CyberDive - Scuba Diving Fun

New and scarier than anything you've ever seen before...

Mikki and Wes are now PADI Open Water Instructors!

Proof!

Wes with his cert

If you aren't scared enough, they also are certified to teach nitrox, medic first aid, and Dan 02. Very scary indeed! More pictures and story to come, when they recover.

The IE

Our Course Director

The Beautiful Baron

Getting Out of Dinner

The Infamous Budman Lake

The Dive Shop

Wes working even at the lake

Wes in Key Largo

Why xmas day, you might ask? Well, you see, Wes didn't have any more vacation time left and really wanted to do his Instructor course. Wes had been an Assistant Instructor forever, and decided that now was the time to become "All Things Scuba," a PADI instructor. Of course, as the dutiful wife, there I was right next to him, having five whole days worth of PADI Divemaster certification, hoping not to make a total fool out of myself doing this course and the impending IE at the end of it.

We flew a Beech Baron down from Gaithersburg to Vero Beach, land of EASE (Eastern Academy of Scuba Education) in about 4 hours. The wind was with us. Being xmas, there were NO humans anywhere to be found at the FBO. This was unfortunate, as there were several problems with the airplane on the way down. First, the radar decided to quit. Second, the annoying recurrent problem of Com 2 sounding like you had pulled out the test button came back after 2 hours of flight. Third, and most annoying, the pilot's seat back decided to collapse, making it necessary to stuff pillows and jackets behind my back in order to see enough to land. Good thing I did, too, since we had approximately 25 knots of gusting X wind. Although Wes has soloed a Cherokee 235, I didn’t think he was quite up to landing a big ole twin with a flailing person in the left seat jumping up and down on the rudders :-).

So, soon after arrival, and calling the EASE house, John Wheeler arrived in his white Bronco. Since we'd brought the house with us (almost up to the weight and balance limits of the aircraft :-) it was kind of tough to stuff everything in there, but we managed. John brought us to the house, where we found that things weren't quite as we imagined. The bedroom facilities were multiple bunks, kind of dormitory style. No possible way I could sleep next to Wes. This would be a problem since I keep his snoring under control by smacking him throughout the night. With him in the bunk above, that might be difficult. Plus, we found we were sharing. I guess Wes had relayed information to me that was just a teeeeny weeeny bit uh....off :-). The room had four bunks in it, a very large closet so we could all put stuff in, and a few chests of drawers where we could stash other stuff. There were two full baths, shared between 10 people, so my falling asleep in the shower routine would have to be changed :-).

Xmas day, in Florida, freezing our buns off (yes, it was cold; about 60 degrees that day) and here was our IDC instructor, John McFadden, giving us paperwork to do. Tons of it as well (we were told PADI also stands for Paperwork Around Diving is Immense :-) John was a rather interesting person. Who BUT an interesting person would start an IDC on xmas day for the benefit of some strange individuals he hadn't even met yet? John was from Belfast, had a pleasant Irish accent, and warned us never to call him Scottish. His laid back manner put everyone at ease. (EASE. get it? Har har har)

Night one in the EASE house was rather "noisy." As predicted, Wes snored. As predicted, I couldn't stop him. We were sharing our room with Molly, an other IDC candidate who luckily could sleep through a class 5 hurricane. I spent much of the night awake. Kicking the bottom of Wes' bed didn't help either :-).

