Last night, Jeff and I went to Hollywood Divers for the classroom part of our drysuit class – the highlight of which was actually trying on rental drysuits to use for our checkout dives.

I guess compared to my first wetsuit experience, it went extremely well. My knuckles aren’t bleeding, and I only had to try on three suits instead of five or six. However, there was the same basic problem: all the rental suits are designed for men. Men that are straight up and down, and no curves. By the time you get a suit big enough to go over my more-than-manly hips and thighs, the darn thing is usually sized for a giant.

So while Jeff got to look all hot and sexy in a perfectly-fitted off-the-rack black drysuit (his first try), I wound up with the “Spiderman” suit, a blue and red concoction with several extra feet of fabric hanging around my waist, neck and arms. But still tight across the hips.

Ditto the fleece underwear (a one-piece jumpsuit). Jeff and I both wound up in the same size undies; his fit perfectly, while mine was stretched to the max at my hips and hanging in folds above my waist.

We’ll have to take pictures when we take them diving next week, so you can drool over Jeff in his manly-looking drysuit and mock my clown outfit.

On the up side, the latex neck and wrist seals were oodles more comfy than I imagined; I really barely even felt them. (Insert condom joke here.) On the down side, it is JUST AS HOT inside a sealed drysuit as it is inside a hot, dry wetsuit. Only you’re not allowed to pull on the neck and let water in to cool you off. And the pool portion of the class takes place at an indoor, heated pool. I’m tempted to skip the fleece underwear, but I discovered last night that wearing the drysuit over any bare skin makes for very uncomfortable sweaty-skin/drysuit adhesion, rendering it almost impossible to move around or get back out of the drysuit.

Now the trick will be to avoid the temptation of buying my own custom-fit suit long enough to pay off those credit cards we keep thinking we’ll get down to zero. We always use the “oh, but we’ll really use this ____” excuse to justify big purchases; too bad that doesn’t actually reduce the cost. There’d be no poverty on the planet.