George,


I couldn�t agree with you more on this subject. I
worked for 10 years for one of the world�s largest
scuba retailers while going high school and college. I
got to see how hypocritical most divers were on a day
to day basis. They would come in totally out of shape
and tell me what big dives they did. My favorite was a
300 � 350 pound guy that had twin Genesis 120�s. He
told me he would air dive to 300 on a regular basis. I
saw him a few times at La Jolla Shores. I checked his
Monitor II computer when he wasn�t looking and the
last ten dives were less than 60 feet yet he claimed
�went to 315� today!!!� 

I put my time in over fifteen years, taught
recreational at every level, staffed ITC�s, could hold
my breath for 3 minutes, free dive to 100� and stay
there long enough to shoot some fish, I pulled more
abalones than anyone on the boat, and finally
completed my Course Director cert and started teaching
ITC�s myself.  I taught for SDSU and logged about 250
� 300 dives a year but still I would get a few morons
in the shop spouting off about how they could swim
circles around me. That I needed to rip the masks off
my students during training.  That they could dive
deeper than me on air and did more diving than I could
ever imagine despite they had a C-card less than 6
months old. Meanwhile you could smell the stench of
beer on their breath as their 350 pound frame waddled
around the store. Besides getting no respect for all
the time I had put it, it made me realize that a lot
of people have absolutely no business in diving in
general.  Even more startling, technical diving seems
to attract these kind of people.  

While I do not agree with a lot of how you conduct
yourself on the net (I do think it is pretty funny to
see how upset people get over it. Especially Tom
Mount!) I do give you credit for one thing. You do
make very valid points and you are single handedly
dragging tech diving into the present day with a
pretty incredible safety record and impressive
accomplishments.  Promoting gas diving, staying fit,
decreasing decompression illness exposure, and
maintaining a well thought out diving rig makes
perfect sense and I don�t see why anyone would have a
problem with that.

My dad told me once that he saw a diving course in the
60�s for $99 bucks and his first tank cost $75.  I
look at the shops today and I still see $99 courses
and $75 tanks forty years later. Meanwhile I pay a
golf instructor $125 an hour to improve my swing.  The
diving industry has been stagnant for years. It has
not kept up with the times and the best people that
are attracted to it initially, leave after a short
time because it is run so poorly and you can�t make
any money at it or are put off by the people that it
attracts.

Diving needs someone like you. You may shoot your
mouth off and everyone that �built the diving
industry� may hate you, but the diving community
hasn�t really done anything but flame for the last 40
years.  With PADI�s recent entry into the tech field
we can expect to see the death toll rise soon due to
the widespread marketing of tech diving to people who
really shouldn't be doing it.  

So keep doing what you�re doing. You are waking people
up, changing an entire industry for the better, and
probably saving a few lives.

Todd


--- Trey <trey@ne*.co*> wrote:
> Brock, substance use or abuse is not tolerated in
> the WKPP in any form,
> whether it be casual, "recreational",  addictive or
> a "problem". It is
> hard enough to do what we do with out that bullshit.
> 
> While my personal discontinution of drugs and
> alchohol years ago was the
> result of using cocaine ( and to an extreme) , the
> others all have their
> own reasons, most of which are simply seeing my
> example and seeing what
> the human body can do at any age when treated
> correctly. Some may or may
> not have thought themselves to have a "problem".
> Parker thought he did,
> so he was really adamant about being clean and sober
> , was vocal about
> it, and as such pissed off the same slobs that I
> piss off. 
> 
> If it were not for coke, which gives you the instant
> wakup call, I might
> still be drinking , which would really suck at my
> age, or any age for
> that matter. It was a bad experience , but I am so
> glad I went through
> it and got there fast. 
> 
> It is pretty funny when fat , drunken , pot-smoking
> slobs want to talk
> about what I did prior to being 33 years old ( I am
> 48 now ), or what I
> did in college as a kid, or whatever. The real
> assholes usually like to
> point out that I got divorced, or that I got
> arrested for punching out
> two cops ( did not know they were cops, but I was
> high at the time, and
> was a college wrestler so got it for using
> "weapons") or whatever else I
> did that they think they know something about,
> without knowing any of
> the real background on me , or ever wondering why I
> know what I know or
> can do what I do. Makes no difference. This is not
> about that.
> 
> I have been a good influence on my guys in every
> respect, and the rest
> of these nitwits are nothing but a huge problem for
> all of us and
> themselves.  
> 
> The fact is that normal poeple do not get drunk or
> high - they do not
> care to do so. 
> 
> I prefer to deal with players on my team who have
> already discovered
> that they do not want to be users and boozers, and
> have decided to
> pursue a healthy lifestyle. That in itself causes a
> huge backlash by the
> slobs.
> 
> I remember when Gilliam was writing a "good" article
> about me in his
> "Deeptec" magazine. I told his interviewer that I
> was on the board of
> directors of a drug and alchohol treatment center
> here in town, and that
> I was a Stephen Minister at the Methodist church
> handling the same type
> of things ( I no longer am involved in either
> activity). He said, " we
> do not want to print that since people might think
> you are an addict",
> and in that article he also thought it was so funny
> that I was so
> outspoken about diving gear and such,  but when I
> criticized his deep
> air diving and the deep ari diving death of Rob
> Palmer, he published
> another article in which he dwelled on these
> subjects, the divorce, the
> substances, etc., and put a picture of me with fangs
> on the cover sheet.
> 
> You can see that while none of this has anything to
> do with diving, the
> strokes out there use it in response to my criticism
> of their practices
> like it will make stupid not stupid any more if I
> did waht they do now,
> and that tells it all. Notice however that Tom Mouth
> never goes there,
> and he hates me the most, or second most.
> 


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