Bright and early the next morning began the PADI indoctrination sequence. We received yet more paperwork. We filled it out. We gave it back. Then we started receiving paperwork we didn't have to give back, which made us all confused, since our desks were already filled with books and supplies and computers and general junk. We found places to put everything, piled up the new paper, and started the video watching process, seeing PADI stuff on PADI, PADI stuff on marketing, PADI stuff on standards, did more pre-assessment exams (guess the others were pre-pre assessment exams or something), found we were lame and silly on physics and the RDP (go figure), and generally we had quite a bit of work to do. We also learned about the fun we would have in the IDC for the rest of the week. It certainly was going to be action packed. The schedule was quite scary. Even scarier when you realize that John would be with us for just about every waking hour of his day. Yes, the man is dedicated. Should likely be committed, but dedicated :-)

Luckily for us, John's teaching style was quite relaxed. We could bring food into class, roll in wearing our PJs from the last night, and generally be comfortable. It was very clear that he was there to help us. That first day was all lectures/videos and slides. It was a pretty basic outline of what we could expect at the IE, and how we would be able not only to pass the IE, but also to actually teach scuba diving. What a concept :-).

The EASE house was set up in a rather interesting manner. People all got together to eat, cooking supplied by John Wheeler. The food was rather good, and it was nice to unwind. After dinner, it was back to the classroom to finish up on a few things, then finally to bed where, guess what? Wes snored. He likely has bruises from my kicking him though :-)

By this point, days began running together. We were basically in class or studying every waking hour of the day and night. We learned about how to do academic presentations, pool presentations, and open water presentations. By then, I had finally figured out everyone's name, including our new IDC Staff Instructor, the Course Director Wannabe Ryby Stonehouse from England. The other class members besides Wes, Molly and me were Bruce and Tom. Bruce was from Texas and Tom was from Las Vegas. Quite a crew of misfits we made :-).

Meantime, there were a few more people in the house, some new instructors from a previous class, Phillip and Frank, and a new divemaster candidate, Echo from California. Echo was in our room and got to enjoy the Wes symphony too :-). I made more effort to kick, likely causing more bruises on poor Wessiepooh.

Anyway, as the week went on, we learned how to use visual aids, how to market ourselves and our courses, how to deal with students, how to point out mistakes in a positive manner, (none of that "you ignorant moron, what ARE you doing") and how to freeze our bloody butts off in an outdoor pool with outside temperatures around 50 degrees with a nasty crosswind. That lesson was repeated with vigor when we went to the infamous "Budman Lake" where we had water temperatures in the high 50's and outside air temperatures of about the same, with nice windy ickyness. On the bright side, John did everything he could to minimize our time in the weather, letting us do briefs and debriefs in the nice warm classroom, letting us get suited up in the nice warm house, and letting us take off our wetsuits also in the nice warm house. That truly helped a ton. Also on the bright side, Reece shipped me my dry suit (thanks Reece).

Throughout the course, John and Ryby (who was charged with doing anything John didn't feel like doing, sorta like Divemaster all over again :-) They were patient, helpful, and clearly knowledgeable. The IDC was certainly an experience. An 8 am til 10 pm daily experience :-).

Once the IDC was over, we had more work to do before the IE. The IE would not be until the end of the next weekend (1/6 and 1/7). Since we had a few days to "hang about," John offered us the opportunity to take a few instructor specialty courses. We took Medic First Aid instructor, DAN Oxygen Provider instructor, and Nitrox instructor. We could only teach the third one if we actually PASSED the IE, but the other two can be taught by AIs. Since taking the IDC makes you an AI, poof I could teach them. Wes of course WILL pass the IE. I wasn't so sure about myself.

As an annoying aside, I did something really stupid in my spate of breaking things. I broke the screen on my PowerBook G3 laptop. Unfortunately, I was using the powerbook to put together my presentations and read them to the pretend students. John pointed me in the direction of a Mac shop called Autobahn in Vero Beach, where people actually knew what they were talking about. They told me that the G4 powerbooks were about to come out, and because of that, my G3 machines and parts were scarce. I didn’t realize HOW scarce until we tried to scare up a screen or even a new machine. It just wasn’t going to happen, and I thought I was doomed. Mark from Autobahn, however, had a G3 laptop that he was using for something else, that he just swapped hard drives over, and poof instant fixed machine. I borrowed his machine for the IE, and he ordered me a new G4 Of course the new G4s are beautiful. Also of course, they won't ship for at least a month.

