Welcome to Nowhere

Archive for October, 2011

Last night I had my EFR ( Emergency First Responder ) refresher/training course , we learned about the changes of how to perform CPR that became acceptable since I was initially trained.

It was a good review and nice to see that I still remember most of the stuff , and since our “classes” are more along the lines of an open discussion forum, I was able to part some of my knowledge about how to approach and perform some of the action covered in the CPR procedure.

Then we moved to the CPR and Breathing section with the doll , when it was my turn I got into position and tilted the head back to administer the “rescue breaths” , when there was a loud “CRACK” and Annie’s head was in my hands 5 cm away from the neck joint.

They say that giving aid to a non breathing , no pulse person is a good thing cause you can’t make them any worse , does removing the head of a non breathing person counts as making him worse ? I mean he was dead already , how much deader can you be when you are not breathing and have no heart beat ?

Once the rest of the group managed to recover from the shock , we all laughed , but they looked at me wearily and announced they rather I do not come to their aid if they require CPR , so now I managed to scare most of my Dive club about my buoyancy (or lack there of ) and to add to that those of my Dive Master course would rather die then me give them CPR .

I am not making good impression on people am I ?

Last night I was lazy ( and late) coming to the weekly training session in the pool of the dive club , and was hoping to stay dry .

The Club Director and My course Instructor had other plans to me , and told me to get in the side pool to do my 400m swim , the prospect of it didn’t stress me too much until we had a miscommunication , my doing or his , who knows ?

The problem was that I asked how many Laps I need to do , he thought for a couple of secs and then said “25” , I was a bit startled but a test is just that , A test to push you see how you cope. At the side of the pool were two ladies observing their children in the pool with one of the DM ( Dive master) scuba giving the lesson , and my instructor told them to count my swim for him as he was needed also in the other pool , Unknown to me was that he told them that I need to do “25 Lengths” of the pool .

I started swimming and after a while lost count on my Laps ( I thought I was at 7 or 8 ) and paused to ask the ladies how much I had done , the answer was “17” which wasn’t what I was expecting , I went on to complete the rest but the Instructor said I stopped and hence failed … I don’t care cause now I know it is not 25 Laps but 25 lengths , which is a lot easier.

My arms did hurt by the end of it as i think this is the longest distance I swam with out fins since I stopped swimming in the Tel aviv Uni , in the Pre-Wife Age , that can tell you Folks how long ago that was.

I should go back to swimming , at least once a week , maybe?

On Sunday I did some of my mandatory training dives for my PADI dive Master course , if you ever had your face covered in mud or had been sprayed from a passing car/bus/truck you’d know the feeling of how bad the visibility was in the place I dove .

The place is called Wraysbury , which is a lake outside Heathrow airport , so the planes are going over head constantly (imagine giving a briefing in that environment) , the bottom of the lake (max depth 10m ) is sleet and sand and it is used for training , so all the divers are mucking the water with in the first 10 minutes of the first diver in.

After doing the 4 mandatory “puddling” , I had to do the “open water skills” swim 800 m with mask and fins and two a diver for 100 m , all went fine but the visibility was getting worse every minute (almost hit the pillars of the deck one time cause could not see them) .

Last night I had my Theoretical test for the course , 120 questions involving diver theory about displacement , gasses , dive planing and not to mentions diver safety , it turns out that 2 questions i accidentally marked the wrong answer then what I wanted and that piled up the number of wrong answers I gave , one member of the group did fail the test , Gladly it was not me , I passed the test and now I am one more step closer to completing the course successfully .