DIR- Generic Drinking the DIR koolaid

[Billy Northrup]

For the record, it was Flavor Aid not Kool Aid.

 

[EireDiver606]

And go for dinner with the instructor and teammates before the end of the course to celebrate the start of your real diving career

 

[Dan_P]

My experience is the longer divers dive before going on an Essentials (or, in this case, Fundies) course, the more they struggle.
I've seen my students fresh out of OWD go on to Essentials and do well, and I've seen Full Tech divers join an Essentials and struggle something fierce.
Habits break hard, and bad habits really have a way of biting you in the ass.
I'd say go for your Essentials/Fundies/Basics class as soon as you can meet the gear requirements!
The sooner, the better.

As for the computer/gauge question, I think it's inverted to look at "what a computer will do against you" or "what a gauge can't do for you".
To me, it's about my comfort zone, first and foremost.
By having a plan and making predictive adjustments to that plan ahead of events, I can gauge how much further ahead I can think. When the scope of my predictions start to shrink, I know I'm increasing mental stress upon myself in the diving I'm doing.
Stop and breathe.
If I cannot conjure a new plan, I already have one in play to fall back to.

It's not like you jump in the water with no clue what you want to do, or can do, and at the end of some dive, you make a plan;
You always have a plan in place, and then you can amend it if you want to.
That way, worst case, you're cutting a dive short and doing more deco than you need (but no more than you originally intended, and you have gas for).

The rest is one or a few stories that keep getting regurgitated, about divers who can't maintain depth, can't adhere to a maximal depth, can't figure out their average depth, and so on. That's all symptomatic of diving well and truly beyond one's comfort zone. A computer can't alleviate that problem, because while it may give you clear instructions for your deco, stress (and subsequent panic) is not symmetric like that. If you're really pushing yourself just to hold onto the dive, anything and everything might happen to tip the scale for you, and that's what the real problem is, in my opinion.

That's what's lost in translation in all these discussions about computer versus gauge, there's so much context that doesn't get taken into account. The same goes for manual rebreathers, sidemount systems with manifolds, standard gases, and so on. Heck, buddy lines is a prime example.
I've met a lot of divers who thought I'm a liability because I don't use a buddy line.
It's no different. Just lost context.

That said, I'm sure you'll benefit greatly from your crossing over to the world of DIR.
Noone can agree exactly what shade of green the grass is, but it's green AF here.

Good luck, have fun, and happy diving

 

[seeker242]

You may want to subscribe to GUE TV to expose you to the details of the course. You can get a free 3-day subscription.

IIRC, you get 1 month access included with fundamentals these days.

 

[Billy Northrup]

My experience is the longer divers dive before going on an Essentials (or, in this case, Fundies) course, the more they struggle.
I've seen my students fresh out of OWD go on to Essentials and do well, and I've seen Full Tech divers join an Essentials and struggle something fierce.
Habits break hard, and bad habits really have a way of biting you in the ass.
I'd say go for your Essentials/Fundies/Basics class as soon as you can meet the gear requirements!
The sooner, the better.

As for the computer/gauge question, I think it's inverted to look at "what a computer will do against you" or "what a gauge can't do for you".
To me, it's about my comfort zone, first and foremost.
By having a plan and making predictive adjustments to that plan ahead of events, I can gauge how much further ahead I can think. When the scope of my predictions start to shrink, I know I'm increasing mental stress upon myself in the diving I'm doing.
Stop and breathe.
If I cannot conjure a new plan, I already have one in play to fall back to.

It's not like you jump in the water with no clue what you want to do, or can do, and at the end of some dive, you make a plan;
You always have a plan in place, and then you can amend it if you want to.
That way, worst case, you're cutting a dive short and doing more deco than you need (but no more than you originally intended, and you have gas for).

The rest is one or a few stories that keep getting regurgitated, about divers who can't maintain depth, can't adhere to a maximal depth, can't figure out their average depth, and so on. That's all symptomatic of diving well and truly beyond one's comfort zone. A computer can't alleviate that problem, because while it may give you clear instructions for your deco, stress (and subsequent panic) is not symmetric like that. If you're really pushing yourself just to hold onto the dive, anything and everything might happen to tip the scale for you, and that's what the real problem is, in my opinion.

That's what's lost in translation in all these discussions about computer versus gauge, there's so much context that doesn't get taken into account. The same goes for manual rebreathers, sidemount systems with manifolds, standard gases, and so on. Heck, buddy lines is a prime example.
I've met a lot of divers who thought I'm a liability because I don't use a buddy line.
It's no different. Just lost context.

That said, I'm sure you'll benefit greatly from your crossing over to the world of DIR.
Noone can agree exactly what shade of green the grass is, but it's green AF here.

Good luck, have fun, and happy diving

That's some awesome insight and writing, thank-you.

*I'm terrible at putting thoughts down to writing so I'm stealing it

 

[Dan_P]

That's some awesome insight and writing, thank-you.

*I'm terrible at putting thoughts down to writing so I'm stealing it

Thanks Billy
Feel free!