Unlucky 4th of July

7-5-2011

Sitting in my rack for two days, sleeping an average of 13 hours per day, got me thinking I should probably write out a journal entry this year.  At some point.

The reason why I'm sitting here:

Yesterday--the 4th of July--I dove around 5am.  An uneventful dive--just water jetting out a 10' deep trench to expose a pipeline.  We're looking for a leak in a pipeline and it's buried under 9' of mud.  We take this jet nozzle that gets 150+ psi of water and we carve out a trench.  It's slow going for a deep one like this cuz you gotta get a good bevel on the sides so that you don't get a 10' wall of mud, that could potentially collapse, crushing you and making a watery grave for your ass.  Ok, so that's what I'm up to--and it's going well (I don't have too much jetting under my belt, and I'm getting the hang of it). 

So the dive supe says,"Coming down on pressure, get ready to leave bottom." Not the usual way to wrap a dive up--usually the diver would get a 5 minute warning, he'd ask to come down on the pressure to the jet nozzle, tie it off to the project somewhere, and make sure he's all clear to start the ascent.  This was more like a, "Drop your shit and leave bottom."

I'm climbing my line and I get stopped at 40' for my first decompression period.  This means that I'll have 2 deco stops (one at 40, and one at 30').  

Supervisor comes over comms,"Yeah, I ran you over a bit.  You're gonna have 2 stops... And um, sorry about this, but you're gonna be dirty for 24 hours." 

This means that the supervisor brain farted and ran me past my intended bottom time. It also means I lose a dive ($150 or so). 

I do my in water deco stops and jump into the chamber.  Everythings going fine (cept the whole dive loss thingie), and then the superintendent comes up to the window and get's on the chamber phone with me.  

"Yeah, so Yanni (my outside chamber operator) ran you up too fast on your slide, so I'm gonna tack on an extra 20 minutes instead of giving you a treatment table 6."

"Ok, no problem."

"Unless you'd like a table 6?"

"20 minutes yes please--no thank you on the table 6.  I'm all good with that." 

(In the event of a missed stop or other decompression foul up, the automatic policy is going onto a treatment table 6-- which consists of 6 or so hours in the chamber.)

Basically I had a seriously unlucky 4th of July dive.  Not by my own doing at all, just the double luck of the draw. 

And here I sit, typing about it.  

I guess the silver lining is that I got the 4th off...  Not that I could do anything with it.

Oh, I forgot to mention... I worked out with a kettlebell about an hour before my dive. And during said workout, I was practicing my quick stand up (lay down and pop into stance), needless to say the boat was rocking a bit, I lost my balance, and fell backwards.  In an effort to catch myself, I smacked my hand against the kettlebell, causing swelling and a massive bruising of my thumb muscle.  Ouchie.  So, I don't know what was up with the 4th, but I'm glad it's over with.  

My hand still hurts a lot--puts a damper on my workout.  

But I got to sleep like a girlfriend in a coma, and I've posted my first blog in a year.  Not a complete loss.