You've Got to Know When to Hold 'Em........

This past weekend, we were supposed to be diving the river on Saturday and White Star Quarry on Sunday.  Unfortunately, both days ended up being a bust.  Aaron had an emergency at work and in the span of three days managed to put in something close to 48 hours of work.  Needless to say, I am glad that the situation is taken care of and that I am no longer a work-widow (my own adaptation of "deer camp widow," a Yooper euphemism).

Saturday, it was discovered that there was still ice covering a significant portion of the White Star Quarry - too thick to be considered for open water diving, but too thin to be able to ice dive.  Ahh, spring, how I loathe thee sometimes!  We were not about to let a little ice ruin our dive day though!  Off to the river!  It was a beautiful, but windy, morning.  The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and the river was flowing.  Man, was she flowing!  Current was stronger than last weekend.  Aaron had already planned to not dive since he was so tired from work, but I took one look at it and called it before I ever got in.  Another friend of ours, Jill, did the same.  At least I wasn't alone!  Two in our group still choose to dove; both are more-experienced river divers than we are.  

I had this feeling that THAT would be the day I would find an awesome bottle!  I was so bummed sitting on the shore, waiting for our friends.  Although, I did have fun watching Jill's twin daughters play on the small icebergs that had drifted to shore.  The only saving grace that day was that those who chose to dive, didn't find anything remarkable.  It made my decision not to dive slightly more bearable.  Probably not what they wanted to hear!

There's a saying in diving: "Anyone can call a dive at any time for any reason and not feel bad about it."  (calling a dive: choosing either to end a dive once it has begun or not begin a previously planned dive)  We are going into an environment where we aren't meant to be.  I think it shows great maturity in a diver to know when to call a dive because he or she doesn't feel safe, recognizes that the conditions are outside of their training and experience, or realizes that they may not be fully equipped (mentally and physically) for a dive.  However, it is equally important that one's dive buddies also support the diver's decision and not make him/her ashamed for calling a dive.  It is times like this that I have to remind myself that it's more important to live, and dive another day.

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River Diving

Ahhh, the joys of winter diving!  When the ice is too thin (or, in some winters, non-existent), some crazy divers take to the rivers.  River diving allows for a completely different experience, mainly as a result of the current that isn't really present in lakes and quarries.  However, it is a COMPLETELY different beast.  Not only are there currents, which can be strong, there are also underwater hazards not typically found in protected quarries or even in the Great Lakes.  For years, people used the rivers as a dumping ground (out of sight, out of mind?) and as a result, it's not uncommon to find collapsed docks, wads of fishing line, lawn chairs (seriously?!), cinder blocks, re-bar, and even low-head dams.  While to the untrained diver, this is an environment ripe for something to go wrong, with the proper training, equipment and mindset, the rivers can be a fantastic opportunity to dive locally.  And really, who wants to wait for their next tropical vacation to get in some underwater time?

Entrance to one of the dive sites we frequent.  Thank you to Rich Synowiec of Diver's Incorporated for the picture.

We often dive either the Detroit River or the St. Clair River, but have dove other rivers as well (Cooper, I'm looking at you).  I have had so many people ask me "Why in the world would you want to dive the Detroit River?!  Aren't you afraid of finding a dead body or something?  What is there to see down there anyway?"  Well, while finding a dead body would be pretty horrifying, it's really quite rare (unless you are a public safety diver and it's your job to find that kind of thing).  What we DO find when diving the rivers though are bottles.  Tons and tons of them.  Everything from beer bottles to apothecary bottles and everything in between. Take exhibit A, a bottle Aaron found a few months back in the St. Clair River.  The bottle has "Dr. D. Jayne's Expectorant" embossed on one side.  While we can't positively identify when the bottle is from, best estimates put it anywhere from 1850 - 1890.  

And THAT, my friends, is why we dive the river!

First River Dives of 2014

I apologize in advance, this post is kind of long and picture-heavy.

