SCUBA DIVING

SCUBA UTAH

Who knew you could go Scuba Diving in Utah? I guess I sort of did, because I’ve swam in the Crater in Midway and people scuba dive there.

Laura and I found Groupon deals for Scuba Utah like forever ago, and I bought a “scuba discovery class” for Mic and I for his Birthday last year. Somehow a year went by since I bought the groupon and it expired. I called and talked to the owner and convinced her to still accept our expired groupons, and the four of us went scuba diving. SO much fun.

I was super nervous. I’d snorkeled before and that seemed challenging enough.

Our group was small, just Alex, Laura, Mic, me, and two other people. There was a main instructor and 3 assistants. They put all the gear on us, and then we pushed ourselves from the edge of the pool into the water. We all sunk down with the weight of the tanks and everything, but I kept sort of floating back to the top so they put a ton of weights in my vest to weigh me down. At first the added weight weighing me down freaked me out a little bit. I kept picturing myself drowning, and no one being able to pull me to the surface. But after a few minutes I was able to get used to it.

The instructor taught us a lot of scuba diving skills and had us pass them off individually for him. I totally failed the “Regulator Recovery”, it’s a test where you take the regulator out of your mouth, let it float away from you, and do some tricky arm movement to get it back. I kept panicking and forgetting which direction to swing my arm in order to retrieve my breathing tube thing. (Sorry I don’t remember all the technical terms, and should probably research them but I’m sure you get what I mean). The first time I attempted this step and panicked, I had to motion frantically to my instructor to just grab my tube for me so I could hurry and put it back in my mouth and breathe. For a second I thought I was going to drown. He then proceeded to make me try again, and again to pass it off. But I just couldn’t do it. The whole time this is going on everyone else in the group is watching me. Luckily I passed all the other tasks.

Since you obviously can’t communicate by talking, there are all sorts of gestures/sign language you use to communicate. I actually really liked communicating this way.

After we passed all our skills off we had free time in the pool. I managed to do a front flip with my gear on and everything. Pretty impressive right? Being under water and breathing at the same time is so fun. It was fun to just lie on the bottom of the pool and look up. It’s an angle you don’t really get to enjoy when you are just swimming in a pool. Snorkeling in the ocean would be a million times better. Apparently it’s not as expensive as I thought to get scuba certified and buy all the gear. We will have to look into it, especially since we love to travel so much. Scuba diving in the Caribbean and/or Australia/New Zealand is on my bucket list. 

Thanks Tif for letting me borrow your camera that can go underwater. (Genius). I wish we'd taken more pictures but I didn't initially bring the camera into the pool. Next time. Oh and a lot of the pictures were too blurry or our air bubbles ruined the picture. In this first picture the instructor motioned for us to all hold our breath so the bubbles wouldn't obscure the picture. For the most part we pulled it off. It's hard to take a picture when you don't have someone counting "3, 2, 1.." for you. 

The four of us. Staying in this pose and not floating away was super tricky actually.

Looking super attractive. Holla.

Our awesome instructor. Even if I did think he was going to let me drown.