Funny and scary!

I ordered a custom made immersion suit from Survival One. This is a top of the line Gortex and Nomex dry suit with a front diagonal zipper entry.

I just got back home at 2 a.m. from our journey to Florida and back. There sat my new bright orange immersion suit and I couldn’t wait to try it on. My living room was dimly lit when I donned the suit. It was very difficult to put it on, but I had never tried one before. I thought once on it would fit correctly…NOT!

I started to panic as the rubber collar had not yet been cut to size so my head was turning red from a lack of circulation and my eyes started buldging. It was the same as being strangled. At the same time, I was starting to overheat adding to the panic. There was no one here to help me so I started to rip the suit off my shoulders so I could release my head. No luck…now I was overheated, sweating, panicking and trapped in what felt like a straight jacket.

I said to myself, don’t panic, and sat down in a chair for a moment…I considered calling a friend at 2 in the morning for help extricating myself. It felt like the black thing that covered Spider-Man’s suit that he had to rip off.

Okay, I couldn’t pull it off by myself, so I looked for some mechanical advantage…there it was, I went over to my spin bike that has forward facing handlebars. I jammed the handlebar under the zipper near my shoulder and started manipulating my body down for ten minutes…finally, I had freed one shoulder. It took the same process for the other shoulder. Wow!

Then I was able to free my head with a plopping sound from the rubber neck seal. Next, I could not free my hands from the rubber seals so I stepped on the sleeve and plopped each of them out…next my feet.

I was truly freaked out. I put the suit back in its box and left it there like a scary monster.

The next day when Kenny arrived I had him standby to help me in case I got stuck again. Sure enough, my head turned red and I told Kenny to get it off of me. He had to use two hands on each shoulder and lean back on his foot…and it still took him 2 minutes per shoulder.

Needless to say, I will never put that suit on again…it’s on its way back to Survival One.

I’m writing about this since everyone thought it was hilarious…with the exception of me. Don Ratliff laughed as said he wished he could be a fly on the wall while I was doing the immersion suit dance.

Art at Van Nuys Flight Center said he had heard a funny story about my suit. That’s when I decided to write about the event.

It wound up that they had built the neck to crotch measurement way too small. I’ve moved ahead and ordered a Switlik immersion suit. Both of them are around $1600 for those who care to know.