This past weekend, we set out for our first river dives of 2014.  We had some friends we met on a dive trip last summer come into town from Wisconsin to take the course from a good friend of ours, Rich Synowiec, and then complete their check out dives.  We were invited along to dive with them on Saturday and Sunday.  

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Typical bed of the pickup on a dive day.

Of course, the first step for any day of diving is to load the gear into the truck: two dry suits (White's bag); an argon set up (for me since I get cold easily); dry suit undergarments (Fourth Element bag); two hoods, masks, sets of gloves (wet for Aaron and dry for me) and fins; two sets of regulators (in bag farthest to left); 45 pounds of extra weight; two river tools with two goodie bags; and an extra change of clothes, just in case the dry suit isn't so dry.  We have really gotten this whole thing down to a science and can be loaded up and ready to go in about a half hour.

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Pickup bed of some dive friends.

Have we ever mentioned that diving is an equipment-intensive hobby?  No, we haven't?  Well, it is.  The picture to the right is the gear just for one person.  Well, plus some other, non-diving related, stuff

On Saturday, we were diving on Gross Ile, a small island in the Detroit River.  The weather was nice, relatively speaking.  The air temperature was 38F, no wind, and the sun was trying to peak out.  But the river, well, she was raging, quite literally.  That was the fastest current we had ever dove in.  A couple of things were working against us - the location is shallow, the water level is about 3 feet lower than normal, and the shipping channel of the Detroit river (on the other side of a very small, unihabitated island) was frozen over still.  All the water that would usually flow through both the shallow side where we were diving, and the larger and deeper shipping channel, had to go right past our dive site.  Talking about a ripping current.  The water temperature wasn't terrible, 32F, but with all the work we had to do in order not to get swept away by the current, we barely felt it.  Both of us ended up calling the dive about 10 minutes in.  Better to be alive to dive another day.

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This is why people dive Poseidon regulators.  The first stage is frozen solidly in ice, and still functioned great!

Sunday took us up to Harsen's Island.  Harsen's is in the middle of the St. Clair river, right where it opens into Lake St. Clair, and you need to take a ferry to get there.  It's actually quite interesting to sit in your car as you are crossing a river.  We met with friends (lots of them, actually - Rich even snagged a quick picture of everyone before everyone got kitted up) for breakfast at a local place before hitting the river.  The weather was much colder on Sunday - 16F and windy, but sunny.  Colder weather (and of course cold water), is a problem for some regulators.  It can cause them to freeze and free flow.  However, some regulators are better than others.  The ones below both continued to function perfectly, despite the fact that they were incased in ice.  Note to self: need to get myself one of these 

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Who said Poseidon regulators were rock solid?  No free-flows or failures from the Poseidon's today.

Both Aaron and I got our gear set up, and then donned our undergarments and drysuits, hopped in the water annnd....free flow.  A small one, but still an issue.  Poured in some warm tea (that's all I had on hand) to thaw it, and then try again.  We both were able to get down, but Aaron's started to free flow again, and he couldn't get it thawed  He ended up calling the dive.  I was able to get in a half hour dive before I overworked mine, froze it, and had it free flow on me.  I did learn something interesting this weekend - I can reach my own air to turn it off if need be (don't worry, I was on the surface when I turned it off).  Good to know.  One dive and a frozen reg later, and I called it a day.  Below is a picture of me as I was doffing my gear (dry suit is off, undergarments are still on).  Please excuse the state of my hair.

Unfortunately, since Aaron wasn't able to dive, he wasn't able to find any treasures.  I found a few cool bottles, but I have no idea what kind they are.  They still need to be cleaned and researched, if I get a chance.

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Meghan doffing her gear after a great dive of diving

Science Fair....and Feelings of Inadequacy

For over twenty years Meghan's Dad has been on the board for the Flint Regional Science Fair.  A few years ago, we both started assisting with the judging efforts.  Evaluate the projects Friday night to determine the finalists and then interview participants the next morning.  The first couple of years this was a fairly simple process: we show up, get handed a sheet of 10 - 15 projects to look at in the Junior level (middle school students) and evaluate them.  These projects ranged from topics such as "Which Disinfectant Works Best" to "Which Bridge Design Hold the Most Weight."  Pretty creative projects, but none were too mentally-taxing to evaluate.  

