Well,
I finally did it and it was an awesome experience... Things I saw...
Arriving on location in rain slick training our instructor waisted no time getting us orientated with the entire location, dive shops, bathrooms, compass navigation on land and beach entrances.
We suited up and practiced our snorkeling first with our jackets on, dove down and picked up sand in our hand and brought that back up for the instructor; a pike dive.
Then we placed our entire gear on and I brought the wrong regulator set that would not fit my Malibu BC back inflate and had to rent a jacket inflate instead; I noticed that the majority of rentals at Monterey are practically all jacket inflate.
Quite the opposite from our LDS which promotes nothing but back inflate; I was kinda of very ****sed that I had to rent out the Jacket inflate since I had my sites on really mastering the back inflate which I had practiced in the pool.
Well, the visibility was very bad as we swam to our bouy to begin our mask clearing; maybe 1 foot at the surface, but down to the bottom of the rope the visibility was about 8 feet at most so I was encouraged when the first set of divers came back up and told us.
As I went down my buddy had a hard time equalizing the ears because she was a little sick before the dive and the instructor had to keep taking her up 2 feet which made me wait a while just below her. That makes you use up more air waiting for the others to clear.
Once down in that super cold water I read my depth at about 20 or so feet and once those ears were cleared I was feeling great down there. the only thing that bothered me was the cold water on my fingers, I have to get use to that cold surge.
I read temps as low as 54 degrees with one diver in our group saying he saw it drop to 47 degrees at one point; as long as I kept the hands close to my torso or moving them around I would generate some heat but could notice the cold water moving around in them when I would flex the hand.
I used a 4mm karbon flex Merino Pinnacles glove. The rest of me was at 7mm at the head, torso at 13mm, groin at 10mm, boots at 6mm and the extremeties at 7mm legs and arms. My suit is all Merino linen on all items, I use a three piece suit not counting the boots or gloves.
I didn't feel any cold what so ever as I entered the blizzard water, nothing at all goes down that seal at the back not with that new neck seal that the M-E 7 from Pinnacles promotes.
Just the hand and on my last dive on Sunday my arms just the arms could feel a hint of cool but not cold, and absolutely nothing in the groin and zero at the chest.
My bouyancy was done with just 28 lbs on the jacket inflate which I really didn't like since trying back inflate BC the Malibu.
Man was our faces really cold when we did a full mask recovery and had that cold water hit our cheeks and nose. It's literally amazing how warm that area stays with your mask, just amazing.
We saw lots of sea lions all over the rocks on the wall with an occasional seal cruising about 10 feet away from us, they move so fast and are extremely agile, no wonder they are hard to catch via predators like the shark.
As much as I wanted to block out the shark he kept entering my mind when ever I surfaced and floated on my back to exist the beach. I would always try to stay close to my partner just for security in mind. Visibility is just zero from looking down to the floor as your swim on the surface, that really sucked.
It was all fun exploring at the bottom with our instructor finding a lot of decorative crabs. Lots of stars and a couple super size stars the size of my chest. Some really big fish too, the size of basket balls, I mean the mask makes them appear 33 percent larger so maybe they were smaller.
On my last dive with my buddy, we decided to swim on the surface all the way out close to the end of the rocks and then dive down and explore and come back. We had a hard time dropping without the guidance of the rope on the bouy since the water at surface was so murky, but once we got to the bottom and equilized the ears it was all good, visibility was at best 10 feet in all areas minus the kicking of the sand from our lack of experience.
We followed baby flounders all over the rocks and before I new it we had dropped down to 37 feet and still dropping till we made it to 45 and we stopped. We had a BT of about 28 full fun minutes till our PSI dropped down to 1,000. We decided to return to the surface and swim back to shore.
That swim was the hardest since at times we hit some current but we finally made it back and removed our fins and lugged up that heavy gear up the stairs through the water drainage that poured right into break water, it had rained all day on Saturday from the parking lot, leaving us with a much better day of full sun on Sunday with no drainage.
Overall experience was a 10 on the scale, knowing that future dives should have a much better visibility than what we got, that will spoil us in the future.
Now it's time to consider what computer, regulator and BC I will purchase. I now know that I don't want a connected computer since I prefer seeing my data on my left arm, that wasn't something I considered before, but being a diver now, I know my desires and whats more practical for me.
They are so right about try it in the ocean first before you purchase, I just made sure I got a really nice wetsuit and mask and fins and the rest would be trial and error on rental equipment first.
We also camped out in our CRV cars Saturday night, that was a lot of fun, I brought all my camping equipment and the car stayed nice and toasty with waking up to divers in the morning for their Sunday dives.
Well, I can't say anything more other than thanking my dive buddy for getting me into scuba and of course our awesome instructor Erin, thanks...
MG
PS...
Beach dives suck when you get sand all over your suit and on your regulators. I can hardly wait to do the boat dives in Monterey, nice entry and exist no sand. I guess you just don't really appreciate some things in life until you've tried them all.
Oh yeah, my buddy purchased a underwater camera and took some pics of me underwater with the giant starfish, I hope they come out and I will post.
Of course it's ok to pop up and check your orientation first if needed. 
