New SCUBA Gear

Last night I went to Y-kiki Divers to buy all of my dive gear. I started looking at new dive gear while at home the week before going back to camp. I looked at ScubaPro, Oceanic, Mares, and Aqualung. There is a whole lot of different gear out there and it is expensive. I looked at three different dive shops in the St. Louis area. I decided on Y-kiki because it is the one that my parents have had the best experience with and they also were willing to throw in the next course in my quest to become a Dive Instructor so I will be taking O2 Provider and Rescue Diver with them.

The equipment that I bought was all Oceanic.

BC - Cruz


This BC has two features that are pretty common but I am really grateful to get to use. One of them is the alternate air source built into the inflator pump. This will allow me to leave the octopus at home when on fun dives. Whenever you go SCUBA diving you always have a primary air source and a backup one in case your buddy needs to breathe off of your tank for some reason. By having it attached to your inflator hose instead of independent, it eliminates the need of a hose coming from your tank and is one less thing to accidentally drag along the reef.

The other feature is an integrated weight system. After putting on all the gear needed for diving, you end up being positively buoyant which is not a good thing if you want to go to the bottom of the ocean. To remedy this problem, you add lead weight. If you do not have an integrated weight system, you put on a very stylish belt with lead weights positioned either on the hips or a little in front of them whichever is most comfortable. However, the weigths often slide to the position that they want. The integrated weight system means that there are pockets designed to hold weight eliminating the need to wear a belt. The weight stays in the same spot the whole dive and some of it can be placed near the tank to help trim you while under water.

Regulator - Delta 4
Octopus - Octo Swiv Mag

This regulator is the only regulator that NOAA allows their divers to use in water under 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Although I do not plan on doing much cold water diving, it goes to show the overall quality of the regulator. The first stage (the thing with all of the hoses attached to it) is environmentally sealed which is why it is able to be used in cold water. The second stage (what you breath from) has a swivel connected to it so that you can move your head without needing to pull and twist the whole hose making the regulator less tiring to use. I also have control over the ease of breathing so I can set it wherever I want based on the conditions.

The Octopus is the secondary regulator that I would need while teaching a class to PADI standards. It is bright yellow so it is easily found. It swivels and twists to allow for the most freedom in the event that it is necessary. Another cool feature of this octo is the mag part of the name. It comes with a magnet on a clip to connect to the BC. This is much easier to use then any other connection device on the market.

Computer - Atom 2.0

This watch is a dive computer that connects wirelessly to a transmitter on the tank. This system eliminates the need for another tube coming from the tank. It can gauge my air consumption rate and can calculate how much time I have left on my dive. It will display the time remaining based on air time left or non-decompression limits. The advantage for having a dive computer is that it can adjust for changes in depth where a dive table is set hard and fast. The person helping me at the dive shop said that he was able to go on a dive where he hit 130 feet and be done for one hour and ten minutes. He was not at 130 feet the whole time but on a dive chart he would only be allowed to be there for 10 minutes and then he would need to go to 15 feet for a safety stop. With the computer calculating in real time he had an extra hour.

Altogether I spent 4 weeks of working at Cedars to buy all the gear making this be far the largest purchase I have ever made. And now I have to wait almost one month before I get to try it all out during the rescue diver course.

Easist Job Search Ever

It was time for me to start looking for a way to earn some money while in St. Louis for the next few months. I decided that working for either Best Buy or Circuit City could be a good option since I like technology. So I got ready to go look for a job. I put on a collared shirt and some nicer shorts. I drove out to a shopping center that had both a Best Buy and a Circuit City. I saw Best Buy first and as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a sign that said, "Now Hiring." I walked into the store and went to the customer service desk. I asked the lady working there for an application. She told me that I had to fill it out online. She then asked what my availability was and when I told her that I was flexible, she responded by informing me that she would have no problem fitting me into the schedule. I went home and filled out the application and based on what I was told, I have to imagine that getting hired will not be difficult. So I should have a job when I get back in town from my trip over Labor Day.

