 dives a day for 6 days.... but at one point I relented and let her plan us 2 days at Universal Studios. There isn't really anything to say about that.... Harry Potter lands, overpriced, crappy food, long lines, blah blah blah. It was fine. But then before she left she talked the kid into wanting to go to Sea World to see the Shamu shows before they got taken away, so we ended up with a 3rd amusement park day at Sea World. Rained all day. Their big new shark theme coaster was shut down all day because of it. Way to not plan on operating in Florida weather.

And then my dive shop guy up here in Ohio wanted his rented gear back on Saturday when I had planned on returning Sunday evening, so my seven days to dive turned into two and a half. You've already heard about the first two days.... then we spent 3 days at Universal and Sea World, and then we had a day and a half to get from Orlando to Toledo before the dive shop closed, a drive of 17 hours.

So I decided to sneak one more dive in on the way out of the state.... we returned to Devil's Den that Friday morning.

Got there about 10am, way fewer people than the previous Saturday, our first time, but still a few peeps here and there. This time we knew what we were doing, and gearing up and stuff was quick and easy. I was pleased when I was still running here and there after unloading the gear doing random things, and I came back and my kid had his gear already assembled, waiting on me.



It was just as great the second time around, and we still didn't find the 55 foot depth. Deepest my wrist computer saw was 47 feet, so we really need to go back yet again and look for that deep spot.



And that was a great little dive to close out Florida with. As a hobby I don't regret taking it up, though I do wish it wasn't so expensive to start up. Gear rental was 350 in Ohio for 10 days and I still had to rent tanks in Florida, and these private springs cost about $35 each to dive. A basic buoyancy vest and regulator costs about $700 to purchase. It's just UGH. With two of us we need to have a c-note just to consider going to the local quarry for a couple hours.

But the father/son memories and life experience for him.... I think it's worth it.



Here's a little thing I did on the way out the door. Feels like a cap on the vacation. (Out of the water, in the waterproof case, audio going through the air doesn't penetrate very well to the camera microphone)



Equipment used:

Mask antifog.
Gear bag. For fins and masks and odds and ends. Very awesome bag.
Dive lights. Bought 2, both worked flawlessly. Comes with a rechargeable battery, sturdy case to store it in and tossing it in the gear bag, and keychain LED flashlight.
The camera. A basic GoPro clone. Worked very well. Comes with tons of different mounts.
Wetsuits. We used 3mm wetsuits, as I said, still a little cold for the kid with no body mass. Was perfect for me.
Fins, snorkel, mask I let the dive instructor sell us his stuff, he said it was high-end. Prolly cheaper on amazon.
Dive computers We each have one, it pretty much takes care of handling your bottom time, decompression limits, etc. Kind of low-end as far as these things go, but I already had sticker shock from the cost of everything else, and they got the job done.

Thus ends the dive vacation travelogue. See you next month.

I know scuba diving is considered a sport, but is it really? I feel like this thread should be in General.

Awesome posts Gordo! What a great experience for you and your son to share. I can promise you it was worth every penny, its something you guys can share in for years to come and maybe someday he will be doing the same with his son.

I went scuba diving with Leisher's wife (My cousin, so don't get any weird thoughts guys!) in Cozumel Mexico years ago and it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. Cozumel has the second largest coral reef in the world behind only the Great Barrier Reef off of Austrailia and it was a beautiful thing to see.

It's not for everyone though. We had a 300 pound beast of a woman in our group and she had problems. We got to maybe 10-15 feet deep and she was having problems getting her ears to adjust to the water pressure and immediately was giving our dive instructor the "I've got a problem signal" and had to surface, her dive was done. Leisher's wife and I had a good chuckle about that. I'm pretty sure we only got to a max depth of 30-35 feet, but you could feel the pressure difference. We were instructed to pinch our nose and blow to get your ears to adjust and I did it once and had no problems with it after that. I'm sure its something that you get used to after doing it regularly. Did your son have any problems with getting used to the water pressure?

SO, did you guys do a "discover scuba" type of thing? Usually equalizing your ears is the first thing you learn in the pool when certifying.

And yeah, it gets to the point where you don't even think about it. You go another 10 feet, you pinch your nose and blow, no big deal. Even my son.... in our open-water training the first time in the quarry, it took him about 10 minutes to pull himself down the chain to get to the 20 foot platform. I was seriously concerned about his ability to proceed. He would go 3 feet down the chain, try to clear his ears and fail, then go back up 2 feet.... because that was the procedure if you couldn't clear your ears. Go up a little bit and try again w/less pressure. But by our last checkout dive he was clearing his ears just fine, and like I said, in these solo dives, we don't even think about it any more, we just do it.

Funny you should mention Cozumel... I was just looking up resort dive packages there to see if we could find a cheap one for his Christmas break from school.... unfortunately that seems to be their most expensive period of time. I don't want my kid to go half a year without diving through the Winter and forget his skillz.

SO, did you guys do a "discover scuba" type of thing?

We were on a cruise and one of the excursion packages offered was scuba diving. We had a short, maybe 15 minute in water instruction before we went out. Probably should have been a little longer and nobody really knew what they were doing but hey, its Mexico!

The water was so clear and the colors were like pastel paints, no need for a light. The sun lit the water so well even at 30 feet, everything was crystal clear. If you're looking for a place to dive, I'm sure Cozumel would be a decently priced place, but it is Mexico and I might have my reservations before going there again. Hell, we saw the Mexican military driving right down the main tourist strip in open Jeeps with their assault rifles right at their side.

Yeah, in those 3rd world shitholes, stay within the tourist fences.

All the good reefs are at 30 feet.

Stranger wrote:We were instructed to pinch our nose and blow to get your ears to adjust and I did it once and had no problems with it after that.

So... sometimes I feel like the only person in the world who can equalize without having to do all that.

Can anyone else just open up an ear muscle and the equalization happens? It's magic on scuba, cuz I just contract the muscle, and it equalizes as I go down, no pressure.

My wife had pressure equalizing, I told her to use the ear muscle, and she looked at me like I was crazy.

My cousin, so don't get any weird thoughts guys!

Like that's ever been a barrier to a Clevelandite.

Malcolm wrote:

My cousin, so don't get any weird thoughts guys!

Like that's ever been a barrier to a Clevelandite.

Not to derail the thread but.. Technically I'm not from nor did I ever live in Cleveland. I'm actually a resident of Michigan now.

I'm actually a resident of Michigan now.

So more meth and occasionally the Tigers win a World Series? Nice trade up.

Malcolm wrote:

I'm actually a resident of Michigan now.

So more meth and occasionally the Tigers win a World Series? Nice trade up.

Actually heroin is the major epidemic around here..

Sorry Gordo, your Scuba thread is awesome and I've loved reading it. Malcolm is always trying to get a rise outta me.

so back to Scuba now.

TheCatt wrote:

Stranger wrote:We were instructed to pinch our nose and blow to get your ears to adjust and I did it once and had no problems with it after that.

So... sometimes I feel like the only person in the world who can equalize without having to do all that.

Can anyone else just open up an ear muscle and the equalization happens? It's magic on scuba, cuz I just contract the muscle, and it equalizes as I go down, no pressure.

My wife had pressure equalizing, I told her to use the ear muscle, and she looked at me like I was crazy.

I can do that when ascending, just open up and flex my jaw a bit to relieve inner ear pressure, but I didn't even know it was possible the other way around.

Stranger wrote:Sorry Gordo, your Scuba thread is awesome and I've loved reading it. Malcolm is always trying to get a rise outta me.

so back to Scuba now.

I was wondering why he ever thought Cleveland.