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After sitting on my hands for several days to prevent a keyboard meltdown, this morning I finally gave up and decided to post some comments regarding my experiences of diving with Mike and Joe and AUE. First Regarding years of experience and dives:Let me see now, I have been diving for 27 years, by my calculation that makes Mike Barnette either 3 or 4 years old when I started. I'm sorry Joe, I think you were a bit older but not by much :-). In the past couple of years that I have been diving with these guys, and in fact any of the guys in AUE, I have learned more about real diving than I probably learned in the previous 25. I have never received anything but support good advice and encouragement. They have frequently gone far out their way to help out, for example the times when Mike R. let me tag along with his class dives because I didn't have a buddy. Or the hours spent at Ginnie helping me prepare for my Cave 2 class. I would take advice from either Mike or Joe any time any day, I have never even bothered to ask them what is their deepest dive because it's not relevant. Having a safe attitude and a bit of common sense are the most important factors. Regarding perfect dives & cover up's:Thank goodness that I don't dive with a group that decides it's a good idea to focus on the mistakes that their dive buddy makes, or blame any mishaps on the other person. Mistakes are made by everyone, they are discussed and we all learn from them, there's no need to publicly disparage anyone about it in a dive report. Once when diving the Hydro, the hook went into a deep hole in the wreck, Mike went in and spent several minutes picking all the fishing line off it and bringing it out. When we reached the railing, he passed it off to me and I immediately dropped it back down in the the next door cargo hold! he fixed it again and we left the wreck, can you imagine how stupid I felt? After the dive the response I got was the comment "hey shit happens sometimes", and then "but did you see how I fixed it, it works better if you do it this way"... I certainly didn't see him get frustrated and knock his own mask off, and I didn't read about it on the internet either!!! I thought dive reports were supposed to be informative and entertaining for the reader, not to catalogue everything that wasn't 100%. Along the same lines, it is very funny how when you respect an individual's right not to publicly discuss their injuries without their permission, you are suddenly the perpetrator of a cover up? Well I am sure that by now you will be thinking about calling me a brown nose or some such rubbish, but I prefer to think of it as being smart enough to find safe dive buddies who know what they are doing, and friends that trust each other with their lives. Mike and Joe sincerely believe you are dangerous to the diving public at large, and in particlular the guys who are just starting out and are not wised up to your antics. Neither of them would go after you otherwise. If you want to get them off your case then I suggest you review your public behaviour. LL -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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