Brittany Visits

If you have been reading Brittany's blog, you would know that she has spent a week in DC for training and still has one more to go. When she was talking to her company setting up travel plans they were going to fly her out to DC and then home and then back to DC and then back home. When I found out this plan, I suggested that instead of flying to her home, she fly to my home. This worked out well and so I got to see her this past weekend. She was able to fly in 4 hours early since training ended early. So I picked her up from the airport and took her to my house. We started the weekend by making fudge. It was in such great demand that we were supposed to make a double batch. Things went pretty smoothly. We were afraid the mixing bowl was going to be too small so we decided to pour the chocolate into the hot mixture. In order to do this, we pulled out one cup of the marshmallow fluff so that we could add the rest into the hot mixture. After finishing with putting the marshmallow fluff into the hot mixture I set the plastic container down and poured in the chocolate. Oops. I put the plastic on the still hot burner and melted the bottom off. That was unfortunate but we were able to clean it all up. The longer lasting problem was that we had one cup of marshmallow fluff without a home. Half a cup was still in the measuring cup and the other half was on a piece of chocolate wrapping. We decided that we could eat ice cream sundaes with marshmallow fluff on them later. We made dinner, spaghetti, and played some Wii, but Brittany was too cold for ice cream. The marshmallow fluff sat on the counter.

We went to bed and the next morning enjoyed a relaxing morning. For lunch we relaxed a little less and went on a bike ride to Qdoba. We got back and got ready to go to the college for dinner with my parents and to hang out with some friends up there. We brought some fudge up with us and gave it to Christy, Brittany's RC while in Howard, my brother, and Karen. We were surprised to find out that another friend was flying in that night and was coming up to the college as well for the night. So we went to the pub to wait until Marcia arrived. All in all, it was a good reunion. We drove home and went to bed. By the way, the marshmallow fluff was still on the counter.

I took Brittany to the airport and it timed out so that I could meet my grandma for breakfast immediately after dropping Brittany off. We had a good breakfast and I drove her home. That pretty much concluded the excitement of my weekend. And the marshmallow fluff is still sitting on the counter.

My Olympic Sport

I have had lots of opportunity to watch the Olympics for the past week. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is finding new sports. The most memorable was curling two winter Olympics ago. This year I saw handball for the first time. After watching this much Olympics I went to the website to see how many different sports there are. While there I decided that when I go to the Olympics I will go as a slalom kayaker. Essentially there is a fake river with gates set up. Green gates mean you go through them going downstream and red you go upstream. There is a two second penalty if you bump a gate and a 50 second penalty if you push it past a 45 degree angle, go the wrong way through it, or miss it altogether. Here is a video of Campbell Walsh slalom kayaking to give a feel of the sport.



Unfortunately I missed this event because I was still at camp when it happened. This would be a fun event to train for, just go to rivers and start paddling down them until you are really good at controlling your boat. Then find a course and start applying your control. Now I just need a spare 2 grand to get all the equipment. Keep an eye out at the next Olympics, I might be there for some kayaking.

Family Camp Basketball

It was time for the annual Parents/Staff basketball game on Thursday. This game provides bragging rights for a whole year. For the last six or seven years, the staff has been able to keep the title. This year things were looking not as promising. We usually had at least two or three college basketball players on the staff team. This year only one. The parents had a sheer mass on their side. They had several players who were able to just push their way through our defense.

I was able to put up a three pointer and a couple of two pointers during game. I was also given the privilege of guarding the largest parent to try to keep him from pushing his way through our defense. I am not sure how incredibly successful I was. We ended up losing the game rather thoroughly. It was too bad that we lost.

However, things got worse in the follow up game. We were all playing and just having a good time when I came around a player and a player from the other team came around at the same time. His face collided with my elbow. As soon as we hit I knew it was bad. He lost a tooth and I felt horrible. He ended up going to the dentist the next morning to have it taken care of. The collision made my elbow bleed pretty badly. I went to the nurse's station and got it cleaned up by the practitioner and put a band aid on it. That whole night it did not hurt at all. That changed in the middle of the night. My elbow started hurting. I had to work all day at camp and any pressure on my elbow would cause the pain to be worse. I was able to complete the majority of my tasks one handed, but had a few times that I had no choice but to push through.

To end this post, a church sign I saw on the way to dinner tonight:
Exposure to the son might prevent burning.

