The river

[Jon]

Rob (cigarlung) and I got out this morning for a chilly dive in Lake Monona and the river.

Things had iced up a bit since I was skiing near there just yesterday. There was a fair bit openwater to be found, but we had to break through patches of skim ice to get out to them. We couldn't findt he 40' hole, but w did hit 30' without a problem. There's some interesting lake topography out in that are due to some dredging/dumping that has gone on in the past over there. The bottom goes from 20' to 40' and then up to 8' in at least one spot.

I did see one carp swimming around out there, but since I had no sling with me he remains safe to live for another day- or week. There was also lots of junk to be found- including a very old rowboat.

Jon

 

[Jon]

The weather switched from the blinding snowstorm, but relatively warm temperatures, to the bright, sunny and frigid cold temp of this morning. The weatherman called it -5F with the windchill.

Rob had some new NEMO bi-fins to try out as well as his nifty little Go-Pro Hero camera. He has the new one with the wide angle (170 degree) lens and 5mp pictures. I'm interested to see how things turn out because this camera is TINY! It would be the perfect thing to mount on any speargun as it is half the size of anything I've seen so far. It can do an hour of video on one SD card and has a ton of different mounting brackets that go with it. I would think that the bike mount kit might work out best for most spearguns without too many modifications.

I found lots of other junk as we headed up river- mooring weights, cassette tapes, bottles, hockey pucks, and even a plastic lizard for my 3-year-old. The old boat was the neatest thing out there, but it's pretty much a mess and sand is the only thing holding it together.

Jon

 

[cigarlung]

Jon great diving with you thanks for sharing your river and lake. Hope to have some video out with my wife's help. Rob

 

[unirdna]

Haha. The Indigo Girls and Elton John on the lake bottom. Must have been the result of a hippy kayak colliding with a transvestite paddle boat. :naughty

Rob's exposed forehead is giving me a headache. :hungover

 

[fleshy]

Rob had some new NEMO bi-fins to try out as well as his nifty little Go-Pro Hero camera. He has the new one with the wide angle (170 degree) lens and 5mp pictures. I'm interested to see how things turn out because this camera is TINY! It would be the perfect thing to mount on any speargun as it is half the size of anything I've seen so far. It can do an hour of video on one SD card and has a ton of different mounting brackets that go with it. I would think that the bike mount kit might work out best for most spearguns without too many modifications.
Jon

We had a "Go Pro" up here last year. Had some difficulties with it. Battery life was really poor, it was hard to tell if you were recording or not, and it was difficult to use because it only had one button. It seemed like there was a lot left to chance with everything. We had mixed results. Granted with a different mounting system somethings might get better, but with the one we had it was inconvenient as well. Granted it was cheap, and the stuff we DID get out of it was good material. I hope that you guys have better luck than we did. Ended up giving it to a teacher for $15 for gas money.

Rob's exposed forehead is giving me a headache. :hungover

Brother of bob. I was thinking the EXACT same PAINFUL thing. Ouch. Pull that hood down brotha!

 

[Jon]

Rob has the new style- not the old one. It is 5Mp instead of 3Mp. It also has a wide angle lens (170 degree) Which should make it much nicer underwater. Looking at some of the other camera sites the new one gets a much higher rating than the old one.

I had never held one in my hand, but just grabbed it and started pushing buttons, there are two, and I saw that it had a timer one the front that counted off time as the video ran. Someone in another thread mounted one of these on their pneumatic speargun. The thing is so tiny you'd hardly know it was there.

As far as the hood goes, yeah it looked painful- especially the cut on his forehead from running into the surface skim ice. I think an Ice mask would make it 100 times warmer.

 

[cigarlung]

My forehead made a good recovery my feet as always were the problem area with pain with numbness from the cold perhaps from being a kid playing hockey outside and letting my feet get to numb. I think my skull may be acquireing more mass as my hood feels tighter each time I dive also causeing my jaw to cramp up. Sorry no video up do to not having much gray matter or time to figure this video thing out. I tried a ice mask 1 time and felt terrible jaw cramping and kinda suffocated. I still hope to dive again soon.