Night Adventures

[blobbottlebob]

Road dog posted a thread called night digs and I wanted to post this story but I didn't want to wreck his thread so I'm starting a new one. Any adventures after dark? Feel free to post them here.

Here's one nightime dive story. (I actually have quite a few).

I was out diving by myself in a small lake. Evening was approaching but I thought I had time for one quick dive before dark and then I would leave. It was the first time I had ever been in this lake. There was public access with parking but it was restricted to boats you could carry down to the water (there was no launch). The access was in a tiny bay that was filled with muck and sediment and only a foot or two deep. Because I was planning on swimming, I didn't worry about a boat but rather walked in with my gear and took off. It was so shallow that I was getting stuck in the mud. I inflated my BC and used it to pull some of my weight off of my feet. Then I crawled above the bottom as best I could leaning on my dive float which is full of air. (It is bascially a truck tire). This worked reasonably well and I got out of the bay.

Because I wasn't finding a thing diving outside the bay, I swam to the other side of the lake. It was only a quarter mile or so, but it was getting darker already. I found several anchors, a few bottles but nothing very good. When I swam back, it was under the stars. I thought that it was beautiful but I wanted to get off the water because I had no lights with me. When I got back to the mucky bay, I discovered that I couldn't crawl over the top anymore. The anchors were weighing down my float and I couldn't get a lift off of it. (Why I didn't just chuck the anchors - I'll never know. Guess I didn't think of it). I pulled off my fins and took one step at a time through this muck. With each step, my foot would go two or three feet into the mud and get firmly locked in. I would grab the leg with both hands and pull on it until it came out with a sloshly gurgling sound. I was taking about one or two steps a minute. The little bay was hundreds of feet long. A sheriff drove by and seeing a car in the lot decided to flash his lights down by the water to tell anyone there to leave. I was too far out for him to see me yet. About a half hour later, I crawled up on shore totally exhausted. What a nightmare!

 

[surfaceone]

...What a nightmare!

Hey Bob,

Count your lucky stars, man.

 

[cordilleran]

I can't match that frightfest with Johnny Law, but I can relate a slightly unusual occurance happening with me some 40 years earlier.

I would often walk the shore of a reservoir with my dog Spot. Spot was your typical male cur with an overdeveloped olfactory ability. Male dogs generally are unique in that they strive to mark their territory. Universally, dogs love to annoint their hindquarters with putrifactive stench. Some people are that way as well.

We both walked inquisitively along the dumb shore and in the waterline muck appeared a chalk white appendage. At first glance the apparition sized up to be an extraordinarily large fish exposed to the elements and bloated with possibilities for further expansion. The stench was in keeping with putrifaction. As Alpha Male dogs generally do, an opportunity for annointment was in order. Baptism by stench. Spot dutifully began rolling on his back with the offal. I quickly quelled his enthusiasm only to discover on closer examination a vestigal human imprint.

It seems a girl had drowned one-month earlier in the reservoir and Spot had wittingly acquired her last odoriferous epitaph.

 

[blobbottlebob]

Oh man Cord,
That's terrible. I bet you had to get home and scrub your dog. That is, after you spent three hours being interrogated . . .