"The Giant Stride, Lawnmower, and the 3 H's...

May 4th trip log, but is it a trip if I just have to drive a few miles?

The day started out a bit sketchy, Nathan was just starting to pack for his trip and I had to have him at the airport by 11 to be early for the boat dive. Who starts to pack the morning of a business trip? One that takes you away for a week? Sigh, thats the other problem, my house is completley empty, no kids, no Nathan, just me, what the heck? This will definitly be a LONG week! We get Nathan to the airport and I head out to Lake Travis Scuba , Today would be dives 10 and 11, I will meet 5 new divers and all of them are WAY more experienced then I am. Talk about intimidating. I had already talked with kvalve and ftwdiver so I was looking forward to putting the emails with the faces. Once I finally arrived at the Marina (yes I got lost, twice, jeesh) I notice two scuba divers. They really are not hard to pick out of a crowd, just look for the shirt with the dive flags. I meet Zinc (Brandon 1) and an older man (cant remember his name, he was the smart ass with the rebreather hehehee). I was a bit confused on procedure , I had no idea it was okay to take the golf carts, nor did I realize they were there on purpose to be taken. Brandon gave me a quick briefing …take gear out, put on cart, move car, look both ways at the top of the hill (Im on a standard and not exactly proficient going up a hill) and I was in motion. It surprises me that I feel a bit less clustered at the beginning of a dive, that is until I get to the boat. ..

Lake Travis Scuba, owns the boat we will be on today, and well Ive only been on a boat once, and I have only shore dives atup until this moment. However I get within shouting distence of “The Giant Stride” and already am being welcomed. Bill, David , Jim Bob, whatever you want to call him (as long as you call him) helped me orientate with preparing to leave for a boat dive. He was a patient man who had no problems teaching me a bit so I can not be one of “those divers” with no boat manners. I was instantly set at ease, I knew at that moment I was going to have a blast. The boat is quite nice here you can see a view of the outside http://www.laketravisscuba.com/gallery.html, inside where the gear sits is probably pretty standard, maybe even on the big side for boat dives, thats what I gathered from the more experienced divers anyway. However theres a nice somewhat inside area with ample dry storage and comfortable seating. While I am setting up my BCD I get my number (Im number 2) so I wont get left behind, and I also get a water weenie with a whistle (Im such a kid, saying weenie still makes me laugh almost as hard as when they are inflated, Im definitly the larger child in this family). Also at this time is when I get to meet “frank” / Matt / ftwdiver and Brandon 2 / txmanager, Brandon 2 is extremely shy but nice and polite and Frank is on the quiet side to, you can see his excitement as well and we joke a bit about our previous exchanges. Finally I get a call that Melissa and Chris are about to pull up with our tanks and so I head back to the front to help them unload.

Since I am over 15 I got to drive the golf carts, to bad they are slow, I can see the fun if they went just 5 more mph. Once I am at the front I see kvalve, I only recognized him because he had been described to me as a old tall teddy bear with salt and pepper hair (I added the old part lol). He is one of the few that read my blogs all the way through, so I definitley gotta give the man a huge, he was also correct in his height. Its nice to not always be the tallest person in the group. Instantly at ease with the man. Ive known of his experience and Ive talked with him enough to already respect his view and opinion in this sport and now to top it off he is very down to earth for a watergod. Even though I am so new , I was not treated as if I had cooties, I am a newb but thats okay cause they were once to. Its nice that they saw that, as that isnt always the case. In skydiving a newb is looked down upon generally, as if the skygods skydived out of the womb or something. This is a refreshing feeling to me.

