Software developer passionate about all things computer science, nature, and travel
Breathing Gas– 32% Backgas / 100% Deco
Max Depth– 104ft
Avg Depth–
Visibility– 150+ft
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time:
Notes:
Met with Jeff after he got off work at Ginnie and headed to the Devil’s area to gear up. The plan was a simple scooter mainline dive here, nothing fancy. We would scooter until it became too small, drop the scooters and start swimming. We hit our turn pressure around the scraper, all in all a pretty uneventful dive.
So I finally took the time to research how to jailbreak my iPhone a few weeks back, and I thought that I would make a post on some of the cool apps that you can get from a jailbroken iPhone that you can’t get from the apple store. Mine was jailbroke using tools found here.
Cydia
Cydia is the “hacked iPhone’s” replacement to the app store. While the app store remains fully functional, Cydia allows users to search far more apps, as you bypass the fees that Apple charges to let programmers sell their software within Apple’s app store, and also allows you to get blocked apps, suck as GV Voice, which I’ll discuss later.
SBSettings
This is perhaps the most useful app that I’ve found. You simply swipe your finger across the top of your iPhone’s display and it lists several frequently accessed settings that you can flip on/off with a single touch, much easier than going through a series of settings menu. Most helpful is the ability to turn off 3g when I’m on campus, since we have Wifi, no need to waste the battery.
GV Mobile
GV Mobile enables you to use your Google Voice account to text message free, as well as place calls. The nice part about this, is that it prevents people from seeing your real phone number. This is helpful to those of us who have 2 or more phone numbers, as limiting everyone to only your Google Voice number empowers you to switch which phone all calls go to, screen calls, receive SMS via the internet, as well as block certain numbers at certain times of day.
Breathing Gas– 32% Backgas / 100% Deco
Max Depth–
Avg Depth–
Visibility– 150+ft
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time:
Notes:
Met up with AJ and Stacey late in the afternoon. Stacey is quite frankly much better on a scooter than either of us are right now, so we had asked her to give us pointers, and guide us in the right direction to become more proficient on DPV’s. Since she takes weekly water samples in the Insulation Rooms, we would tag along during this dive. AJ and I lead during the dive so that Stacey could observe us. Getting into Devil’s Ear just isn’t fun yet, I’m doing better, but still need work. We made it to the Insulation Rooms, which was a new experience, as the jump line here is tied off to the ceiling, and scooters are great at floating as well as catching flow at the same time, so once again, as with any new thing in diving, very task loading. While it’s not the easiest place to run a reel with a safety/stage, please don’t just throw your scooter or stage bottles in the clay where you jump off mainline, the damage is very evident from people doing that at this particular location. Anyways, back to my story….we got the scooters clipped off and headed down the passage, stopping for each of us to cookie the T and then following Stacey to the area where she takes her weekly samples. On exit, AJ and I had decided to alternate towing each other, which Stacey said we did well. However, we do need to work on OOA drills, as the additional task loading of the scooter made for a way to eventful drill. Once again, deco was minimal (I’m starting to love the Gavin for that!).
Breathing Gas– 32% Backgas / 100% Deco
Max Depth–
Avg Depth–
Visibility– 150+ft
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time:
Notes:
Left Telford, got a quick fill from Extreme Exposure, and headed to Ginnie to meet Gibby and Jeff. Jeff had a hose leak, so he had to sit out the dive. Gibby and myself continued on, but the main goal of this dive was to play with 30w HID video lights that a friend loaned us and get some cool video. I haven’t had a chance to put it together, but when I do, I’ll post it on here.
Breathing Gas–
Max Depth–
Avg Depth–
Visibility– 50ft on the way in, 15-20ft on the way out.
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time:
Notes:
Received a free boat ride up the Suwannee River from Cave Excursions West during their REACT party, which is a great place to get cheap gear, a free meal, and meet several cave divers! I lead the dive, and Stacey followed. The guys at Cave Excursions had already placed a primary reel for everyone to use during the party, as well as placed the gap reels in the two nearby sinks where the gold-line breaks. I’m not exactly sure where we ended up, but it’s very easy to describe, as Telford is one of the most changing caves that I’ve seen! One thing is for sure, you can tell that Telford isn’t dove often, as it’s VERY silty, and exiting is always done with less visibility than entering. This time it wasn’t as bad as last year. We also got to make it quite a bit further in than last year, maybe an extra year of experience helps here :-P! We made it to an area where the cave gets very black, with rock that branches off quite a bit, similar to the double lines area of Ginnie, except far darker. Shortly after that, the cave got very low, with pristine white columns from the ceiling all over the place, similar to the Olsen (Pothole) line in Peacock, aside form the height, and there were also several more formations. From talking to other cave divers, it sounds like we nearly made the first T. I certainly would take a stage to Telford this time, as the cave changes so much, and it’s so shallow, you really could use more time to enjoy it!