Float Trip

Trip day. This means fish trip during main camp and Big Surf at family camp. Except this year. I went on the float trip for the first time in 5 years. It started out that I was going to be with a father and son in a three seater canoe. However, I ended up canoeing with another counselor. She had not been canoeing in 12 years. She insisted that she be in the back. It was not too pretty. We started out be being the first canoe so we could stop and take pictures of all the canoes as they passed us. I stole the underwater camera from Charlie so I could use it on the float trip. Then I had to paddle consistently to try to keep up with the last canoe. We were the tail canoe and my partner in back thought that dragging the paddle in the water made a pretty swirl. So she dragged her paddle almost the whole way. Even when we needed no turning. We stopped at lunch and did the jumping rocks and the regular routine. When we got back in the canoe. I started to move towards the back when my partner asks to be the back again followed by the comment I am getting better. I was not too excited about spending the rest of the trip dragging her paddle and having issues. So I pushed the canoe out backwards making the front the back. I stood up and started paddling. We started talking about how I looked like a gondolier. So I started singing, camp songs, Disney, and Smashmouth. The last half of the canoe trip was much smoother than the first leg. I was able to successfully navigate the river pretty much by myself and my partner enjoyed the ride and entertainment.

Lebanon Dive Shop

If only one of those existed. The only place to fill up a tank in Lebanon is at the local fire station. Tom and I went into eat dinner with a group of people and then stopped at the fire station. The local fire chief visited Cedars a while ago and got the grand tour. His question was, "How old do you have to be to be a camper here?" So, Bill called him and asked if there was any place that Tom could fill his tank in Lebanon and he responded by saying the only place was the fire station and then very quickly volunteered to fill the tank. That is why we ended up at a fire station instead of a dive shop.

We pulled up to the fire station and went to the front door and rang the door bell. No one answered. We rang it again. No one answered. We walked around into the garage and called out. No one answered. We decided to make one last attempt at the front door. This time Tom made me ring the door bell. And guess what, someone finally answered. We went to the air compressor and got it set up. Now all we needed to do was put the adapter on the tank. It did not fit. The adapter was about 20 years old and the tank was new. Apparently the new tanks are wider at top than an old tank. So the only place within an hour of camp to fill up air tanks does not have an adapter to fit the one tank we have. So we leave and go back to camp.

Once back to camp, we collected all of Tom's gear and the pool light bulbs, the reason for our diving excursion. We set up the gear and found out that he only had 500 psi of air left. You usually start with around 3000 psi. So we decided that we would only use the air when we needed to return the light to the bottom of the pool once we changed the light bulb. We attempt to fix 4 different light bulbs and only succeed in fixing 2 of them. One fixed itself just by taking it out of the wall. So it was not too successful in fixing the pool lights, but we did make the pool dirty just in time for the parents.

5th Session

This session started out hot. So hot that even the pools were not refreshing anymore. So on Monday, I tried to convince my campers that it would be more fun and more refreshing to have a water fight in the basement of our cabin than go swimming in the hot pools. They all wanted to go swimming, so as they were getting ready, I started the water fight. I filled a trash can with cold water and 4 splash bombs. As they were getting ready, I started tossing water bombs. It did not take long for the water fight to kick into full gear. It lasted for about 10 minutes before they remembered that they wanted to go to free swim. The water fight was far more refreshing then the pool. Oh well.

The next day was trip day. I led the fish trip as usual when I am at camp. Not enough staff wanted to go crawdad hunting so I got to go. This is pretty unusual. So Mark and I went crawdad hunting with the campers. On the way down, Mark and I witnessed something that neither of us had ever seen before, we watched a spider poop. It was big news for us. Once we got to the creek, the kids started hunting with nets. I found a stick with a 'y' in it and broke it down to a crawdad hunting stick. I caught four crawdads this way and taught Mark how to use a stick to catch crawdads. I also did biology theater for the kids. I took two crawdads, one in each hand, and had them talk to each other. They like to talk about what they ate, how they got caught, what eats them, and one even got a postcard from his cousin, Lolly the lobster. It was exciting times. The rest of the day was spent resting, swimming, and sliding. Then it was time for dinner and me to become PD for the night. I worked on evening notes, copied schedules, and kicked little boys out of the bathroom. It was an eventful night. Then I got to spend an hour in the office to answer any phone calls. When I made it back to the PDs office to finish up the work, a storm rolls in and kills the power. So I ended up leaving the PDs office without turning off any of the lights because I did not know where they were. Oh well. I walked back in the rain and lightning. All the way back I could not help but think about how perfect of a setting it would have been for a horror movie. The lightning was so bright that it seemed like day and then it would be pitch black again. About half way home, the electricity came back on. I did not go back to the office to turn off the lights.

