| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
|
Next meeting:
Tuesday August 16th 7pm
Elks Lodge
Topics: Shipwreck diving stories!
July Meeting Notes
 |
notes by Joseph Reynolds, as told to the editor
The possibility of touring a recompression chamber met with approval; tentative date is in the fall sometime.
The conspiratorial prize raffle produced some happy contestants.
We plan to donate our time assisting Channel One Food Shelf on a Wednesday evening sometime this fall.
The DIR Fundamentals class has been rescheduled for 23-25 September 2005.
Joseph described a dive that was part of Dave Owen's 40th birthday surprise.
Pam & Chris Christopherson recently toured Australia and New Zealand. Ask them about the 30-foot "deep dive" excursion.
Remember: We still need divers to sign-up and sponsor a weekend at Lake Wazee during open water part 2 classes. Joe Velie represented the club at Wazee during a recent mid-week part 2 class. Check the calendar and send email to Roger with the dates you can help. It's a good way to get new members into the club and prove there really is local diving here!
Remember: The diver forums at www.blackdive.net/phpbb/ are a good place to see what's been happening locally and to find out the latest weekend diving plans.
August Meeting Agenda
Hear fresh stories of our recent wreck-diving trips to Two Rivers and Isle Royale!
We'll also make diving plans for the rest of the year. Some highlights:
- Niagara Cave walking tour -- October sometime
- Channel One Food Shelf volunteer work -- October sometime
- Recompression chamber tour -- November sometime
- Turkey Dive 2005 -- November sometime
- Holiday Party -- December sometime
Bonne Terre 2005
story by Joseph Reynolds, video images by Wayne Holm
 |
| The airfill station on the dock. |
We stopped for lunch at KFC. The door buzzed when it was open. We sat by this lifelike and surrealistic mural that featured folks enjoying KFC. Wayne invented a new technique for storing potato wedges for later consumption by snorting them up his nose. Apparently there was some mention of Orks, who were once Elves, you know.
A bit down the road we saw a biker gang, practiced belching, and worried about Wayne missing a dive because of a potato wedge stuck up his nose. Wayne, aka. Mr. Potato Nose or Herr Kartoffelnase, tried potatoes again for dinner (at Club 67 Steakhouse and Sports Bar). He and Roger then played foosball, and we went upstairs to join the dance. One of the ladies gave her birthday boyfriend a special dance.
 |
| Descending into the mine. |
My wetsuit boot leaked a bit. After the dive I discovered both the toe and heel were threadbare, so I shoved a plastic sandwich bag from Subway to block water from entering. It must have worked, because my foot was not frickin' freezing on the next dive.
On our way to the Warehouse BBQ for dinner, we saw a woman in a bikini walking through a junk yard, but when we got to the restaurant, it was gone! It had moved. Dave and Dave asked some locals to show us the way to the new building. It had moved to Maple Valley road in Farmington and a had a new copper roof so they could seat more hungry patrons. We missed the East St. Louis Show.
 |
| One of a dozen baby praying mantises. They inspired a dance we used later that night. |
We had a brief regulator symphony on the dock. I was greeting folks going on the boat tour, "Hello, welcome to the dock. Watch your step." They offered me a job....
I got the splinter immediately upon surfacing after the last dive. Mike offered to pull it out with a pliers. We went to the clinic, and after about an hour the doctor pulled it out with a pliers, except half of it stayed in. The X-ray technician was cute, but it turns out wood doesn't show up on X-rays.
We went back to the mine after that to get stamps in our logbooks. Nobody was there, so we talked to the shopkeeper and her mom, and listened to the first part of the walking tour. We had buffet dinner at Ceci's Pizza [$4 for all you can eat! was almost worth it], got a 12 pack of beer, and talked about movies. We practiced synchronized opening of the cans.
 |
| An ork heart / ore cart. |
The next day it rained through Troy, MO. I had a well-done Aorta Burger at the Golden Corral in Hannibal. And we took a side trip to Illinois [by accident!]. But other than that the trip was uneventful. Oh yeah, they almost towed our cars away, Roger and me.
Canister Light Project, Part 2
|
Rich Good, Roger Southwick, and (for real this time) Dave Owen are still building canister lights. Here are some updates. | |||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers
from Undercurrent Newsletter
Among the best of all diving nonfiction is Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers, a tale of two wreck divers who discover the hull of a German U-boat near New Jersey and trace the story behind it and those who died in it. Published last year, the book will be turned into a major film directed by Ridley Scott [!]. If you haven't read this blockbuster, it's now available in paperback and can be purchased directly through Undercurrent, at Amazon's best prices. Click here and all of our profits on this and any other purchase you make will go directly to preserve coral reefs.
This Month at Lake Wazee
|
Roger Southwick and El Presidente del Club Buceo Joseph Reynolds spent a day at Wazee trying out Roger's Ikelite camera housing. One of the two underwater strobes was acting flaky but everything else worked fine. (I think it was a loose NiCd pack connection.) Here are some highlights. | |||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
The next day, Roger and John Martin did a trimix dive near Sherwood Forest on a new wall that we didn't know about. We followed the "crossing" line down to the bottom at 190' and along the wall to the west (looks like north on the compass due to mineral deposits). The wall goes pretty deep -- we got to 210' and it still went down, and up as far as we could see. (BTW, it's about 39F down here.) It's a steep, smooth wall similar to the one starting to the east at 90'.
On our ascent at about 170' we saw dive lights about 30' above us. I thought it was a mirage, but they responded to my light signals... Aliens!
Our 40 minutes of decompression went by faster than I expected. The warm thermoclines provided relief from the chill below, and the 20' stop was actually a bit too warm. I passed the time whittling a tree branch.
We got to the surface just in time to meet up with two other divers who had been shining their lights back at us. They thought there were aliens too, but it wasn't aliens after all.
In The News
Upcoming Events
August 12-15 2005 -- Shipwreck diving at Isle Royale - TRIP FULL
September 20 (Tue) -- Club meeting, grill-out, & park cleanup at Foster Arend - 6pm
September 23 - 25 (Fri - Sun) -- postponed from July -- DIR Fundamentals class. This is an excellent way to improve your diving skills. Check with MDC Sports for details.
See the calendar for more details.
Club InformationMeetings are on the third Tuesday evening of each month at the Elks Lodge, 917 SE 15th Avenue, Rochester MN. Are your dues due? We'll try to send an e-mail reminder. Annual memberships are $25 for individuals or $50 for a family. Note: After 3 months you'll be dropped from the membership list, so remember to renew! Send your check to:
Have you been on any dive trips lately? We'd love to publish your story! Contact the editor if you'd like to contribute: Roger Southwick rsouthwick AT charter.net Get your $75 annual Lake Wazee pass for $50 - fill out this online form. More info is available:
|