Saturday, November 12, 2011

Early Morning Starts

Quite often on a Sunday morning I am getting in the car to meet up with the men and women of the Dumfries Sub Aqua Club. 

Come November, the early morning starts seem to be a lot earlier.  It is dark when I am loading up the car the night before and still dark when I get in the car.  It is dark again by the time I roll home at the end of the day.  It makes me appreciate those glorious long summer days all the more.

I distinctly remember hefting an air cylinder into the car at five in the morning, looking up to the dark sky and seeing snowflakes start to come down. When it gets as cold as that, I will now pack a hot water bottle wrapped in a big towel.  This keeps my change of clothes warm for most of the day AND if anybody in the group has a hypothermia situation, I've got a hot water bottle already primed.  Some of us feel the cold more than others.

I'm not at the pack the hot water bottle stage just yet . . . . but just as day follows night, December follows November and the hot water bottle will be pressed into service again.

We may be diving here tomorrow:

Wemyss Bay.  (pronounced "weems" bay.)

Let's hope the sea conditions stay as calm as they are right now.

3 comments:

dogbait said...

That's dedication to your sport getting out of bed at 5am in your winter. I remember going to a football match in Nottingham in January and daylight disappeared like someone was using a dimmer switch. And my feet frozen solid!

Peggy said...

The sun never gets very high in the sky either. It's like we've got atmospheric mood lighting for months!

dogbait said...

The sun's elevation in the UK in winter was another thing that surprised us the first time we visited. There it is, opps, it's gone again! Got used to it after our 6th visit there in winter.

You probably question why so often in winter. Trips somewhere OS usually ended up back in the UK to visit friends on the way home around our summer holidays. The one thing we never missed though was trying to have a run on black ice!