Whitney hadn’t been to Troy Springs so we decided to go there since she had the weekend off and I wanted to go diving. We decided to play with the scooter, and she had some new gear to play with, so Troy Springs was a great place. One thing that surprised me was that the catfish which used to enjoy hiding under the cavern zone when I came here several years ago were no longer there. The cave is still pumping as usual, showing off as we look into it frustrated by the fact that it’s all too delicate to explore, with breakdown everywhere. Steps have also been added, a nice addition for public access, but certainly takes away from the nature of the pristine spring that I was used to seeing.
Breathing Gas– 32% Backgas / 100% Deco
Max Depth– 106ft
Avg Depth– 85ft
Visibility– 150+ft
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time:
Notes:
Met up with Jeff Marchand after he got off work and finally got to take the new Gavin Standard into a cave after spending several hours with it in open water. We had decided to go somewhere that was very open, and the mainline section of Ginnie fit the bill, with the added bonus that we had already swam this entire area of cave, most of it multiple times, so we had a solid idea on how much gas is needed to swim out from that far back. The first thing I noticed is how fast the cave comes at you on a scooter. It’s VERY task loading keeping up with a buddy, the scooter and the line….and also enjoy the cave. Getting through the lips on the throttle scared me, so I decided to swim it…WOW does the flow really catch a scooter in this area of the cave, and with the safety bottle on the other side of me, getting through the lips was no fun! Once through the lips, we established communication again and got back on the throttle. I found myself constantly on and off the throttle, as I’m paranoid of getting too high and hitting cave. We made it to the Heinkle in about 27 minutes, and turned the dive there, not wanting to stretch gas for the first cave/dpv dive. On exit, we stopped at Hill400 since we had built up reserves, recalculated our gas math, and tied in a spool. The cruise down Hill400 went quickly, and we were at the p1000ft arrow before we knew it. Since Whitney was waiting on the surface, we decided to turn here before deco got too long and left her bored out of her mind. Deco was < 10 minutes, which was awesome seeing as how we had just covered 3700ft of Ginnie, a dive that would have required about 40 minutes had we been swimming!
Breathing Gas– 32% Travel / 100% Deco
Max Depth– 71ft
Avg Depth– 70ft (Shallower, but we used 70 for deco)
Visibility– 30-50ft
Water Temp– 72F
Dive Time: 127min
Notes:
Met with Stacey at her place and carpooled up to Madison Blue Springs State Park. The water was clear, flow was reasonable, and in general it was just a great day to dive there. The only downside was the heat, which makes the setting up time in a drysuit not too fun. We swam to a tunnel near the end of the gold line, went down it, and turned after we found ourselves in a complete silt out. Backtracking, we finally got on the potters delight jump, and made it to Rocky Horror where the slate is, then turned the dive, as Stacey’s drysuit had flooded. Deco was uneventful, and it was still a fun dive regardless of the fact that we didn’t get to the Courtyard as planned.
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Frustrated by our lack of Moose viewing, we hit up google, and found out that Walden, CO was supposed to be the “Moose Viewing Capitol of Colorado”, so we google mapp’ed from Estes Park, CO to Walden, CO. A bit discouraged by the fact that Walden is over a 3 hour drive from Estes Park, but even more upset that we hadn’t seen moose, we weighed our options and got on the road before sunup. Just as I was wondering if I was too tired to be driving, I looked up on a rock face and saw several big horn sheep! The sheep we had searched all over for in the park were right along side the road!
We drove through perhaps the most beautiful scenery of the trip on the way to the Colorado State Forrest. We took side roads, and all sorts of places that we were told Moose hide, all with zero luck. We finally decided to give up searching on our own and drive towards the moose visitor center, where we saw two moose, one decent sized male, on the side of the road! They were very skittish, and kept their distance, but just seeing them was exciting.
We then went to the visitor center, where they told us to take a trail by the lake, however there were tons of children and pets, which we guessed was the reason why there were no moose in the area at that time. We were both starving, so we went towards Walden to get food. Now, I’m not sure if road signs measure distance as a crow flies, or the path a vehicle takes, but our gas light had just come on, and let me tell you, that was the longest 22 miles in my entire driving life! I just KNEW we were walking, as the gas light was on forever, while we had no cell signal. Since the iPhone’s GPS works off of the data network to receive the maps, we couldn’t even tell how close we were getting!
On the way back, we saw one more moose (the one you see in the gallery), but she was in a severely overgrown area, so we couldn’t get much closer. We did get to chatting with a fellow photographer, who was local to the area, and showed us a shortcut back to Estes Park, that cut almost 45 minutes off of our drive home.
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