And then there was this year.  This year, we were both "promoted" to the Senior level (high school students).  Still, these are high school students and it's easy enough to think that since we both have college degrees and engineering jobs - we got this.  Wrong.  So wrong.  These are some seriously impressive students.  Some of these projects, I could understand and objectively evaluate.  Others were so far over my head that by the end of the night my brain was firmly in the "too much science" information overload zone.  Actually, it was probably closer to throwing itself off of a cliff zone in response to the things I made it try to analyze...on a Friday night...after an already long week of work.  Just to give you an idea, the winner of the 2014 Science Fair was "A Novel In-Clinic Patient and Cancer-Tailored Targeted Drug Delivery System."  Feeling inadequate yet?

Diving a Sub-Aquatic Village

In the diving industry, Sundays are often referred to as Dive Day.  This winter, 3 weekends out of 4 each month, we can usually be found diving somewhere.  Whether it be White Star Quarry in Gibsonburg, OH, or Colchester Harbor in Ontario Canada, we usually have found something interesting and unique to dive.  Earlier in December we were fortunate enough to be invited to dive on a wreck discovered by Mike Drexler of Drexler Diving Systems.  Our friend Andy Morrison wrote a great article and many of his pictures from that day can be found on the Toledo Blade Website. Last weekend and this weekend, we dove at somewhat more local quarry that had ceased operations and was allowed to filled with spring water.  When it was closed, large machinery, smaller artifacts, buildings, and even power lines were left in place.  Over the years, as the quarry filled with water, these all became submerged making for some fantastic diving opportunities.

We have been fortunate enough to become close friends with people who knows the gentleman that owns the quarry.  With them, we have been fortunate enough to dive this quarry three times - twice on some pretty impressive sites left over from when the quarry was operational.  Last weekend it was a rock crusher.  This weekend it was the village.  It's really isn't a village per say, but there are five buildings and some power lines still standing.  It's approximately a half mile trek each way to get to the site - while hauling about 100 pounds of gear per person.  The air temperature was 18 degrees and the wind felt like it was blowing at 50 miles per hour on the lake (in reality, it was probably  closer to 20) creating quite the wind chill.  The dives are relatively deep (my dive computer read a max depth of 81 feet) and it's a strange feeling when you get in to the water, sink below the surface, and get warmer than when you were standing on top of the ice.  It's not all that uncommon for the water temperature to be 10 - 25 degrees WARMER than the air temperature (not factoring in the wind chill).  

Meghan under the Ice.  Photo by Kent Klemz

Anywho, back to the actual dive.  A buoy had previously been tied off and so it was easy to descend on the line.  At first, one can't see the bottom, but as you descend deeper, out of the mist, the power lines start to appear, followed by the buildings.  It very surreal to see a little village appear, seemingly out of thin air (or thin water?).  The buildings still have their air conditioners hooked and and ropes hanging on the wall.  It looks like they walked away from it.  Unfortunately, the batteries on our small underwater camera died due to the cold temperatures before we even got in the water, so no pictures from today.  One of our dive buddies had his GoPro with him today and was filming me as I was performing my safety stop at 15 feet.  Once I was done, I ascended to just under the ice and swam directly towards him.  However, he wasn't videoing, he was taking pictures.  As I went to touch his hand, he got a great picture of me.  And I apparently got quite the scare out of him (he couldn't see me coming).  As soon as I was out of the water, the gear was packed up and we trekked back to shore.

In recap, we got dressed in three layers of undergarments and a dry suit, loaded all of our gear on sleds (about 40 pounds), walked a half mile out to the site, chainsawed a hole through 18 inches of ice, and walked a half mile back to shore, for a twenty minute dive.  Some might call us insane (heck, we sometimes call ourselves insane!), but for the most part, we consider ourselves very fortunate to be able to experience and see parts of this world that few ever will.

