Greetings,

Well, this weekend was the first two days of the class.  My wife and I
attended.  The first day was just paper work and lenghty introductions to
what we can expect plus a thorough review of the a relatively complete
history of SCUBA.

Today, they kicked my arse (as well as my wife's).  This is hardly just a
dive program, there's quite a bit of physical fitness involved.  We were in
an olympic sized swimming pool most of the day swimming 300 meter laps or
treading or doing all kinds of excercises, 50 foot swims under water (no
air) to retrieve a 10 lbs weight belt and then 100 meter buddy rescue dives
and so on, gauging our physical fitness and then a thorough review of Open
Water material (SCUBA full gear) (with no rest in between), just to see
where everyone is.  Everyone did fine in there (some after multiple
attempts) but most of us discovered muscles we never knew we had.  Anyway,
this 5 hour swim treatment we received today will repeat next week in the
Redondo Beach ocean (but condensed to an hour or so) (if I understood
correctly) as well as all before all other dives.  So much more went on
today that I'm on in the mood to write about.

Most other people in the program have, I'd say, more than at least 50 dives
and some as many as 2000 dives.  My wife and I are the only ones with as few
dives as possible but even those more experienced seem suprised by the
amount of extreme safety, attention to detail, and excercise required.  They
seperate couples half the dives (ocean dives) but I've willingly seperated
myself from my spouse because, as much as words fail me, this is an intense
1st day of 14 weeks and every day looks to be similar.  I don't want her
relying on me.  I carried her gear bag (as well as mine at the same time)
and they got all over me for carrying someone elses gear bag.  In this
program, everyone is responsible for themselves and they drill that into
from the first 5 minutes.

Anyway, I have a weblog that I'll be posting on each day.  I figure, it was
so difficult to find information about this program (considering I am in the
54th year/class) its amazing.  Maybe in the future, people looking for info
on the class will find my chronicles as a source of information that may or
may not be useful.

Of course, its a SCUBA course, but it isn't run like a "course".  Its run
like a "bootcamp" more or less.

The academics are intense.  I don't know where I'll fit the time to study
for my college classes when they start next month but I'll find a way.  The
written tests and other testing "appears" to be about as intense as the
American Barr Exam or something similar.

I'm exhausted and taking tomorrow off, now I go to sleep.

Thanks,
Shawn