Local Dive Shops - from this past month

[Kirk]

Due to a recent relocation, my local dive shop, Scuba Dive and Travel in South Minneapolis, has not had its fill station up and running.  I hear, however, that will soon change. 

As a result, I've been going elsewhere this past month for fills.  Anyone who has known me the past couple years knows I don't stay out of the water for too long.  I don't have my own fill banks, anyone who has climbed the steps to my apartment understands why, and compressors aren't very welcome to the condo association, for good reason.

First weekend, I went to Wazee Sports, good shop, nice gear, not so knowledgable kid working there that day, however.  He couldn't do an argon fill, so I did it for him.  He filled the o2 bottle a lot faster than I felt comfortable.  He couldn't do my 50% mix, so instead I got a second bottle of pure 02 (I'm not all that good at blending gasses either, maybe I should take a class).  He did, however, pump up my tanks to the psi I requested.  The price was also nice, though probably a bit too nice, by now he might know the cost of argon and 02.  Nice kid, just got the job, hope it works out for him.

Second week, back to Wazee Sports.  This time the owner was there.  Great service, good fills, but a bit more expensive than the previous week.  More money, but fair.

Third week, back to Lake Wazee, but on a Sunday, not a Saturday.  I was told by the owner of Wazee Sports, that he was closed on Sunday, thus went looking for fills.  I chose Scuba Center in Southwest Minneapolis.  It was 4 PM on Saturday, thus I needed something close to me.  Some big guy was working there.  First he told me his air was filthy (or more specifically, if my tanks are O2 clean, he can not fill them), I talked him out of that.  Then he closed my isolation manifold (which I quickly reopened, and mentioned something about not trying to kill me).  He proceeded to give me the slowest fill ever up to 2400 psi, not even the 10% overfill, about 70% of the gas I would get at a technical dive shop.  No O2 or argon at this shop, but I hear their suburban location has other gasses, hopefully they have someone on staff who knows something about them.  The shop itself had some nice stuff for sale. 

Once we got to Wazee, the shop was, however, open (well, I'm not sure open is the correct term, but there was a guy - different guy altogether - who was there, who was willing to trade money for air to fill up Mr. Jokes' doubles).

Fourth week, chose not to return to Scuba Center.  Instead, up to Minnesota School of Diving in Brainard, not too far from the Crosby Pits.  R2 wanted me to try out his new toy, a Silent Submersion scooter (wow, that's the strangest thing I've done in a while, I might need to get me one of those).  I called yesterday, learned they were open and inquired about O2.  At first he was a bit reluctant filling my deco bottle with pure O2, but eventually convinced him it was the right thing to do.  This morning I arrived.  A lot of people in that shop, looks to be a pretty active dive community up there.  Bunch of people were going out on a shop sponsored day trip to the Crosby Pits, and there was a class going on as well.  The owner was a really nice guy.  He gave me a tour of the place.  I was pretty impressed.  How many shops have you gone to that has it's own drysuit repair shop upstairs, it own decompression chamber, it's own hydostatic testing facility, and also doubles as a art gallery.  It's a recreational scuba shop, that has a commercial diving training program, though certainly not a technical shop.  It is setup perfectly for it, however.  He didn't pump much air into my doubles (but certainly no less than any other recreational dive shop would), but he gave me more O2 than I expected (I even told him, I respect the level of your fill banks, I'd be happy with 1500 PSI of O2).

Well that's my little story about area dive shops this past month.  Find a good one, spend money there (yes, I too am guilty of buying stuff off the internet, but have certainly spent a lot of money on gear in my local dive shop ... remember you can't get fills online, ............  nor training....  though a lot of people certainly seem to by trying).  Dive Safe - Have Fun -- Kirk