Wednesday was a swim-line day. I had swimming all day long. This summer we created a new course called the CedarS Safety Course. It involves life jacket skills and throwing assists. The whole course was supposed to take two days so that specialty camps would have something to pass during swim lessons. Oops. It only takes about 20 minutes. Darn what should I do with the rest of that time, hmm, free swim. So I played lots of sharks and minnows and hunt for red october.

Vote

I have added a poll to determine what happens when I win the bet over whose blog is better. If Brittany wins, however unlikely that may be, I will enroll in swing dance lessons with her, as of yet I do not have a wager. The two options are shark feed dive or overcoming her fear of snakes. Make sure you vote to determine what happens when I win. If you have a better idea feel free to write it as a comment.

On a more positive note

My last post was just slightly less than positive so on this post, I am going to focus on the things that I am grateful for this session. I realized that I had a lot to be grateful for on Sunday night when I started talking to one of my campers and ended up talking about sharks and Discovery Channel for about 45 minutes during shower time. It always amazes me how smart my campers can be. Flash back to 1st session. A Trailblazer at the age of 6 was an incredible artist. He drew all sorts of animals from memory. I started to talk to him about the animals that he was drawing and he proceeded to inform all about each of them. In the past, he was even able to tell some zookeepers information that they did not know. He has visited many zoos and ranks the St. Louis Zoo as one of his favorites with the San Diego Zoo. But the St. Louis Zoo is free. Anyway that talk made me realize that I should start being grateful. So here it goes.

My whole cabin gets along with each other.
I got to talk with a camper about sharks.
I got to play sharks and minnows with 7 staff and 4 cabins in the lap pool.
I swam a 50 underwater in my first attempt (my goal is a 75 by the end of the session).
I have a fan that points at my bed and makes me actually feel cool by about 4 in the morning.
I swam my first lifeguard swim in 5 years.
I don't have to run lifeguard swims anymore.
Ashley came and sat at my table so that I could get another pb and j while my hostess was in the office.

I am sure that there are a lot more but that is just a start. So everything is going well at camp. Tomorrow is trip day, the second full day of camp and we are already on trips. Then one more day of scheduled activities, one and a half days of choice, Green and White Swim Meet, and a play, then on to Family Camp.

The top 3

Here is a top three list. This is the top three comments I did not want to hear when I got to camp.

1. I wish you were in ski camp
2. You are not in Trailblazers
3. You are the new PD

Only one of these was not said. I am not the new PD of boy's camp. Steve Henn is coming in on Monday to take over the position. Instead I am in the Pioneer cabin. For those of you who do not know, the Pioneer cabin is 4th grade age and is a two story cabin with a fire pole. This sounds like a lot of fun at first until you realize that you get to walk those stairs in between every activity. Besides, the second floor is always about 5 degrees hotter then the basement. This is not a plus when you are talking about days that are 90 degrees plus. Looking on the bright side, this is only a one week session.

My first night at camp I stayed back with the campers staying over between sessions. I received a piece of good news when I found out that JL was in charge of entertaining the campers after dinner. They had filled water balloons for about 45 minutes that afternoon. After dinner, we went to get set up in our cabins for the night then came back. The campers had the option of finishing the movie they started earlier or playing with water balloons. Most of the staff very quickly volunteered to watch the movie in the air conditioned lodge. I went outside to play with water balloons. It was a lot of fun -- for about five minutes, then the water balloons ran out. We played in the hose for a while and then went in and ate ice cream. We went to check on the movie watchers to find out that they did not find the movie they had started earlier so they started a new movie. So they saw the first five minutes of the movie and then joined us for ice cream. At about 7:30 we went back to the cabins to shower and get ready for bed. To kill time we played Go Fish, Blackjack, and Crazy Eights. I played one game of Crazy Eights and won keeping my streak alive. Once Mark told a story about three friends, killer robots, Pringles, and world domination, the kids went to bed. At that point I was able to head to the lodge and watch The Bourne Ultimatum with Stephanie, Mel, Megan, Charlie, and Eric. I think that is all for now.