A somewhat sad conversation last night

[Centrals]

I don't follow any DIR guidelines blindly, I think for myself and happen to agree with a lot of the DIR principles.

So you do not follow all DIR principales! And what are they?

 

[Crush]

In your comments in your current post, you give an entirely different explanation, one that is not found anywhere in your article. Can you blame any new DIR diver for not realizing that you actually meant something entirely different from what you wrote? Can you see why a DIR diver who read that article would go into a the diving shop and tell the owner that the gear he is selling sucks because it is not perfectly DIR approved?

boulderjohn, IMHO articles such as the one you are referring to, and blindly eager new devotees to the system, are part of what has done the DIR image so much harm. Try all they might, wonderful SB participants like TSandM are battling against years of inertia.

And let's be plain about said article - on one hand it reassures the elect of their supremacy and duty to help the less fortunate, while on the other hand it is being used to reassure the less fortunate that those disparaging comments refer to someone else...

---------- Post added April 18th, 2012 at 07:25 PM ----------

I'm sure the kid was just trying to [-]be helpful[/-] save his soul... but he just hadn't yet learned that not everybody wants [-]that kind of help[/-] to be saved ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Fixed it for you.

 

[Centrals]

LOL ... that ain't a far fetched scenario. Back around 2004 or so I was helping do a cleanup of a boundary rope strung along the bottom of one of our local dive sites ... for the purposes of keeping divers away from a water taxi lane and a fishing pier. My dive buddy ... Randy ... has been diving since his Coast Guard days more than 40 years ago ... he's also spent some time as a commercial diver, and has logged well over 8,000 dives. We're gearing up and my friend Dave pulls in. Dave's a GUE-trained diver ... and he's meeting up with someone who's currently taking a Fundies class for some skills work. He saunters over to chat with the two of us while we're getting our gear together. Dave's a friendly sort, pretty non-judgmental, and knew us both ... so it was all good. His dive buddy pulls in ... a well-meaning fellow with maybe 50 dives to his name. He wanders over to join the conversation ... takes one look at Randy's setup, and helpfully tries telling him how he can set it up to work much better.

Randy took it politely enough ... probably because Dave and I were standing there and he didn't want to put this young pup in his place. After Dave and his buddy walked away to go set up their own equipment, Randy looks at me and says "I really f*#king hate it when they do that."

I'm sure the kid was just trying to be helpful ... but he just hadn't yet learned that not everybody wants that kind of help ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Some of us were testing/trying their kits in the pool and a F student who was happened to be around comment that they did not show any awareness of their buddies!

 

[Thalassamania]

Some of us were testing/trying their kits in the pool and a F student who was happened to be around comment that they did not show any awareness of their buddies!

I'm confused. Were you not paying any attention to your buddies or was he just making it up?

 

[grf88]

Maybe they were practising with their Solo Diving setup.

 

[Centrals]

I'm confused. Were you not paying any attention to your buddies or was he just making it up?

None of us were/are GUE/DIR divers. Some of us were checking their kits in the pool while some of us were keeping an eye on them by the pool. Those "observers" were ready to help in case anything was required as well as giving suggestion afterwards. Diving three deco tanks(11L) do require certain familization of the rigging. We don't do that often.

 

[BluewaterSail]

I think that there is too much emphasis on the gear, which is understandable because it is so easy to see.

What GUE/DIR has meant to me is control in the water. The gear is a minor issue to me.

When I see someone who lacks enough control to keep off the bottom and the coral, my thought isn't that they are a stroke. My thought is that I wish that they knew how much nicer the experience could be. Maybe if they knew, then they would take steps to improve. Dan set a good example approaching the guy that he videoed. I have trouble bringing myself to do that, but I would like to. I think that part of the reason that I am hesitant is I am terrified of being the obnoxious DIR diver that this thread is all about.

Maybe they should add a slide or two to the Fundies course on this!

 

[Thalassamania]

None of us were/are GUE/DIR divers. Some of us were checking their kits in the pool while some of us were keeping an eye on them by the pool. Those "observers" were ready to help in case anything was required as well as giving suggestion afterwards. Diving three deco tanks(11L) do require certain familization of the rigging. We don't do that often.

I always have my team in the water with me, and when I train students it is always as part of a team. There is no practicing alone. This is not just because of safety, as in keeping an eye on each other, this is primarily because anything that one needs to learn the entire team needs to learn/experience.

 

[danvolker]

Remember my context: comments can be taken to an extreme. Let's look at the entire quote. You talk about the joy of diving in a BP/W and a long hose. Then you say "Try to dive only with people you know are safe, and who dive the same procedures and configurations you do." OK, to me as a DIR reader, that means try to dive only with people who use a DIR-approved configuration. What else wpuld it mean? Now look at the very next sentence? "If you are "stuck" with someone you see gearing up badly, with a poor configuration, try a good natured explanation of why the "Doing it Right" system would have him/her configured differently." What is a "poor configuration"? It is not explained at all, so in the context, it the only conclusion I can draw is that is any configuration that is not yours. In your comments in your current post, you give an entirely different explanation, one that is not found anywhere in your article. Can you blame any new DIR diver for not realizing that you actually meant something entirely different from what you wrote? Can you see why a DIR diver who read that article would go into a the diving shop and tell the owner that the gear he is selling sucks because it is not perfectly DIR approved?

I am not going to beat this dead horse any more.....but when that article went online, there were only a handful of DIR divers anywhere....that was in the beginning. So people reading this, could decide who was close enough to their way of thinking and diving, to be safe....Not really such a terrible thing.
In the late nineties, you had all the major manufacturers coming out with hot new colors and bigger BC pockets, and new and improved logos....the divers were being pushed by the advertising engines into very foolish gear configurtations, and there was so much of this, the training agencies did not really have any plan for helping their instructors or students wade through all the nonsense.....Monster pockets and octo holders come to mind....the pockets were huge drag and certainly were more hindrance than help, and many of the octo holders were so hard to pull a 2nd stage out of, that it could take well over a minute, and could even pull the mouthpiece off of the 2nd stage.....If we sat back and started trying to remember the big marketing pushes at the time, there were many dozens of things that were being pushed that were really not good for diving....Over the next few years, most of that stuff fell by the wayside....

The article was just an early attempt to deal with the bad gear and the lack of planning by most recreational divers, on how to wear dive gear. DIR then was a brand new concept to most divers.....
Today, mainstream HAS actually thought and dealt with most of the really stupid gear or really bad set ups...not all, but a good percentage....DIR is commonly heard of, so an article like that now, would have very different implications...the advice would be interpreted differently.....

The old issues of SFDJ.com back to 1993, are there for archive purposes. There is no intention of taking them down. Sorry.

 

[JamesK]

You know, things have changed in the ten years I have been diving. Now please people, I am simply making a generalization and not trying say everyone is like this. So don't get your feelings hurt if you are not one of them. OK, now that the disclaimer is out of the way. It used to be that the DIR divers were very vocal and would call people out and start crap. Now that has shifted and the non-DIR divers are the ones raising the stink.