A third lung is one lung too many

     Fossil Steve taunted me last season with visions of the amazing things he was finding in a place he fondly referred to as "The Meg Hole", a deep section of the river where, with the right gear, you could potentially recover dozens of megalodon teeth in a day.  All I had to do to access these treasures was use a third lung diving system: the air supply stays above the water (in our case, on a table) and we breath through regulators on long hoses in order to stay submerged.

Easy!

 

If you're not me.

 

     But, of course, I'm me, so, much as I wanted to jump at the opportunity, I dragged my feet. 

     At first, the water was still too cold from the winter but as April crept into May and water temps rose steadily, I had knew I was going to have to give it a go.

     On the appointed day, I launched my kayak and started trolling to The Meg Hole, only to find that one of the nearby phosphate mines had drained a retention pond into the river and the water was completely opaque.

     I met up with Steve and tried to put on a brave face while he tied my regulator to me with string and latched a heavy weight belt around my waist but inside, my anxiety was ruling the day. 

I don't like water I can't see through!

     Steve is older and has seen a lot in his days and he is fairly patient.  He watched me while I dipped my face in the water about 10 times and then waited while I tried to dive to the bottom but for me, it was a total cluster.  You're probably thinking we were diving in 20 feet of water.  It was more like 7 feet of water.  I don't scuba dive and the feeling of the weight belt dragging me down made me want to panic.  I couldn't seem to get my head down and since I couldn't see a thing through my mask, all the meg teeth in the world wouldn't have convinced me to keep feeling around blindly on a river bottom. I managed to get my head above water and gasped, "Steve, help me!" and Steve took my hands and said, "Put your feet down, girl."  I was still in the 5 foot deep section of the river.

     After my initial attempt, I assured Steve that I would try again in a minute and that he should go on about his business of fossil hunting.  He went under water and though I couldn't see  him, I could hear him shoveling gravel into 5 gallon buckets that he would then drag up to a sifting screen on the shore.  Every so often I would dip my face into the water but that was as far as I got and when he emerged about 15 minutes later, his look of surprise was comical.

     "What are you doing?"  he asked me.

     "Hanging out," I replied.  "I think I'm going to skip the 3rd lung for now and head for shallow water."

     The season ended before the water cleared up so I never tried again.  I'm not against another attempt but the planets will have to align before I purposely sink myself to the bottom of the river with a bucket and a shovel.