Friday, October 04, 2013

SCUBA

Apparently I've already annoyed all my friends talking about how awesome SCUBA is.
SCUBA is awesome. Now when I tell a friend how awesome SCUBA is they say "Hey, I heard you can breathe underwater" to me.
But, Dude, I say, you can breathe underwater.

Seriously that's the most amazing thing.
So far I've only done like 9 dives and they've all been at Dutch Springs, a quarry in Pennsylvania. And I know that a lot of the old hat divers are all like "you have to go to Belize" or whatever -- but I just don't care. I will dive in your swimming pool. I would dive in a bathtub if it's big enough. Seeing groovy fish is cool but so is being in a very silty environment. I love seeing the beams of light coming up off of other divers when it's so dark and silted up you can't see more than a few feet away.
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Right up at the very beginning of SCUBA training (with PADI) I had the option of going with the Imperial or Metric units of measurement. Normally I'd simply default to Metric because calculations are typically easier.
But the way they teach safe ascents is that you should ascend at 1 foot per second or one meter in four seconds.
I decided that since the ascent rate was one of the most important numbers I'd have to keep a hold of in my mind during a potentially stressful situation. So therefore I'd do one foot a second. So I'm using Imperial for everything.
Incidentally, my computer prefers one foot every two seconds (a meter every 8 seconds) as the ascent rate. Still that's either 18 meters per minute or 9 meters per minute, versus 60 feet per minute or 30 feet per minute. The Imperial is just easier to count. 
And yeah, I know the numbers don't work out. That's just the standards they use so at least they come out to even numbers of feet or meters.
So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Until we finally alter our time system so it is decimal or we alter our numbering system so it is dozenal or duodecimal. Because I'm totally down with that.


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Any math errors I may have made above I totally reserve the right to correct and then pretend they were never there in the first place.

2 comments:

Kangas said...

Until I can see you breathe in water like in the abyss, it's just not that impressive. Do THAT and I'll be impressed. :)

Andrew Bellware said...

I could do it... in a movie.