No, it was fear. The next dive we did screwed up so badly that Casey
quit diving. I called the "jitters" dive after 3500 feet, and the next
dive we all ran out of gas three times - not too cool. Everyone was
fumbling with the bottles. After that we jacked the helium. 

In fact, when Casey came back, he thought we were still diving the lower
helium mixes and higher oxygen.
	
JJ, Bill Mee and some of the others are actually diving pure heliox now
.. I do not have a booster, so I am at the 70-80% zone running backed off
pressures in my rebreather supply bottles and my back tanks.

We looked at all of the possibilities of what was going on with us, and
came to the conclusion that we needed to add more margin for error to
the dives to reduce the fear and add more helium to increase the clarity
and improve the deco results.

I did some dives nine years ago, like when Gavin aned I put the end in
the Turner Sink syphon, where I intentionally used high nitrogen to calm
me down ( dove 15X40 ), but all it did was cause me to slow way down and
have screwups, like losing my pencils and lights and compass while
surveying, dropping them from my hand and never knowing it .

We were diving just the two of us with no support, no backup scooters,
no safties, diving to thirds in a raging syphon at 295 on the roof
adding line. We got out of the water with no gas to our names. This is
the kind of thing that got Gavin and others to quit this sport.

I changed all of that in the last few years, have done some several
hundred of these dives the easy way now, and can tell you that after 
several hundred deep wreck and ocean dives and several hundred extreme
cave dives, it is feer, not "willies", and nitrogen is bullshit of the
worst order. Now we come back wtih full backtanks.

Now we take away anything from the dive that is a concen and replace it
with more backup, do it right, and love it. 

Will, I am not afraid to think out loud, learn and progress. I stand in
stark contrast to eveyone else who fails to really go out and learn
anything. I do not need to take it to the point of a death to change,
and have actively done so for the last few years.

My "willies" statement was pure bullshit , and I think we can all see
that now. We have this down to paint-by-nunmbers at WKPP, and we are
still trying to improve it and learn more.

You will note that you never saw me ever recommmend any of the insanity
we did in the past, and in fact Gavin said that if I ever told anyone
about any of our personal dives, he would deny it. The problem was the
he and I were bad company for each other when there was line on the reel
and open cave in front of us. The reality is that we are both here by
the Grace of God only, and we both owe it to everyone else to tell the
truth and show how it really should be done. Also, the caves are so long
now that our past bullshit would not cut it .

Now we "walk down and ( do) them all", so to speak. 

William M. Smithers wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 21 Aug 1999, Richard Pyle wrote:
> > > Will, this effect is called "fear" - what more of these guys need - not
> > > pre hpns. It comes from the sudden realization that you are doing
> > > something very stupid, and then the environment becomes more facinating
> > > than the fear.
> >
> > Ah ha! Just as I suspected.  You've never actually done a deep heliox
> > dive, have you....?  Just try a few - especially with fast descents.
> > You'll come around.
> 
> Who knows, but here's the quote I was thinking of - from Sept. 3, 1997
> 
> ltgmirvine@sa*.ne* <George Irvine> wrote:
> > narcosis in that case.  That side may be easier to explain that the
> > helium jitters. Otherwise, Casey told me I was acting jittery on a dive
> > that was routine and easy, so maybe it is there for real.
> 
> -Will


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