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With all the intro's lately it occurred to me that I have never properly introduced myself to the list. (alright, let's keep that snickering down in the back). I am a NAUI trained diver who started in '78. I dove like a typical rec diver here in Virginia Beach, VA and in the Fl keys for many years. I have been an avid snorkel diver since I was 12 years old and always wanted to stay down longer than a breathold. After screwing around with rental gear for awhile I had to make the decision as to whether or not I was going to enjoy this sport or not and decided to make the leap and purchase my gear. As most of the rec diving around here is around 80' this does not make for much time underwater and I grew tired of spending an entire day and much $ for a lousy 20 or 30 total mins of bottom time. After reading about decompression diving I decided to give it a try. I can't tell you the thrill of watching my dive computer drift into a virtual overhead, it scared the hell out of me. I read, read, read up on the subject, and the more I read the more serious I got about how to equip oneself to survive this type of diving. I took a TDI nitrox class to try to extend my bottom time. But things did not seem to add up, from my reading it appeared to me that increasing your PPO2 just made things more dangerous, I did not understand the logic behind nitrox. After experimenting with crap gear like stuporwings and pony bottles I found the Techdiver list. And on this list was this guy ranting and raving about "hogarthian" diving techniques and how stupid and suicidal stuff like pony's, independent doubles, and all the crap I was doing. This guy (who you might have guessed by now is George) called me a stroke and an idiot, and explained to me in terms which I could clearly understand why what I was doing was wrong. Me, being a standard hard-headed scuba diver, did not believe him but, some of the stuff he said seemed to make some sense from my research. So I decided to try it out. To my amazement the ideas and concepts worked as advertised. Even better than advertised. I have to say that being a military brat and the son of an Admiral in the US Navy I did not have a problem with George's presentation style. It was something which I was used to and it did not bother me, although my ego did take a beating from time to time. This is not a sport for limp-wristed wussies, that's for sure. George, Bill, Trout and the others made me a believer and I read and read and read and decided to put my research on a web site for the general diving public. At the time I was not a trimix diver and the diving community (particularly the NE diving community) jeered, derided and tormented me for daring to put into print what I had not personally experienced. But fuck it, how many guy's made it to the moon compared to how many built the rocket? Fuck them, I say. My friends in the diving community have allowed me to dive trimix with them even though I am not officially sanctioned. Obviously I had done my homework. They knew, as did I, that being a trimix diver merely requires a trip to the local gas supply store and the required fittings and equipment. So, here I am in one of the premier techdiving Mecca's in the world, Virginia Beach, Virginia, doing what I enjoy. But now hear this: Tech diving is a dangerous sport. You need to be confident, comfortable and one with the water to be a tech diver. My personal goal is to see more shipwrecks, not to set any depth records. The fact is that the deeper you go, the less people have been to your goal. As a techdiver you can see sights which less people than those who have climbed Mount Everest have seen. And you can bring back a souvenir or two (right, Rick?) to show you have "counted coup" with places on this Planet Earth than most people cannot even dream of visiting. Techdiving is a worthy goal for those who are willing to put the time and dedication into the sport. It is an interesting sport in that the majority of pleasure and enjoyment is one of personal satisfaction as non-divers do not have a clue to what it's all about. That's good enough for me. Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn About Trimix at http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/trimix.html -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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