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Oh for crying out loud, I am tired of all this caterwauling about instructors and dive shops....ye-ah, like this isn't 20th century consumer/capitalist America, I am shocked, absolutely shocked (....not!!!) at the idea that people are in this for the money, that dive store owners are going to sell me whatever they can, that instructors might also be part of the big peddling scheme....what, we all just fell off the turnip truck????......also, the Hurricane has kept me out of the water for too long.... People have to get their certifications and GO DIVING.......WEEK IN AND WEEK OUT.....thats what makes a diver. Not the gear, not the number of cards, not the number of books or classes taken, but the number of dives .....the sum amount of time spent under water. Find a boat or boats (oh allright caves too) that have the divers doing what you want to do and go there, pay attention, ask questions and just be there, as much as you can. Because you have your drivers license doesn't mean you can do the Indy 500. If you commute to work daily by car over a distance, chances are you are a better driver than the dude who takes the car out on Sundays for a spin up the parkway or to impress the date on Saturday. Same for diving....average time spent in the water actuallly diving per trip is what? adds up to how much actual experience? Sure, intellectual experience is great, but it takes ACTUAL experience to transfer the intellectual into stuff that can kick in and save your ass. Intellectually, I have a handle on what Irvine and crew are doing, i.e. I read their stuff....am I capable of doing it?? ROFL I know an extremely experienced diver who this spring changed his bc setup and it still is annoying him on a regular basis. I changed my D rings this year, in funky situations, they annoy me because I still have to take time to think about them along with the 20 other things that need to be thought of at that time .....they are not yet in my muscle memory....which is where gear has to go.....new gear is fun, but sucks until it is put into that muscle memory....so, commonsensically...new people with new gear need to be encouraged (by whatever community is around them) to cool their jets....get used to the setups.....all this stroke labeling....you don't dive the way I do so you are a stroke....this year a diver came out for the Doria, watching him get dressed, I thought what a jerk, he was all over the place and had a terrible time....later I got to talk to him....turns out hes a caver, a very good and respected one.....not a stroke, just a diver from a different environment....and, btw, cool enough to be aware of that fact..... this year a diver showed up on the boat, lots o cards, on a nice enough day, he lost his mask on the surface.....immediate panic attack, screaming, hollering, "I'm drowning, I'm drowning", grabbed hold of the anchor line and would not let go.....big scene...lots of work to bring him safely aboard....another diver lost their mask this year 20 minutes into a dive on the Doria....wasn't a happy person, but guessed out the deco and finished the dive....I submit that the only difference tween the two divers is the amount of time spent in the water...... Steve Bielenda of the Wahoo makes the analogy that every dive is a piece of experience that you put into a backpack that you can then reach into next time in the water.....another captain used to say that the definition of a good dive was to come back up the anchor line....of course this was usually said while patting me on the back after not having accomplished X when he had achieved Yand Z, but nonetheless the point is made..... If a person dives once a month, how much diving time in the water is that? 40 minutes? (I'm not including deco time) A month? How long will that take to accumulate a well filled back pack? Even once a week, if you get out every week, a huge if, its only 52 trips..... This is an intense activity.....thats one of its attractions.....but the ocean is an implaccable force....it doesn't give a hoot about how many cards you have or how much money you dropped on them or your gear configurations, if its macho or the latest in tech or DIR......DIR has to start with simply doing it.....and having the internal knowledge or sense or awareness of ones own ability level.... ..everyone has that little monkey that lives in their brain that jumps up and down n chatters 'you shouldn't be doing this, you shouldn't be doing this' .....I've been known to push him out of the way from time to time, but he does have the ability to call my dive plans too..... I'm not saying don't take courses, not at all, this thing is about continually advancing your own abilities and knowledge...but the only true thing that will make a diver is time spent underwater......please let this be a short hurricane season..... -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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