Certifiable

I spent this past weekend in "Nearly Canada" finishing up my Open Water Diver Certification course. The last part of the course involves completing four dives over a two-day period. The water was cold enough that we had to wear wetsuits, hoods, and gloves. While wearing all of that equipment made performing our basic technical tasks awkward, I am also confident that I will have a much easier time in warmer water.

To my surprise, we did shore entries on all four dives. I think that shore entries are much more physicially exhausting because you have to strap on all of your weights, tank, BCD (buoyancy control device) and clambor down a plank while holding onto your fins and mask and hoping that you don't fall on your rubber-encased butt. In a boat, you can just gear up and jump off.

The bay where we were diving was pretty cool because there was an old ship that had sunk right there off the shore many years ago. Although visibility wasn't more than about 20 feet, I did get to see a few fish and some interesting wreckage. However, most of my time was spent trying to focus on my breathing, not dropping to the bottom or bursting to the surface.

Saturday night I spent in a roadside motel. While the staff was extremely friendly, I was more than thankful that I hadn't seen that recent slasher film about motels in the middle of nowhere. I guess it was actually kind of quaint... if you like wood paneling, shag carpet, and red lighting in the bathroom! There wasn't even a deadbolt on the door. Yikes.

Today, I am surprisingly sore. My calves ache, despite all of my running this past summer. My shoulders hurt... which I kind of expected given that I have the upper body strength of your average 7 year-old girl. However, when I take a deep breath, my entire rib cage hurts. I think I pulled every single one of my intercostals!

The reason that I pushed to get the course finished is that I have another adventurous vacation with "The Phoenix" coming up in a couple of weeks. With being at opposite ends of the country for residency, we decided that the best way to stay close friends would be to vacation together. So after suriving our crazy Grand Canyon hike, we decided that SCUBA would be the next adventure.

Dentist for a Day

My vacation started with "The Phoenix's" graduation. When you graduate from medical school, you get hooded at graduation. It's not really so much of a hood as it is a velvet sash that goes around the neck. The person doing the hooding has to have a doctorate degree. There are instructors available to hood graduates, or at our school you can be hooded by a family member. "The Phoenix" and I side-stepped this little requirement by telling our school that we were cousins.

As I was flying in the night before, "The Phoenix" picked up my gown and hood. She told me the hood was purple, which I thought was a little odd as it was green last year, but then I thought maybe it had to do with my specialty or something.

All was going well enough, until an elderly gentlemen came up from behind me and started straightening my hood. "All of us dentists have to look good," he said. So that's how I found out that purple is for dentists, whereas green is for medicine. Between me not being her cousin, and not being a dentist it was quite the misrepresentation.

Her ceremony was just as long and drawn out as mine was. Our CEO (Yes, I said CEO, not president) was there, wearing her blindingly large, gold University medallion, ala Flava Flav style.

Finally, we double-checked that the name on her diploma was correct, and booked it out of there! I remember the feeling of relief that came with having that piece of paper in my hand.