Did you know that it is now Mr and Mrs Moonfuzzy? We made it official Nov 10th.Originally Posted by FW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjlXwuyxZgI&sns=em
(you may notice in the video I'm about 30 lbs underweight for what I should be.)
Yep, I had heard that, congratulations!
Congrats to you guys!!!!!
"Is this thing on?"
I keep straining my head but I can't remember that happening. Actually though maybe I can remember that - we were suspecting bad fills at one place but I'm not sure why "one" tank not "both" would be an issue. Maybe blame wet valves/wips during a fill.
You do remember that I've always dove independent doubles right? Having rust in one tank but not the other would be kind of the expected if it were to happen.
I think John followed my lead and went with independents fairly immediately as well (at least for the time peroid that the two of us still dove together). About the only time he ever dove with a manifold that I can remember was the trip he borrowed/rented yours - which led to endless problems/stupidity on that trip. (Of course that trip started with him shipping his independent tanks to FL and someone dropping them on thier top and crushing the DIN valves on both tanks.)
That was a long time ago though!
And it is true - it never happened again.
Actually it wasn't your tanks. You just happened to be along with the owner and it wasn't John. How about a "female"??????
And yes, the conversation of bad fills did come up but back in those days, it seemed like all the shops were accused of bad air at one time or another.
Jodi's doubles had an interesting problem. The tanks were slightly different heights and the stress across the manifold I guess would cause the tank o-ring to blow.
But for a while there it was pretty confusing what in the world was going on. Luckily it happened once in the garage (so we had no idea what had happened) and once on the picnic table gearing up - but never in the cave.
But yeah, there might have been a tank rust issue that happened with her tanks sometime as well.
If it wasn't Jodi or John then it was 1999/2000 or later - but if it was Jodi I expect you would have remembered it was her.
How could anyone forget? Loved that Tiger, or was it a Panther?
And yes, it was her tanks, or at least she had the tanks that had water and rust in "one tank only" of the doubles
What is life without "memories"
Keep fighting the good fight! I wish you wellness and that you keep up your good spirits.
Thinking about John's crazy trip where everything possible went wrong I feel the urge to share the comedy of errors that trip. (Some pieces of which I didn't find out until later.)
John was fun to dive with early on if a little thick headed but we could always get thru to him about his worst ideas because he had this dive light that just had the worst luck in the world. Everything went wrong with it. When he had his worst ideas we would start arguing with one another about who had to get stuck with his cursed dive light when we divided up his gear later. We would continue to argue about who got stuck with his dive light until he relented on whatever bad idea it was. LOL!
Anyway he had his problems and tended to be over aggressive but he did fairly well as a cave diver while he lived in FL and was going cave diving fairly frequently. It wasn't until he moved out of the area and would only get back to FL occasionally and still wanted to do bigger and bigger dives as if he was still in practice and all his gear was working. (And on top of that working in CA resulted in lots of money and out of practice.)
John's dive trip from hell was going bad long before he even got on the plane. John was having a rough month at work (satellite electronics/programing in CA) he'd been accused of creeping out some woman at work and she/the company were giving him a rough time for sexual harassment. He started taking anti-depressants so his thinking on the dives when he visited ended up being strange and wrong. Still, he called and planned a trip to FL and I agreed to dive with him while he was here. He shipped his tanks to FL but the shipping company dropped them on their head and crushed the DIN valves on both tanks.
But he made it to FL - and he managed to beg/borrow/rent a pair of manifolded doubles for the trip to replace his damaged tanks.
When he got to FL he had big plans. He wanted big dives. He had a bunch of money too so he wanted to get a scooter and launch immediately into dives he could do before just swimming/staging. And though we aren't diving together anymore these days he convinced me to buy a scooter as well (it was a matter of when not if I was going to buy a scooter anyway). So we buy two scooters and head to Little River to try them out - and his brand new scooter is wired wrong and runs BACKWARD. What kind of crazy cursed luck is that? You can't even blame that on him. It really did run backwards and there is nothing that could be done about it.
So that was turned into a semi swim/scooter dive and John not getting to dive his brand new scooter.
Next we head to Cow. We're diving cow upstream and unbeknowst to me he pushes past his 3rds so when we finish the upstream and kick into the downstream to play for a while in the shallows before heading up for deco he is acting very agitated. So I don't know what's going on but I signal him OK go ahead out and I'll pull the reels and meet you at deco (at least that's what I was mentally projecting as I signaled). So he heads out and I go back into the squirrelly side stuff to retrieve the reels.
That's when I see his light headed strait for me at amazing speed - a strait line that didn't correspond to any passage.