Was this the end of my computer woes? Hell no! The day before the IE, my power supply decided to short itself out. VERY luckily, Autobahn had one in stock. Otherwise, I'd be waiting for AGES to get a new one, even to charge my battery. That definitely would have been mega painful.

So, anyway, the IE arrived sooner than any of us had thought possible. John had cleverly set up another IDC right after ours, and brought in more people than the house could handle. This was a feature, not a bug, as we were sent to have a room of our own at the Citrus Hotel. Unfortunately, when we opened the door, the cloud of stale smoke was so bad that there was no way we could stay there. We slithered off to the Howard Johnson's up the road where we got a great night's sleep in preparation for the IE.

IE day started with a way too early wake up call to the house, packed all our stuff up (the tons of gear, even more tons of paperwork and manuals and all) and dragged it to a community center where we were given our lovely 6 exams of 20 questions each, then our 50 question standards exam. Everyone passed.

Then we did the academic presentations. Mine was on Nitrogen Narcosis (apt since most people accuse me of being narced at the surface anyway :-) I was told that I didn't relate it enough to the open water student dives. Hmmm. Well, I did say that likely there wouldn't be anyone getting narced at the 40 foot level, but if they felt symptoms, they should let us know and ascend. Examiner said that wasn't enough. Uh, ok :-) Wes did Decompression Sickness. He did a great job, too and got a good score.

After the academics, it was off to the pool for our pool presentations. That's where you do a brief of a skill, demonstration of the skill, and then the other candidates become simulated students who are assigned problems. You must find and solve the problems to pass. My skill was the two methods of regulator clearing. Student problems were lack of bubbles with regulator out, and one student did instead of two different purge methods, the same one twice. I had to catch him and correct the problems. After that, we did the skill circuit. We were asked to do a 5 point descent, fin pivots, and a CESA (controlled emergency swimming ascent). After this fun, it was off to do the 800 yard swim in mask fins and snorkel. After that, day one was over. Phew

Day two started off even earlier and we met at the infamous Budman Lake at 7:30 in the morning. The smart people (me and the examiner :-)) wore dry suits (thanks again, Reece). I was blessed in that the list of skills I randomly selected included weight belt removal and replacement at the surface, and a controlled descent. This was similar to the pool with a full brief, student do (with problems) then a debrief. Unlike the pool though, there was no demonstration. This was lucky for me since I had 30 lbs on my weight belt. My student problem was getting hoses all caught up in the belt. We fixed that quickly. The controlled descent problems were one person trying to descend with the snorkel in her mouth, and the other turning head down and kicking for the bottom. I caught him by the leg and yanked him up. I guess the examiner liked it cuz I got a 4.8 out of 5 on it :-). After I stopped the student "problems" and descended to the platform, I was done, and could float around waiting for people to finish so we could do the rescue demonstrations.

The rescue demos went pretty well, since John and Ryby had taken tons of time rehearsing and teaching us how to demonstrate them well. Once everyone was done with the rescue, we came out of the water, got hot chocolate that our lovely course director had made for us, got our debriefs from Scott the examiner, all of us passed, so we ran off to celebrate.

We couldn't go home on Monday since there was too much ice around, so we came home Tuesday. We still can't believe we're instructors (and neither can anyone else actually :-)). Now where's my vacation? :-)

CyberDive Supports

More To Come. The scanner is a humming. We're busily scanning yet more pictures. In case you're lost your place, you can always find the CyberFlight page by clicking this nifty link. CyberFlight is our airborne division and is full of rollicking and zany fun.

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CyberFlight and CyberDive are equal opportunity employers. Even strange people like Mikki. They don't get paid anything, but you can change all that. Then Mikki can leave her job in the circus. Mikki is going after her helicopter rating and is insufferable. Mikki's helicopter manual even has its own home page. LEGAL - This website and all photos on it are copyrighted. Please do not use any of it without our prior permission. Remember, do not taunt happy fun intellectual property lawyer.

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