Decompression stops can be needfully boring.
When scuba diving, if you go past a certain depth, you have to “stage” your ascent every so many feet for a period of time, so you don’t get the bends when you surface. I have a high regard for my own skin so I don’t quibble with this and will sit at a decompression stop for however long it needs be; and sometimes just a bit longer.
In the mid-2000’s (somewhere in there, the memory is fuzzy) I was on a dive trip with friends in Mexico, and the order of the day was to dive with Hammerhead Sharks. I love sharks; I think they’re graceful, efficient, and I enjoy their variety of size and shape and color. Shark diving? Sign me up. (Just none of that “let’s chum the water and put you in a cage” stuff). To dive with the Hammerheads, you have to go deep-ish. If I recall correctly, we were clocking in somewhere between 120 and 160 feet. For reference, a Basic Open Water certification will get you certified for 60′, and part of that certification requires you do a “free ascent” – meaning you take one breath at 60′ down, and then ascend (carefully exhaling the whole way) for 60′ without taking another. So we were a little deep.
I remember the decompression stop had me holding on to a guideline from the boat, probably the anchor line. My dive buddy was slightly below me on the wire and in the open water, the only view was the vast blue of the ocean; all the sharks were at depth. It was quiet, it was peaceful, it was … utterly boring.
For however long of a decompression stop I had to be at that place, I was staring out at blue nothingness, literally forced by physics and physiology to stay in one place and do essentially nothing but breathe. I was still “on the job” — the dive was not complete, it’s not like I could nap or anything, but I was, at least a little bit, removed from the “work” of the dive. In 20 years of diving, this is the only decompression stop I remember.
I write this from Arizona, visiting my parents, and it is NOT boring, but it is a decompression stop, for me, from work. I’m not 100% off, but I’m not 100% on, either.
Inasmuch as I would like to be 100% off, I need this decompression stop, before surfacing and heading into a real vacation; I have a hard time letting go of work things, and need to double check multiple times for my own sanity: did I finish this thing? Did I pick up this ball? Did I put this to rest, or at least to rest enough to wait for the New Year?
Somewhere along the way to now, I started taking the day off before a trip and the day off after, to allow for a similar staged decompression: it’s not like you’re still on vacation those days, rather, those are the days you set things “to rights” so you’re ready for the next stage. Piles of laundry and an empty fridge and hundreds (if not thousands) of emails feels rather like the bends otherwise.
My advice, therefore, is this: do your decompression stops. They can be boring, you may feel afloat, you may not have the ability to immediately communicate to your buddy and you may be eyeballing your air, but they are needful.
Bobbie Conti 