Well there is only one reason anyone would swim like that in that location so I had my regulator out and handed it to him when he arrived. He accepted it politely and we finished removing the reel I had in my hand already as we exited.
[He wasn't actually out of air as he thought. Not being used to manifolded doubles, out of practice, agitated from pushing his thirds and thinking weird on antidepressants when he rolled off a tank valve playing in the downstream narrows he assumed he'd run out his air (because he'd pushed his thirds earlier). This dive was actually the previous year's trip - but for some reason on both trips he was using manifolded doubles he wasn't used to even though only one trip had his tanks destroyed. In my mind though it is all part of the same cursed trip.]
In a couple days he has a different new scooter from another shop with metal blades that make it go really fast. We go back to Little River and I can hardly keep up with him. For my own dive I feel like I've managed to trim out the scooter and get a good feel for it and fix a few things from the first dive. For John, fast was probably not the best thing for a first scooter dive, he never slowed down or let up on the trigger, bashed into the ceiling multiple times - and sheared off left knob & post of his borrowed tanks and damaged the cave.
I'm thinking the owner of the tanks is not going to be happy.
He's got some more repairs to arrange and we both get in some dives with other people before getting together for the next dive. After the last dive though I ask John to plan and demonstrate a "safe dive plan" for the two of us and "NO CAVE DAMAGE". (The "big dive" trip he came to FL for with "massive big dives" is wearing down so a "safe dive plan" is not what he wants to do but he needs a dive buddy so...) He's clearly got different dive priorities than "no cave damage" and he says something idiotic like "it's not like it's protected" (anybody that's dove with me knows that isn't even close to an acceptable thought with me).
Anyway we must have survived that moment because shortly we're on the dive: a nice straight-forward up the main line Devil's Eye dive (with no cave damage). His metal blades are too much for the Tekna/Aeris scooter clutch and it starts slipping when he gets close to 9. I'm better trimmed on my scooter so I can keep up with him now. Cruising along trying to match speeds - and suddenly he disappears.
I go back looking for him and eventually find him back a couple hundred feet downstream of where I'd last seen him. His light went out and wouldn't come back on and he'd drifted for a while before I cough up with him. Was it the same cursed light we always teased him about? Yes, I think it was - he'd gotten the cursed light converted to one of the new HID lightheads and when it went out it took a while before it could get triggered on again. Eventually we got the light sorted out and working again and headed up the main line but still it was another chance at his "big dive" ruined by faulty gear. While the dive went OK we didn't actually make it that far (not any farther than we'd done on swim dives in the past).
And we come to the end of the trip. It's John's last dive of the vacation and he probably hasn't had a "big dive" yet that he was happy with on the whole trip (despite all the scooter purchase, cave damage and tank repair in the world). Plan a dive that should satisfy though: scooter up the Hill 400, cross to the main line and optionally come back on the Big Room / Bone Line. Hopefully all gear weirdness is sorted out and things will go as planned. We head in make it to the Hill 400 jump, signal and turn left onto the hill 400 line and... he's gone.
Wait at the jump. Look both ways. Cover my light.
No John.
No glimmer of light in any direction.
Hmmm...
Head up the main line a few hundred feet - no John.
So I put a note at the jump on the main line (with instructions and a check box. A "I found the note and am heading out" check box). I then did a sweep along our original planned route: up the hill 400 line, across onto the main line and back).
Still no John.
Getting to the point that I'm thinking I'm probably going to have to surface, skip deco and call for help - at least if the note isn't found and checked off. But I get back to the Hill 400 jump and... my note is missing.
Missing? Why would my note be missing? It would be strange for some other diver to remove the note. It makes no sense that John would remove the note. And there is no new note.
Nothing to do though but head out and plan to surface and call for help. (Unless I run into John on the way out.)
Out thru the cornflakes and into the gallery, heading rapidly towards the exit and... my huge, ugly yellow etch-a-sketch note pad is on the floor in the gallery ~100' from the exit.
OK there is no way it got there in the current. Some weird thinking got it here and that means John has been here.
Sure enough there he is at deco.
[When I jumped onto the hill 400 line per the dive plan John sailed on by. I had "disappeared" and it being John's last chance to dive this trip he just continued up the main line. (He "knew I'd be fine on my own".) When he got back and found the note on the line he must not have wanted anyone to stumble on to it and think there was a lost diver in the cave so he took it (and then he must have dropped it on the way out).]
Obviously that was the last time I dove with John ever. (I got some of the back-story pieces after that.)
Poor guy. A good friend. I miss him.
Must be something about the name "John".
"Is this thing on?"
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