Shakem At Night

Blah, I know I have been terrible at posting, life got really hectic after the first week of school. They were sneaky and eased us into it and then BAM we had a thousand things to do. I'm working on a recap of the last couple of weeks because a lot has happened, but until then I just wanted to rave about the quick night dive I did tonight.

I'm pretty sure my roommate thinks I'm crazy for even thinking about a dive the night before an exam, but it was really therapeutic. Just what I needed. My life is so hectic and stressful these days and there is just nothing like having a little bit of time to yourself where your two main focuses are steady, even, rhythmic breathing and maintaining effortless buoyancy under water. It is so soothing, so calming to be in tune with such basic physiologic needs and it just tends to make everything else melt away. Sure, seeing critters is a major added bonus, but honestly you could drop me in the water and tell me to hang out at 30ft for as long as I could and I'd be content. It truly is why so many relaxation techniques are centered around breathing!

This was a really quick dive because the wreck we visited was at 100ft. You just can't go that deep for very long without adding complications like running out of air and decompression time. I'm not really interested in either. We did have one person come up nearly empty from the dive, but I suppose that's what you get when you ignore your gauges and get excited where the density is 3x what it is at the surface (meaning you go through air much faster). I checked my gauges at least 4 times that I can think of and that was just in the 20ish minutes that I was on the bottom and I don't go through air very fast. A combination of relaxation, mild movements, good breathing techniques, and physiologically and anatomically being female allow me to go through a tank much more slowly. We ended up staying down just shy of 30 minutes and with studying to do tonight, it was better that this wasn't a 70+ minute dive (although I'd much rather stay super shallow and be underwater longer!). The wreck was pretty at night, the colors and critters were more beautiful as always, and I enjoyed slowly focusing on one thing at a time. My buddy stayed right with me and we did great!

Now to face my large animal surgery exam tomorrow, our 2nd castration for junior surgery lab on Tuesday, and a make up small animal surgery exam on Wednesday. Busy busy!