to begin again from last night. on thursday evening after work we headed to muskogee. our diving classes began on friday morning at 9:00 at tenkiller lake in gore and we wanted to make sure we got there in time. we hung out with justin and lindsay and took it easy.
on friday, we all woke early, showered, and headed to the lake. gene, the owner of the scuba shop is an incredible, incredible man who has had so many awesome experiences. he retired from the air force after 20 years of service; retired from the troopers after 20 years of service; and retired from northeastern state university after 30 years of service. he has been on 147 rescue dives, and has a picture shaking john f. kennedy's hand. the memorabilia that is on all of the walls of the shop are like an enormous scrapbook. i'm amazed each time i walk in. we were the first to arrive out of the other students and gene introduced us to jim, our instructor. most of the day friday was spent in the classroom watching videos and then in the freezing cold pool. it was so cold that i lost feeling in my hands before the class was over and immediately jumped into a warm shower as soon as we were dismissed. lindsay's lips were purple. we headed straight for gene's shop to get wet suits for the next day. friday night we just hung out at the house and watched movies -- a typical evening in muskogee.
saturday morning was much the same as friday's. this time we got to the shop, loaded up our scuba gear and headed down to the lake. we hopped on a boat with everyone and (slowly but surely) made our way to goat island. the boat was having problems, but we finally arrived and completed our first two open water dives. i had a hard time learning neutral buoyancy, so i spent most of my time crawling along the bottom, but it was still a lot of fun. travis and i couldn't tell if lindsay and justin really liked it, but we both had a great time. when it was time to leave for the day, the boat wouldn't start and we had to be towed by another boat, the driver of which said "i'm not really a sailor" ... and was he ever telling the truth! i think we would have rather taken our chances with the busted motor. :) we got to the house, took showers, and headed to zollie's. lindsay wanted justin to eat there for a long time, and none of us had ever been, so we decided to give it a shot. the food was pretty good, but the people were really rude. i felt bad for lindsay because she had talked the place up so much; it always sucks when you really like a place and then everyone else has a bad experience. we went to the house to watch the matrix, but i think i fell asleep as soon as the lights were off.
sunday we had to get up earlier so that we could take food out to the lake. justin and lindsay ran to the store while we stayed at the house and got ready. we finished up our last three dives -- travis and i even got to do a dive by ourselves without our instructor. we didn't get to go too far because we were almost out of air and almost back to the boat, but still it was fun. the last dive was the best for me because i finally got neutral buoyancy and was able to experience the feeling of being weightless that trav kept referring to. it wasn't such a great day for lindsay. she wasn't able to complete all of her dives because she got blockage in her ears which caused a nose bleed. when we got home sunday, we didn't stick around the house long. i was ready to get back to tulsa, back to our house. we spent the rest of the afternoon home relaxing, unwinding, and getting ready for the new week.
i found out that travis's cousin tabitha was in the hospital, but we're thankful that she's doing much better now.
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