"How was your scuba trip Brian?", says Mr.T as he stares at me. "What?"
I say. "What?" "What?" and that is how it all ended. Friday I took a
trip to Athens Scuba Park. I knew I had a little cold, with my head all
clogged up, but I figured if I took some anti-histamine I would be clear
by morning. It took me 2 hours to drive to Athens, TX. Actually it
should have taken and hour and half but I was stuck behind a pair of
trucks driving 45 mph in a 60 mph speed limit on a two lane road. I
thought to myself, I wonder if this is how Texas Chainsaw Massacre
happened, two trucks run a guy off the road and have him for dinner. I
was in the backwoods of Texas, a place that is rarely known, a place
where old people come to die. Anyways, I get to the hotel, check in, and
proceed to go to bed at 12:30, early for me cause I had to get up at
7:30. I actually got a wakeup call, set the hotel clock radio, and set
my cell phone alarm. It worked! I woke up early, but I was feeling bad.
I knew that I am physically allergic to mornings, so it was kind of
expected. I actually get nauseated if I wake up before 8:00am. Freaky
isn't it? So I wait it out and take some more medicine. Then I get to
the park and join the bathroom folk for a while(don't you just love
hearing about this). So I go to the instructor, explain my stomach and
head situation and ask him if I can wait a couple of hours before I
start, as I felt the medicine would kick in. He then said, we can't wait
and gave me some Imodium. So I sit there for about 20 minutes and feel
well enough to go scuba diving. So there is little ole me(ha) wearing a
wetsuit and bcd and oxygen tank. When we start off we have to do
something called equalizing - which is when you pop your own ears so
that your decent doesn't hurt your ears. My problem was that I just
couldn't pop my ears cause my head was still stuffed up. So the rest of
the class was at the bottom waiting for me. They had an extra instructor
who stayed with me and showed me other ways to equalize, which worked,
but rather slowly. We then went down to a sunken bus and explored that
before we came up. I explored a couple of buses and a couple of
airplanes that weekend. It was pretty cool. On Sunday we had our final
dive. It was that dive where I actually followed the instructor inside a
bus and looked out the window at the other scuba divers. They also sunk
a toilet and he made a joke by sitting on it and pretending to read.
That was when I realized that part of being a scuba diver is antics. Ah,
the antics. When I came to the top on that last dive I had a little
blood on my nose. It wasn't really bleeding, but I wondered where the
blood came from. My hearing is at 50% and everything is muffled. I have
been taking cold medicine to combat it, even though my hearing is the
only symptom left. Today I found out what caused the bloody nose as I
went to doctor for a follow-up. He looked in my ears with his ear thingy
and said," that's bad." I apparently shouldn't have been scuba diving at
all. I now have blood inside both of my middle ears, some kind of
hematoma thing. I am an idiot. In the written class they said," if you
are sick you shouldn't scuba dive." Of course I should've listened, but
I figured the drugs would work. So the doc said the only thing they can
do is wait 3-6 weeks for it to heal. In the meantime I am stuck saying
"what?" My trip to Cozumel is July 15th. If it is not healed I will not
dive. I learned my lesson. But nevertheless I did get my license! At
what cost, at what cost. What?

Thought of the Day
"Well, my swimming pool problems are solved. I just found myself miles
and miles of open lanes."
"What is that smell?"
"That's East River."
"You're swimming in the East River? The most heavily trafficked, overly
contaminated waterway on the eastern seaboard?"
"Technically, Norfolk has more gross tonnage."
"How could you swim in that water?"
"I saw a couple other guys out there."
"Swimming?"
"Well... floating. They weren't moving much, but they were out there."
- Kramer and Jerry, in "The Nap"

// posted by Brian @ 5/23/2006 01:48:00 PM