Mailing List Archive

Mailing List: cavers

Banner Advert

Message Display

From: <kirvine@sa*.ne*>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 06:06:17 -0400
To: freeattic@co*.ci*.uf*.ed*
CC: techdiver <techdiver@aq*.co*>, cavers@cavers.com
Subject: Best Quote from National Geographic
"No group of divers in the world is better at this sort of mapping
--nor at the paramount cave-diving imperative of "pushing" a tunnel to
the greatest distance possible -- than the 158 members of the Woodville
Karst Plain Project (WKPP). The ten-year-old group's divers spend more
than 40 weekends a year pursuing their proud, long-term goal of mapping
evey foot of cavern beneath the Woodville Karst Plain--and, in the
process, continually setting and breaking world records for distance at
depth underwater.

      The article definite sets the record straight on what we did,
although it is ambiguous in discussing what Stone did, simply becasue
they used him as a source of information, and he misled them. They also
put all of our quotes about Stone and his band in there, even though I
told them it was not necessary since we already won the war and he had
proved us right, all the way to the accidents and the death, and he had
been beaten up so badly by his own actions that he did not need any more
from me, but Sankey finsihed him off completely with a few bullseyes.
Stone himself admitted that his divers were "not up to WKPP standards",
and claimed that his rb , chamber, bell , and $34,000 scooters allowed
these misfits to do dives that they claimed were similar to what we do.
The fact is they did not execute what I would consider a decent set-up
dive in 90 days of repeated trying, but he is correct: if some of those
people can do anything and walk away from it, he defintiely went a long
way towards levelling the playing field. However, the real playing field
is not some drive-up park where Carte Blanch is issued - the real world
of this kind of diving will not accommodate any of his methods, and that
is why the WKPP has the end of the line everywhere, and always will. 

Technology and enough gear might make a pig appear to be singing, but
this is no different than having a conversation with a parrot - seems
like he is talking, but there is nobody home. This was like one of those
animal shows where the pets do tricks. It was like Bill Mee's wife's
monkey - the monkey puts on her glasses and pretends to read the paper -
just a funny monkey. Stone is not funny, and neither are his vargrant
trailer rats - they nearly finished cave diving off for good, and in
fact that was there intention - they failed even in that. We still have
the football, we are still scoring.

Navigate by Author: [Previous] [Next] [Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject: [Previous] [Next] [Subject Search Index]

[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]

[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]