Once we are all packed up and on board the group decides Sterns Island to start. At first it was going to be me and Melissa in our own group, but Chris, Frank and Brandon 2 joined us. We recieved a great briefing of the area and what to see. We were asked if we saw the lawnmower if we could tip it back the right way. I still am not good at calculating the time it takes to get ready and was baking in my 7 mil wetsuit with an additional 2 mil on my head and core so I offered to get in the water first. I had not taken a stride since training so I was a bit nervous but did fine and did not smash my face in the water first. Once we all grouped up we decended. I had a bit of trouble breaking the surface so I decided to calm down a bit and relax, funny enough that works and down we went. We were heading out to the sailboat and on the way Melissa found me a intact carnival cruise hurricane glass for a treasure. We checked out the boat, and heading towards the lawn mower. The five of us put it right which was surprisingly cool to do and its about this time Melissa made a new friend and had me laughing my butt off underwater. It wasnt to long after this that someone hit 1500 and we had to turn around. We found a nice spot to do our safety stop and I hit the surface with 1200ish psi. The boat wasnt to far away from where we came up at, and once at it I realized that I had to climb a ladder to get back on, uhhhh I had 20 lbs of weights, crap, and with all the waves and not using them to my advantage I got knocked off the ladder half way up. Now kids, my first PSA of the blog is this …. when climbing back in the boat have your reg in your mouth and goggles on!!! I learned this the hard way so listen to my advice lol. Since we had a long time to wait for the 3 solos or whatever they were doing this is when David/JimBob/ Boat operator gave me some more boat training per say. Which is good because I definitly plan to use his services more often. The vibe of the boat was awesome. I was granted getting motion sickness but they also told me how to fix that.
Once Kvalve got on the boat he asked me how deep I went, and well 60 ft, and he laughed and ribbed my rule following ways and said “and not one inch over hahaha” thats when I remembered I had broken a rule the day before and had to tell him all about my rebel ways.
Our next site was going to be the old scuba park, and me and Melissa were going it alone this time. We were planning to do a straight out then in dive. Thinking that we would get that navagation right. I of course got ready to early and had to hurry into the water, then Melissa, and we were decending before anyone else even was in the water. I knew this meant we had plenty of time to rest on the boat before others came back up. Prior to the dive we talked about how I felt comfortable to go deeper if it was just the two of us. She knows my oh shit faces, the good oh shit and the bad oh shit. This whole dive was a bunch of good oh shits. At my max depth to date I was the most relaxed to date. We saw one boat , one milk truck, and one inverted pool shell. About that time is when I hit my turn around mark. The plan had been to head to shore at 1500 psi and play around that area until we got down to 700 ish psi. We used our compasses and headed to shore… at 15 ft we were in middle water NOT shore. So we had a very interesting safety stop, one that had me laughing and actually enjoying the choas of not having anything around…Since we were not where we planned to be we surfaced after 3 minutes and realized we should use the weenie (hahahhaa) because we were a bit far from the boat. I couldnt shut up about how awesome the dive had been, it was just amazing. Granted neither of us on either dive saw even one fish but it was still an amazing dive.

Once on the boat we got to talk about the dive some more and just enjoy how beautiful the lake was. That is except for other boaters. Now folks here is where I get serious, just because any Joe, Dick , or Nancy can rent a boat does not mean they should be excluded from the rules. The boat has a HUGE flag on it and he also flies a flag. The flag means divers down ya dumb shits. When the three uber experienced guys weenies (hahahha) came up, we saw a pontoon boat heading straight for the weenie (hahaha) as if it was a beacon to say “Hey come look at me” … Its not a beacon, it means theres someone holding on to the other end. I stopped swearing at them to stop once I saw the kids on the boat, and as the boater BARELY missed the weenie (hahahha) and drove past us he apologized. Thats all good since no one was hurt, but next time it happens and my head gets run over, sorry isnt going to cut it Mister, Im gonna be pretty pissed when my happy day turns into watching a diver getting rescued and or being rescued because anyone with 60 bucks a hour can rent a boat with no knowledge of anything but turn the key and go.
Once everyone was onboard we get to head back to the dock. It was a rather enjoyable boat ride. It didnt hurt to have such awesome people around me. However the 3 H’s took over about 5 mins into the boat ride and I was already planning how to fulfill the one with food involved. We decided Mexican is the best after dives so we were going to hit Iquana’s after wards. 6 of us agreed to go and let me just tell you the food was glorious except the meat was a bit dry, and the view was awe inspiring. When you eat there make sure you try a Melon Margarita, they float midori around the frozen bliss and it was to die for.

If you have not dived with Lake Travis Scuba, then book here http://www.laketravisscuba.com/about.html right now he has openings but I dont suspect it will be easy to get a seat for long. You have plenty of dive sites to choose from, its value priced, and the entertainment value is ten fold. Tell him I sent ya, lol. And if you have been on the giant stride then you know how great it is and Ill see ya there. I plan to take the boat at least once a month , support your local dive shop and dive operation because Lake Travis Scuba is the best, and a great compliment to Windy Point. Austin definitly is a dive town and we have two of the best resources to utilize our lake, if we dont use them, we may lose them and I still havent seen the whole lake … so book now, just save me a seat.