Lesson of the weekend: I’m a sidekick

I’ve been feeling a bit down lately, whether from the fact that I won’t be going home again to see my mom until Christmas (damn airlines trying to squeeze money out of us) or from feeling like science isn’t what I want to do with my life (if I could find a well-paying and fun job in the scuba industry, I’d be gone in a flash just as soon as they handed me my degree), but I don’t like this feeling of oppression and impending bullshit, so I’ve decided I need to be happy.

Grand statement, eh? We’ll see how well it works.

I did get an escape this past weekend–we had a scuba class to teach, and for the first time in quite a while, our entire staff was there, and, almost more importantly, it was just our staff. Greg, Ben, James F, Nate, Shelly, John and myself. It was pretty awesome. Well, and another divemaster candidate who will eventually be staff.

Saturday was bright and sunny. (And why didn’t anyone tell me to put on sunscreen? Bah. I’m not enjoying the current peeling trend.) The water was calm and pretty clear, although what we affectionately refer to as a “student bloom” kicked up by midday. When you’ve got a ton of new students, their buoyancy isn’t the best, so they spend a lot of time kicking up sand, which eventually dulls the water column a bit. But we rocked through skills, the students did well, and we even saw some neat creatures. I found an 18-inch cabezon (tasty!), two fishing lures (they may or may not have been attached when I swam by, but they’re now in my collection of ‘shit I don’t like to find underwater when I’m in a puncturable drysuit’), a Monterey dorid and a San Diego dorid (shell-less snails), rockfish up the wazoo (very technical amount of fish, that), and lots of crabs.

I love being able to find stuff for students. I always worry that they’re going to think Monterey is just cold and dark and dreary compared to places like the Caribbean. In some ways, it is, but on it’s good days, I love it. I did have one student point out to me that just being underwater was the coolest thing ever, so I shouldn’t worry about finding things to look at. Point taken, but I’m still on the lookout.

Post-dive, we stuffed our faces with Pizza My Heart and Chipotle, then headed for the hotel and its hot tub, where we made friends with a new open water student who was taking a class from someone not affiliated with our shop. She was pretty cool (and works here in the hospital like me), so we as a staff have decided to steal her. It’ll be nice to have another person here at work to hang out with, and also someone to “geek out” on scuba with. Good times.

There was the obligatory Chinese food dinner and Dove bars to round out the evening, though Greg didn’t insist on watching Cops, which, I have to admit, was a bit sad. I’ve gotten used to our routine. Ah well. We ended up watching Transformers instead, which wasn’t that great. Might have helped if I’d known the story and/or seen more than the last hour.

Sunday dawned foggy and misty, and the water was pretty fully of particulate matter, so the viz dropped from 15-20ish feet to 5-8ft. I had a bit of an issue with the divemaster candidate I was trying to train when he was leading our student out on a tour, so that’ll have to be addressed, but it was a good dive. Bit colder, but we found the cabezon again, and a lot of egg yolk jelly fish.

Then it was off to Grandma’s Kitchen for breakfast and paperwork. There’s something about lugging around all that gear, swimming in 54°F water, and getting up freakin’ early in the morning that results in numerous large plates of food being consumed.

Somewhere in the briefings for all this diving and classwork, it was declared that I was James’ sidekick. His point: I’m the smaller of us two, and I help him out. Thus, Sarah=sidekick.

I’m all right with this. James is the instructor I was with a year and half ago on The Class Dive That Shall Not Be Spoken Of. He’s also one of my best friends, as is his girlfriend Cara. Additionally, with the Chinese food (which he and I went to pick up, where we talked about the approaching anniversary of That Class) came fortune cookies, and mine read: There is a true and sincere friendship between you both.

His point? “Yeah, because no one died, and we’re the only ones who can laugh about that.”

Amen.