Canoeless Guru...

[Harold]

While many StarCity NEFGA members were trying their luck at carpfishin', Canoe Guru was in the Kearney area with the Husker Divers ( Scuba Diving-Husker Divers, Lincoln,NE ) teaching people to breathe underwater.

Between sniffing carpet glue and mounting my replacement trolling motor, I snuck out to the pit to take a couple pics, as well as to meet the "canoeless one".

When I drove up, there were LOTS of vehicles, but only a few divers.



Of course, they were "under the water"!

Not knowing (if) when I could sneak out, I asked Canoe Guru to "pop-up and wave" when I appeared.



While I have a friend who is an "under-water breather", and I have always been intrigued by the activity, I have enough trouble breathing the air from the "Big Tank"!

I was granted a quick photo of Canoe Guru and a couple "students".



I didn't spend much time there as this was a "classroom" situation, but did chat with Beth as they walked to the trailer for the photo.

Hopefully she will post some info about the weekend, which included a Night Dive at another location!

By the way, NO ONE had to ask ANYONE to SMILE! It was apparent to this land lubber that they were having a GREAT TIME exploring the LAST Frontier!

Harold F.

[CanoeGuru]

Thanks, Harold! It was nice meeting you in person. It was a long weekend of training but 18 new Open Water Divers have been certified, including two adaptive divers - one's a paraplegic and the other has a touch of cerebral palsy. Among the crowd we had students from Imperial, Nebraska; Marysville, Kansas (we train their police department dive team); Crete, Nebraska (we train their fire department dive team), and a girl who goes to school at Union College in Lincoln who's from South Africa and is just here in the States for college. She goes back to South Africa in November.

One correction to your post - we're not from a club. We're from Husker Divers, a scuba shop in Lincoln.

In addition to the Saturday/Sunday class, we did a night dive Saturday night, open to any divers who were already certified. We rode a boat to one end of the lake, dropped off the boat, and then swam back to the dock area with underwater lights. We saw a ton of bluegill and a couple of bass. The highlight was right at the end of the dive. The group I was leading, as we were swimming up the slope of the lake at the end of our dive, saw a really big (30"?) catfish in about 4 feet of water. We spotlighted him with our dive lights, and he didn't seem spooked at all. He sort of swam over to check us out and then slowly disappeared into the gloom. That was really, really fun to see.

As you noted, we were indeed having a great time. It is so incredible to be under water, completely weightless, able to move in any direction at will, and to watch all those fish. We saw crappie, bluegill, and bass in abundance, and the visibility was around 20 feet - pretty clear for these parts.

Thanks for stopping by to see us and for the pics!