Dive Fest 2009 started out with a bang. Mike picked me up around 12:30. We headed to Cloud to pick up Curtis and Blog Reader Kristen then stopped for lunch at Bravo Burrito.
I needed to purchase a dive light for a night dive and Curtis and BRK needed tanks filled so we stopped at the MSD in Brainerd. After that we headed to Dive Fest Headquarters for our first set of clues for the medallion (free fun dives) and the first three poker chip mine reveals (free trinkets like Xmas stockings made from dive flags). We thought the festivities kicked off at 5pm but apparently it started at 4:30, right about the time we pulled into the campgrounds.
Ted was already there waiting for us. The clue for the medallion was “Look ma, no men”. I have no idea which pits were revealed since we we decided to go right for the medallion search. From the clue we assumed the dive site was somewhere in Mahnomen. At first we thought maybe it was a site with a female name: Joan, Feigh, etc. But more than the formal hint was revealed. A suggestion was given to brush up on dive table and compass skills for the clues tomorrow. Since the dive table consists of numbers or letters, I asked Curtis if there were any sites in Mahnomen that had numbers in them. There was only one, PADI #79.
When we got to PADI #79 no one was there. Could we be the only ones to decipher the first clue correctly? Are we even in the right spot? Last year we were positive we had the right spot on Friday night and it turned out we were way off, but we still had a good feeling about this one.
Looking back, I’m really astonished we pieced the info together and guessed the correct site. In the end did it really help us to know the site so early in the game???
Our site theorizing was way out there. I think it helped having the Friday night dive. If we hadn’t covered the road so thoroughly we might have done more tanks on Saturday trying to find it anyway.
I agree. We’re just really intelligent. We can’t go second guessing how smart we are.