The crater at The Homestead.
With our upcoming trip to Thailand, I decided to get certified to dive. Adam is advanced certified, and Thailand is a top scuba destination, and it seemed wrong to go and not dive. I signed up for a class with the oddest bunch of people ever.
The instructor, let’s call him Chuck, referred to himself as Scuba Chuck. He had an obsession with milk. In fact, his favorite type of milk was breast milk. Straight from the tap. I cannot believe he shared that information, and I cannot believe I went back to class after that.
Then there was the girl named L. L is not an abbreviation. She legally changed her name to L. Just the letter L because people used to misspell her real name, and this was so much easier. Right. Now confusion there. She was older and single and extremely bitter about it. EXTREMELY. We heard about it at every class.
Then there was the young married couple. Early twenties. He would strut up and down the aisle with a gun on his hip? Why was he packing, you ask? Did he have a dangerous job? Feel threatened in some way? No. No, he just liked carrying a gun. In a holster. On his hip. Where everyone, EVERYONE, could see it and know that he was carrying a gun. His wife brought their annoying little yippy chihuahua to class. She was always kissing the dog’s belly and counting how many nipples she had. Good thing she wasn’t lactating or maybe Scuba Chuck would have asked for a sample.
The last character in this freak show was a guy taking the class to become a divemaster, and this is the conversation we had one day during class:
Him: “I really like your pointy ears; they’re sexy.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Him: “They’re elvish, and that’s hot.”
Me: “What?”
Him: “My wife has pointy ears, too. It’s one of the reasons I married her.”
Me: “That might be considered a compliment in Rivendell, but not so much around here.”
Every night I would come home and tell Adam about the bizarre happenings in my classroom. At least it kept me awake while we were calculating nitrogen levels.
What about those open dives in January in Utah, you ask? That’s what The Crater in Midway is for. It is a hot spring inside a cave. We drove up there in a blizzard, did our dives and came back. It is a hot spring inside of a cave. Pretty cool, and way better than doing a dive in a wetsuit in a freezing cold lake.