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Tag Archives: Events

Memorial Day Weekend 2017

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Wow, Can you believe that Memorial Day Weekend has already come and gone? In fact, we’ve had a second weekend since then! Yowzers! Time needs to slow down a little bit, or a lot bit really! So, we learned what the meaning was behind Memorial Day last week and we definitely want to thank those who have fought so hard for our freedom! Memorial Day weekend also seems to be the kick off to summer. The days get progressively longer (that is until June 20, then we working in to shorter daylight hours….), the weather gets warmer, and so does the water! It’s a perfect time to get SCUBA certified if you aren’t already and if you are, get your behind to that water!!

Okay, okay, so as you know if you’ve been around this group any at all, that there are a lot of shenanigans that happen when you put us all together. I’m going to attempt to recap those moments in this blog post but be warned of 2 things… 1) sometimes things that happen at the lake, stay at the lake. And 2) Because I’m putting 4 days into one post, you’re looking at 45 pictures. Hey I took it down from 168, you’re welcome!

Memorial Day Weekend

Friday

These 3 got together again. They are the next bunch of shenanigan makers!

Sisco & Pete were in heaven. I think Sisco wound up swimming so much she collapsed out of tiredness that night and didn’t move until morning.

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Mermet Springs 2016

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I just have to ask… did anyone realize there wasn’t a blog post recapping our Mermet Springs 2016 dive trip? What happened?!?! Maybe you should fire the blogger. She isn’t doing her job… 🙂

As you hopefully know, Mermet Springs is located across the border in Illinois. I can’t remember, is Mermet Springs located in Mermet Springs or Mermet? Bueller, Bueller? Either way we tend to stay in Metropolis which is like what, 15 miles away or something like that. Chump change :).

Mermet Springs, just a hop skip and a jump away!

Now for those of you who don’t know… Metropolis, Illinois is like a good 5 and 1/2 to 6 hour drive or you could fly in to Paducah, KY, which would take you a little over 7 hours (so google maps tells me). But sometime the fun in the trip is the experience getting there!

When you get to Mermet Springs make sure you immediately check in. They keep your C-Card until the end. No big deal, at the end of the weekend you get it back. If you go with our group then Deb and Grady get it back and you collect from them. See no big deal. Here are their summer hours in case you’re interested. We are approaching summer quickly after all!

This… this is how you know you’ve made it. And you have to get your picture taken with the giant fish at least once! :).

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Cozumel – February 18-25, 2017

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February 18 a group of 20 set off on a grand adventure for Cozumel Mexico. What am I talking about… this is the yearly, get out of the fly over states crummy weather! The funny part of the whole thing was, they didn’t leave us in snow this year. We were only about 10 degrees cooler in Missouri than they were in Cozumel. The big difference was the evenings.

This year on the dive boat we had 3 dive masters. This is George. We’ve had him before… he’s not new.

This Jimi. He was new for us. I’m sure we left him scratching his head a few times but we sure liked him. He’s welcome back on our boat anytime!!

Finally we had Jeremiah. He said he remembers us. Is that a good thing or a bad thing… you be the judge! Remember a few years ago there was a cab driver that recognized Deb. Just saying. Anyway, we liked him really well also so he’s welcome aboard our boat again too.

This is Jimi again. Doesn’t he have gorgeous hair? He told us it was for the girls.

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Pardon the Mess

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Pardon the Mess around here. The mess is kind of two fold. Did you notice that the website/blog have been redesigned? The blogger, that’s me 😜, put her Master’s Degree to work and rebuilt the Extreme Sports Scuba website. There are a few minor changes that will happen after this post, but for the most part, Welcome to the April 2017 edition of the Extreme Sports Scuba Website. I say April 2017 because it was redesigned/rebuilt back in Fall 2013 roughly and I’m sure it’ll get it again… remember keep it fresh! But for now, here is the new website!

Highlights:

  • On the home page
    • The slider rotates between 5 photos. Any upcoming events, recent trip group photo, and anything else that strikes someone’s fancy will show up here.
    • We have narrowed our tabs down to the home button, About us (which has a new section about the store), Classes offered, Travel/Events, Local Diving (which has a new local diving spot featured), Kayaks, the Scuba Blog, Links (for all other links), and a Contact us (which contains a map as well as a contact us form that will email directly to the store).
    • Links to Funjet Vacations (book your own destination out of here!), DAN, SDI/TDI, SCUBAPRO, Sealife Cameras, and Malibu Kayaks.
    • Additional links to our classes, about us, and contact page.

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The Extreme Polar Plunge – New Year’s Day 2017

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So technically we don’t call ours a “Polar Plunge” and it is different than typical polar plunges, however… if you think about it, it is a polar plunge. It is January. It is cold. The water is even cooler, well sort of… our water was around 50 degrees and the outside temperature recorded in at a high of 55˚F so technically, it was the same, but the outside is warmer than the water temperature. Anyway, every year we start off the new year with the New Year’s Day down at Beaver Lake; this year was no different. The bus loaded up at the dive shop and left around 7:30 or 8am headed to Beaver Lake bound and determined to have New Year’s Day divers. Don’t look at me, I didn’t dive. It’s cold! I’m a chicken, but we did have 10 divers. Woot Woot! Good for you guys. I’m proud of you, and maybe, someday I’ll be convinced to partake.

