3 days of diving for RivrDigrFest07

I was down for 4 days of RivrDigrFest07.  When RivrDigr brings his lovely cruiseship up to SC for a couple weeks of fun and generously invites dopes like myself to join him for a few days.  We spent 1 day on the Cooper while i was down, and the other 3 on a different river that is worse diving conditions, less teeth, but usually better stuff. 

Day 1 - Pain: 

I have a small problem with my octo - if you hit it, it will free-flow.I have never done this in the water before, but it happens on the boat while i am gearing up semi-regularly.  It happened on the boat for RivrDigr and Chuck to see.  To fix it, i have to take it apart. So we go in on the first dive and about 25 minutes in I can hear someone breathing nearby - not ususual.  It was rivrdigr coming ot say 'hi'.  Unfortunately when he reached out to grab my arm, he must have bumped my reg and boom - freeflow.  Yes, there are some internet rumors on various websites about him carrying a hammer and pounding my reg to set it off as sabotage, but I don't believe them.  The effect however, was not good.  I tried to play with it and get it to stop but no dice.  I had to head up before my air ran out. So, there was a quick end to the dive.  Dive 2 started off much better, i hit a beautiful 4"+ lower about 1 minute in - certainly this would be payback for the unfortunate first dive.  I grabbed a few decent teeth, and then snagged what I am pretty sure was my very first giant thresher.   I headed back up after about 90 minutes and broke the surface - checked my gear and headed back to the boat.  When i went ot reach down and grab my goodie bucket - it was gone.  It fell off somewhere between when i surfaced and when i reached the boat.  I went back down in a fruitless search and headed back in complete hopelessness.  What a terrible day.  So...if anyone fines a minnow bucket full of a bunch of teeth - there are really only 2 I want back the rest you can keep free of guilt.

Day 2: I made some equipment adjustments to prevent the sad events of dive 1 the day before - i removed my octo.  I got a few teeth but RivrDigr got the best ones for sure.  I did snag a nice whale tooth, and a pretty nice little posterior.

Dav3: Ditchweezil himself finally made an appearance today.   Considering he assured me he would be there every day I was there, I guess 1 day was about right .  After giving him enough grief (other than this one last shot here), we headed out.  On the first dive I snagged the best tooth of the trip for me about 20 seconds into the dive.  A nice 4.75" upper.  We headed back in for the second and i snagged a nice 3.5" upper as well.

Overall, an awesome trip and it is just great to spend time with some really good guys doing what I love.  I added a few more teeth to the display case too.