individual dives. Friendly banter and rivalry flew back and forth as the two classes prepared for their trips into
the beautiful, but cold, quarry. Frank's class hit the water first, but quickly lost the advantage as the other two
students (a husband and wife team) went through the process of learning to control their dry suits. Initially, it
was assumed that Frank, since he would be wearing a wet suit while the other students and the instructors
wore dry suits, would be the controlling factor for how long they could stay in. However, it turned out that at
least one of the dry suits had leaky seals and, apparently, when a dry suit gets wet, it is worse than a wet suit!
In addition, all the students were wearing wet suit hoods, gloves and boots, so extremities quickly became
cold and somewhat non-responsive. The dynamics quickly shifted - Frank's polar bear-like natural body mass
kept him quite comfortable (with the exception of the random squirt of water in a previously unsquirted
location!).
Suzanne's class, meanwhile, performed a through pre-dive initiation to the site, walking the shore and
discussing possible issues, before suiting up. Then, after suiting up, Suzanne and her class - a total of four
students, plus instructor - hit the water. Suzanne, looking not the least bit like Jessica Alba, was cold but not
uncomfortably so in her wet suit - at least not initially. However, after almost forty minutes in the water, parts
of her that had never been blue before were starting to lose feeling and it was with a happy shuffle (you can't
really run, or even walk well, in that much neoprene) that she ducked into the heated tent and started to peel
back a layer or two of rubber.
Frank's class performed their two dives back to back (the advantage, nominally, of dry suits - and polar bear
metabolism) and had finished up before Suzanne's group had made it back into the quarry. Frank watched
as Suzanne trudged down to the quarry, bright yellow tank on her back, and cursed himself for forgetting to
bring dry underwear.
