Commuter Family: Drama and Diving

Oldest Son and Youngest Son playing around before our 1st dive.

Our Summer is beginning with new and fun adventures. Friday evening Commuter Husband drove in from Houston to meet us in Plano at Adventure Scuba. We picked up four of everything: scuba tanks, BCs and regulators. Dive shop dude gave us written information and directions to Clear Spring Scuba Park in Terrell, Texas. He said to us "The Google map will take you to the wrong place." Some would call this sentence foreshadowing.

At home, we gathered masks, fins, snorkels, dive booties and then The Big Question was "Would our 3mm Henderson wet suits fit?" Commuter Husband and I bought them in the late 90's and had not worn them in over 12 years. And ... and ... and ... they fit! I will admit I was surprised.

Saturday morning, we are rushed but manage to leave the house by 7:20am with a fully loaded Prius and should easily arrive by the 8:30am start time. As we are driving, Commuter Husband was particularly talkative much to the dismay of the rest of us who are half awake. Commuter Husband truly loves to scuba dive and he is excited.

It appears we are going to do the impossible: arrive at our destination with no drama. Alas it was not meant to be. Commuter Husband used the Google map which says we are there however we are in the middle of a gravel road with beautiful Texas wildflower fields surrounding us. I pull out the map provided by dive shop and I deadpan to Commuter Husband "he told us not to use Google." The atmosphere in the car takes a sudden shift as Commuter Husband turns the Prius around and speeds along the country road with dust swirling around us. Then Youngest Son says "You have cash - right?" Uhhh, no. The dive shop dude and the written information also said the scuba park ONLY takes cash. Now the tension is the car is thick. It is 8:20am.

As we backtrack, we see a small convenience store with an ATM advertised. We stop. Commuter Husband enters the store. We wait. We wait. I get out and enter the store. Commuter Husband looks sheepish as a woman counts the cash to load the ATM. Are you kidding? The money is not going to matter if our whole class is in the water when we finally arrive. The minutes tick away.

We get back on the road and find the scuba park a couple miles away. We arrive at 8:47am. The crusty dive master heads our way and another frazzled student arrives right after us. She also unwisely used the Google map. One of the best parts about diving is divers are a relaxed group - kind of like the hippies of the ocean. Dive master moves us along but he is not particularly worried about our untimely arrival.

We do rush to get all our expensive equipment organized in a safe fashion. Not the ideal way to start the day but we are relieved to be there and get started! We enter the water with eleven students in Group A and are getting ready to descend 20 feet. All going well until Youngest Son announces "I lost my fin." What? How did that even happen? Dive master heads down to retrieve and thank goodness it landed on dive platform and not in the silt of the lake bottom. Crisis averted.

Our two check out dives and the rest of the day go smoothly. Commuter Husband says "I really had fun today." And that says it all ...