Is this the average diver?

Is this the average diver?

  • Yes

    Votes: 8 5.3%
  • No

    Votes: 143 94.7%

  • Total voters
    151

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I dive Hydros Pro with split fins. I am pretty new to SB. Am I a laughing stock for some reason? I sense sarcasm but not sure what it is about. I assume an inside joke...
I thought people would make fun of me for having two alternates, but I suppose it is possible people were making fun of me all along behind my back for more than one reason :eek::)

Yeah, you're a laughing stock because you dive with a BCD and for crying out loud -- split fins. What are you thinking? But, you're not a laughing stock to me. I dive with a BP/W, a long hose and bungyed second. It wasn't always this way. When I got recertified I dove with a ScubaPro Nighthawk which had an air2. My primary was on a standard length hose. My computer was on a console. I also dove with split fins. Oh, shame on me. There is a certain amount of snobbery, especially among those who dive with BP/W's and paddle fins. There is a small core group here who think they're elite divers sent by the god's to impart wisdom by pointing out the folly of your poor equipment choices. They forget where they came from and don't ever mention you were trained by PADI. If you've taken more than a couple of courses from them you are a card collecting moron who is wasting your money. Look at my bio. I've taken ten specialties and worked my way up to master diver, mostly with PADI, and some by SSI. I'm proud of that. I don't feel I've wasted my money and I have learned something new and valuable that's helped me with my diving. Don't get me wrong. The vast majority of SB's who have the training, experience, and technical equipment will give you good advice should you continue your training and upgrade your equipment. They won't put you down. They're the true elites.
 
What were you diving that looked so alien to them? If it was a bp/w I would say that they were not very good professionals. As pros we should understand different gear configs and not look like a deer in headlights when we see something that is not a jacket bcd.
I was using BP/W with long hose.

How do you get or even hear about that understanding if you never see the equipment and never meet anyone who has seen it? How do you even know it exists?

Here are some other instances from my limited range of experiences.
  • Another instructor at the shop where I worked started tech training with me about 13 years ago. When we did, we (experienced instructors with many hundreds of dives) had never before seen a BP/W, DIN valve, a long hose, or a steel cylinder. I knew about them from reading ScubaBoard, but I had never seen one. My bet would be that no one else in the shop had ever seen one, either.
  • The shop did not sell or have contracts allowing them to sell any tech equipment (like BP/W), so even though we got discounts at the shop, we had to buy most of our equipment online.
  • The shop resolved to so something about it, so the buyer came to me one day for instruction on what the different equipment we were using was and why it was used. She had never seen any of it before.
  • The shop had trouble offering BP/Ws (etc.) for sale because almost all the wholesale companies demanded huge initial investments and annual sales. They finally committed to a company, and it went out of business within a few months, leaving them saddled with an inventory of unsellable gear.
  • I later switched to the other shop in town and ordered a set of steel tanks for sidemount use with my employee discount. When they came in, the full time shop employee (a DM) helped me get them out of the boxes. He asked me what kind of tanks they were, since he had never seen such heavy tanks or any tanks with round bottoms.
  • I was officially that shop's tech instructor, but the owner of the shop refused to stock BP/Ws (or other stuff like that) because he was sure it would never sell. If my students were going to buy stuff, they would have to order it. They of course bought it online instead, since they could get it right away, proving to the owner that he was right not to stock it.
  • Although the market has changed enough so that pretty much all vendors sell BP/Ws, neither of those two shops stocks any because they are convinced no one will buy them.
  • There has been a lot of turnover in those shops since I went independent. Both shops do a lot of business. If you went into them right now, I would bet that unless you blundered into one of the few employees left from the era when I was there, the person you talked to, likely an experienced instructor, will have never seen a BP/W, a DIN valve, a steel cylinder, or a long hose.
 
How do you get or even hear about that understanding if you never see the equipment and never meet anyone who has seen it? How do you even know it exists?

Are you,like,...............a Space Alien or sumpin' ?
 
You can look at diving as a spectator sport (as in looking at the fishies) or a competitive sport. You get a lot of the latter here on SB.
 
I dive Hydros Pro with split fins. I am pretty new to SB. Am I a laughing stock for some reason? I sense sarcasm but not sure what it is about. I assume an inside joke...
I thought people would make fun of me for having two alternates, but I suppose it is possible people were making fun of me all along behind my back for more than one reason :eek::)
In no way shape or form are the subject of sarcasm. If you do a nice job with trim and buoyancy, you have achieved good standards in the scuba community irregardless of what some think.
 
I dive Hydros Pro with split fins. I am pretty new to SB. Am I a laughing stock for some reason? I sense sarcasm but not sure what it is about. I assume an inside joke...
I thought people would make fun of me for having two alternates, but I suppose it is possible people were making fun of me all along behind my back for more than one reason :eek::)
I started with split fins in about 2008 when I won them at a dive "treasure hunt" contest. People don't like them because they don't give you a lot of power like other fins. So they are not as useful if you get stuck in a rough current. So, you're GUNNA DIE!
What they don't consider is they are very good in preventing cramping, which in itself MAY be even more dangerous than certain currents. Yes, there are always recommendations of what to do to avoid cramps (hydrating, diet, exercise, etc.)-- which don't necessarily work if cramping is hereditary.
I try to avoid bad currents, before and since I got the splits.
 
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