If you're interested in learning how to dive and explore the fascinating underwater world, please get in contact with us.  While we don't teach ourselves, we can hook you up with some pretty impressive instructors.

Wishing and Waiting and Hoping for Spring

The winter of 2013 - 2014 was the second worst winter on record for Detroit - ever.  To date, over 84 inches of snow has fallen.  To give you some perspective, the snowiest winter had a total of 93.6 inches.  While the total snowfall for this year is just another winter storm for those in Houghton (where Michigan Tech, our alma mater), for those of us downstate, it's downright brutal.  Not to mention it's also been the winter of the "Polar Vortex" where it wasn't uncommon for HIGHS to be only a few degrees above zero, Fahrenheit.  

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Now it's the middle of March, a time when it SHOULD be warming up.  At this point, I would gladly take anything over 40.  Over 50 would be a bonus and just might call for me to break out the bikini and open the pool.  Two years ago, on St. Patty's Day weekend, we were sitting outside, at a local Irish pub, enjoying some beverages with friends while wearing shorts and t-shirts.  This year, the high for March 15 was 25.  But sunny.  Oh was it sunny.  It was one of those days where sitting inside, warm, with the sun pouring in, one could look outside and think that it was 50 degrees outside.  It was a beautiful day for a stroll in the park.  So, that's what we did.  We set off with the dog in tow and went to take some pictures in the Van Buren Township park.  Only one problem...it was still frigid outside.  But, we persevered in the name of photography on a beautiful (albeit, cold) afternoon.  

We were able to grab some really good pictures at the park.  The birds are starting to return, the squirrels are coming out of their hibernation (wait, do squirrels even hibernate?) and the bunnys are starting to hop again (something Scout is excited about...now only if he could actually catch one once in a while).  But I digress, back to our nature walk.  We also discovered the location of the University of Michigan Rowing Team's boathouse - quite impressive.  They were trying to break open the ice on Belleville Lake so they could start practicing.  I think it's going to be a couple more weeks before they have enough open water to row.

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Beautiful Front door of Ford Hydro plant

After leaving the Van Buren Park, we headed over to a smaller one we discovered while looking at the map.  There were two right next to each other called "North Hydro Park" and "South Hydro Park."  Apparently, there is a hydro electric dam built by Henry Ford sitting on the river.  The building appeared to have been built at least 60 years ago, probably more, and had some great architectural details.  Scout was very interested in the rushing water below.  Unfortunately, we couldn't get a good picture of his curiosity.  Our model wouldn't cooperate.

All in all though, it was a beautiful day.  If only it had been a little warmer.  Some further information and pictures can be found at Sherlock Photography.

Germans

Boy does it feel good to be back in Texas!!! It has been too long.  Almost 14 months since I had been here last.  The weather here has been 62 degrees and windy, while back home 4-6 inches of snow fell.  Meghan is not happy about about all the shoveling that she will be doing.

As my day of meetings in Houston draws to a close, it is a great time to reflect on the opportunity that I have to work on such as awesome project.  I will be able to share more details in the coming months with the rest of my friends.    Two of my German colleagues and I went to eat at Saltgrass steakhouse.  It was fun helping them convert ounces to grams of protein, and their reaction to portion sizes drove home the ridiculous portions of US proteins.  While I was helping them with unit conversions, they were helping me with my German.  They taught me two new words that I feel are very important.

Left = Links

Right = Rechts

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Unfortunately I was unable to grab a meal with my good friend Megan.  It looks like I will be back in Houston during the next two months so I am not worried that we will be able to grab that meal.

The most unforgettable experience of this trip has to be the giant cow that was in the parking lot of the hotel in Houston.  The three of us were trying to figure out if a cow of this size would taste good.  

I have an early flight in the morning, and then a full day of work tomorrow.  It will be a long day for sure.  Gute Nacht