Thursday Night Irregulars

As a Floridian I share something in common with most of the people in this state… I came from somewhere else. All of us here at Dive Rite live in Florida and many moved here for cave diving. Our diving before that varies as far as a continent and some island groups. But when I talk about winter diving in the quarries up north with a wide smile on my face I get strange looks around here. I moved from south central Pennsylvania and the local diving is quarries, wrecks off Jersey and Delaware and the occasional river dive.

My dive shop up north, like many, had a unique cast of characters. This uniqueness tended to concentrate over the winter months and form … insanity, there’s simply no other way to put it. Insanity is the only rationale for otherwise normal (or not so normal) people getting up on a weekend knowing that the air temperature is in the 30’s and putting dive gear in a vehicle away. It has been several years since I was up in that neck of the woods for more that a visit. Writing this my only real problem has been picking from the many dive stories. While there have been a handful of memorable dives, mostly I remember the people and antics of being out diving at the quarries… particular over winter. Ice diving classes and the annual underwater tree decorating contest with another local shop bring fond memories, but mostly its Thursday’s nights.

There’s a group of divers who meet every Thursday evening at a place called Willow Springs… year around! We call ourselves the Thursday Night Irregulars, because none of us are regular. As with any assembled group of divers Chaos Theory is dominate. The only things that remain predictable from week to week is there’s diving on Thursdays, there’s a small core of divers that show up every week, dinner is pot luck or a pizza/subs joint down the road, the world’s largest wood burning stove will be smoking hot over winter and there are very few things that remain socially unacceptable. We tell new people that it is a great way to get new divers out in the water, rinse saltwater off our gear in the summer and keep diving over winter. Really it’s a mini-vacation in the middle of the week and an excuse to get together. Now there are a lot of married guys in this bunch, so the real purpose of Thursday Nights can not get back to their wives! Everybody understand?

The quarry itself is maybe 50ft deep, good viz would be 15ft and over winter the water temp can get down to the low 40’s. This is setting for learning lessons and legend making. Lessons might be that a group of five divers diving ‘together’ in such conditions is a cluster of something, but not a cluster of divers. Or when I was set up (yes ‘set up’ is the correct verb) with someone who really should stay out of the water and take up golf, just to see how I would handle the situation. Legend making, the first thing to come to mind is a favorite dive story from a buddy of mine. This quarry has fat lines tying most things together in a circuit. Once, Dan took a new diver on a tour and left the Quest (a major landmark in the middle of quarry) and was trying to find the Mystery boat by compass – there are no lines tied to the Mystery boat. The first thing they run into is the Airplane, right on the nose of the Airplane. This is like leaving Philadelphia headed for Chicago and ending up in New Orleans! But this guy was so impressed that Dan hit the Airplane on the nose by compass alone, that Dan was never able to admit he had been aiming for something else.

After the dive we eat and we eat well. There’s the Lobster Shack. I doubt there’s an ounce of installation in the structure, but it has the world’s largest wood burning stove. The table closest to the fire is the dinner table and there are no guarantees on food… if your dive took too long you get what’s left in the bottom of the pot. This is where most of the fun of Thursday’s is – the dinner table after the dive. Dave discussing the interaction of smell and taste… this may seem academic, but trust me it’s not. Terry and Rodger telling their latest story of wreck trips. Doc Tom has a propensity for wearing boxers on the outside of his drysuit and funny hats. Billy Balls are always good (a diner item … hey, if I’m keeping it clean, you can too!). Gerhardt shares his tales of African safaris. There’s the oddity of George and Jay who seem to dive nowhere else. Dino Don just being out diving and trying to keep up with him. Countless jokes I’m not allowed to post here, including most of Dan’s antics. Well they could be posted, but they’d have to be sanitized so much as to not be funny any more.

Yes, there’s definitely something wrong me. I live in cave country and get to go caving at least three or four times a week. I’ve already lived in the Caribbean and have no daydreams about vacations or retirement there. I’m looking forward to when I can take my gear up north for a visit and hang out with this crowd again.

(But once for the record, and despite loving these guys like family, I’d never consider moving away from the caves.)

All photos courtesy Smokey's Divers Den