Our drives down are never boring, this one included. So our good friend and diver Doug Lord’s birthday is New Year’s Eve. I guess a group went to church and then after went out to celebrate Doug‘s birthday (or so I understood… I wasn’t there). Now if you know our good friend and diver Kim Brungard and/or Dan La Due, Dan likes to stash things in Kim‘s purse for her to find at a later date. Kim was bragging about how her purse walked away unscathed, until she dug through it and found this. Good job Dano! Continue reading→

19th Annual Underwater Pumpkin Carving

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It’s that time of year… time for the recap of the 19th Annual Underwater Pumpkin Carving held at Beaver Lake. We had a great turnout this year and even better weather. The high was 72˚ and sunny. Can you really ask for any better weather this time of year? The water was even a great temperature, the thermocline was down around 30-35 feet. The visibility was impeccable… until Mark accidentally dropped his pumpkin and the weights to get it down, more on that in a bit.

This is a typical Nicole/Kim picture. I’m not sure why, but we do this most every event we’re together. It is what it is. Maybe now would be a good time to tell at least part of the Mark pumpkin story because it involves Kim. So late last month I went to Sams and bought pumpkins for our family pumpkin carving. I posted a picture on facebook of Mark holding 2 of the 4 pumpkins and Kim asked if those were his pumpkins for the carving. I want to mention that they are big pumpkins. So he went and bought one especially for this. We weighed it at the shop and it was 25 pounds. It also took 25 pounds of weight plus Mark to get the pumpkin underwater. But he met Kim‘s challenge and took the 25 pound pumpkin underwater for carving. As he was taking his pumpkin out to the water, the rope that he had his weights tied to broke and we lost 25 pounds to the bottom in about 3 feet of water. Luckily it was all recovered . Grady was happy about that because it was his pool weights we used… haha.

The other funny story of the day involving poor Mark is we told him he was entering the contest. He wouldn’t (although really wasn’t given a chance) sign the release form, so Deb, his mom, and I all signed his release form for him as his parent/guardian. (Note: He did eventually sign it)

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Cayman Brac – Summer Trip – July 2016

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Our summer trip this year headed for Cayman Brac with 13 divers for a week long excursion. Cayman Brac is part of the Cayman Islands and is located in the Caribbean Sea north-east of Grand Cayman and east of Little Cayman. The island itself is about 12 miles long with an average width of 1.2 miles. The island is named

This crab was found while diving. The crab is dead… Scott Peters Continue reading→

Cozumel – May 2016 – Grad-Ge-8-Shen Trip

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What happens in Cozumel on the Grad-Ge-8-Shen trip, stays in Cozumel on the Grad-Ge-8-Shen Trip. Just kidding. Welcome to the second trip of the year. Check out the shenanigans that this group got into… With 10 of us, surely we couldn’t have caused that much trouble, right? Just wait!

Our first day, we decided that we didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn. We were on vacation and thought it would be fun to be a little more laid back. We told the boat to come pick us up at 9am (instead of the normal 8am).

Apparently the guys at Cozumel Marine World know Grady and thought he might have fallen off his rocker. We started congregating ready to board around 8:30. The boat arrived at 8:45am. Every day we’d tell them the next morning we wanted 9am but the boat arrived earlier and earlier every day. By the end of the week we were boarding the boat at 7:45 for our 9am dive. I guess we wanted to get a good jump start. And we took bets every day on who would be “late” aka the last one to arrive to board the boat.

So this is the ladder to get on the boat from the water, but Grady told me it was an air dryer.

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Cozumel – February 2016 – Winter Getaway

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February, wait Nicole, this is August. Yes, I know it’s August but I realized that we never blogged about the 2 Week Cozumel Trip in February. So it’s about time before we forget until the next February 2017 trip! Holy Cow. There aren’t many months left in the year.

So the weather before we arrived was horrible, but once we got there, it cleared up and was nice. For the most part we’ll let the pictures do the talking for us with a little explanation in between .

This just so happened to be the dive trip some lady asked Grady why he was diving with a fire extinguisher.

So we almost had an accident with Someone (i.e. Grady) falling off the boat on to Jan. We lucked out though, it was all good.

One of our favorite dives this trip was Cedar Pass. We saw 5 Sharks and 6 Turtles.

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Extreme Interview: Glen Faith, Owner of Mermet Springs in Metropolis, IL

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Boy do I ever have the interview for you today… Have you met Glen Faith? Do you even know who that is? Well, if you’ve been to Mermet Springs, surely more than once you’ve seen him as he is the mastermind evil genius… I mean the owner of Mermet Springs in Metropolis, Illinois.

Last September when we took our annual trip to Metropolis, Illinois to dive the quarry, I got the opportunity to catch up with Glen, set him down, and interview him.

The first question I asked was… Glen, how did you get started diving?

I started my diving career on my secretary of state police dive team. We did a lot of vehicle insurance investigations and stuff like that. So for almost 24 years that’s what I did. I dove for guns, cars, bodies, etc. Everyone knows what dive teams do.

I started diving in 1988. I have just a little over 3,000 dives. But one of my biggest achievements is I’m an instructor trainer. I eat, breathe, and sleep scuba.

Here at Mermet Springs Sunday’s are slower. Saturdays average 100-120 people, but as the weather starts to cool it will slow down.

Now, the latest news at Mermet Springs: We brought in wifi. We brought in a fiber optic network. We’ll be able to provide all the dive shops and divers

Elogs (training records/digital)

The quarry is located between 2 cornfields which doesn’t provide much opportunity for any kind of internet, but we finally were able to get the fiber optic network in so that all of our people can come dive, but stay up-to-date on the world around them.

We have professionals of all sorts that come out here to dive. This opportunity allows them to stay connected with work and families. Depending on your phone network you can even call home. The best story is we’ve had a lady out here who was a real estate agent who was able to do a dive, do a virtual home tour, and then continue to dive.

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