Sam meet everybody. Everybody this is Sam.

Sam has an English class assignment where she has to write a paper about something she learned. This girl is going to the extreme. Which after getting to know her that is not surprising.

Back in March Sam was in one of my Open Water Pool classes. I knew then she would be a natural. Her families plan was to go to St Thomas for Spring Break. But with Carnival and out of control air fare they are opting to go some place closer to home later this spring or early summer. Sam needed to get her paper done so she chose this past weekend to complete her open water dives at Millbrook quarry.

Her dad was doing this Advanced Open Water this weekend so the timing was perfect. I wish I could say the same about Saturday mornings weather. It was pouring down rain. Yeah, I know we where diving, we where going to be wet anyway. But you have to change in and out of scuba gear, it would be nice to get/be warm between dives, the water tempure at 30 ft was 42 degrees. We where down in the water for 25-30 minutes. Sam's mom came along to watch from the warmth of their pickup truck and commented that is really wasn't raining all that much until we surfaced. Her mom also brought a 5 gallon water jug full of hot water. We poured cupfuls of it in our wet suits as we changed gear and off gassed. All in all Saturdays dives where very wet but fun.

Sunday was bright and sunny we headed over to beach 2.5. The day had promise to flawlessly. Until my ears decided to be not clear. After completing a few surface skills we where descending for our first dive , I could not get past ten feet. My left ear would not equalized. After a couple of attempts we surfaced, I did several equalizing techniques. Then we tried again, I got to 20 feet, decided we would do Sam underwater nav. On the return trip of both my ears equalize and I was good for the rest of the day. Sam worked all of her skills requirements like a champ.