“Ooooo, I want that!”

Walking through the dive shop or skimming through a newly-printed dive magazine always summons up the same thoughts in my mind. Those thoughts are some variation of, “Whoa, coooOOooool!” and “Ooooo, I want that!” Being a college student, the majority of those thoughts end in, “Ugh, I can’t wait until I have a real salary...” but, it also means I always have something to look forward to. One of those “Oooo, I want that” products caught my attention recently. It caught my eye because it brilliantly fixes an infuriating problem that I always have diving. Imagine this, you get out of the water from a stellar dive; you had an easy descent and ascent, you and your buddy were on the same wave length, your buoyancy was dialed, you saw schools of fish, multicolored nudibranch and huge anemone, you played with some harbor seals, and you even got a high five from an octopus!

Walking out of the water you feel like you are on top of the world. You get back to the car and pull off your gear, feeling more liberated with each piece that comes off. The shivers are warded off by the sunshine and a warm towel, and you spend your surface interval eating orange slices and chitchatting with fellow divers. Then, it’s time to start gearing up for the next dive. With all of your might you wrestle your cold wetsuit on over your pleasantly sun-warmed skin, you stick your feet into the puddles that have formed in your booties, you heave your BC onto your back and clip in your weights, and you put your mask on over your head so it is prepped and ready, sitting around your neck for when you need to put it on. Now, here comes the problem I mentioned earlier: gloves. You are weighed down and hot, and you want nothing more than to get down to the water, but those wet gloves block your way. You attempt to put one on but, being that it’s wet, the glove gets stuck on the widest part of your hand, from the joint of your thumb to the joint of your pinky. You pull as hard as you can but the glove just stretches and doesn’t budge. Your face is beginning to burn from the heat building up in your wetsuit, your other hand is cramping from the effort of pulling on the glove, your hand in the glove is painfully being squished, and you are pondering: how bad it could possibly be to just not wear gloves in the 50 degree water? Now, one of two things happens; you either burst into tears, defeated by this small piece of neoprene, or you get really mad, force your hand in as far as it will go, tearing a hole in the cuff of the glove, and, still having zero use of your fingers, you go stomping off, down the beach, leaving your poor buddy running after you, wondering what he possibly could have done to make you so furious.

If this scenario sounds even slightly familiar to you, you will understand why I was so thrilled to find these: EASY- DON gloves. These gloves slide on over your hand, seal with an elastic cuff, and keep your hands dry. No more battles with the wet and stretchy gloves that put you through hell in order to get them on. Can you hear the angels singing? I can! As you can probably tell from the detailed description, I have had many a battle with the gloves, and I cannot wait to get my hands on (or in?) these gloves.