- Messages
- 94,449
- Reaction score
- 93,511
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
Some folks are obsessive about everything they do. For them, working to achieve perfection IS the fun of whatever they're doing.I don't know what the average of people doing this is, but I once paired up with an individual at Catalina Island who was DIR and GUE to the core. He didn't have a buddy and we never met, but he took a chance on me (not being trained the same way as he) and we practiced drills (doubles, bouyancy, finning, buddy checks, team excercises, etc.). He was considerably better than I was but I had only started adopting the DIR and tech ways just within 20 dives prior. After doing three dives with him I asked if we could do a leisure dive and he informed me that he doesn't do those. His past 300 dives has been nothing but training dives at the point, at the oil rigs, or other deep locations in order to perfect his skills for an upcoming GUE tech 1 course he was scheduled for in New Jersey. He had only been to the GUE-F level at the point.
That got me thinking, people who adopt GUE/UTD must be committed. I dive to have fun. If my every single dive was strictly practice then it would cease to be fun for me unless there was an ultimate objective (for him there was). I'm one who signed up for UTD and am waiting for the class to agree on a schedule. I will always practice my skills within each dive but I will also enjoy the majority of my dives. On occasion I do "training" dives. But I can't imagine 300 straight dives costing me a boat fee to do nothing but practice and not even notice the giant sea bass swimming past me (I don't think he saw them, he wanted me to focus on him as a marker for bouyancy while he did drills and vice-versa).
Those folks may be great at whatever they achieve, but they're generally not going to make fun people to be around ... for diving or anything else.
I've met a few ... but as Blackwood said, they're rare. Most folks who are preparing for a higher-level class will schedule skills dives, but not every dive. Sometimes they will plan for a portion of their dive to be for skills practice, and just kick around having fun for the rest of it.
You have to practice to improve your skills ... but constant practice makes for a very one-dimensional diver who has forgotten why they got into diving in the first place. People who do that tend to not make very good dive buddies, because they will have excellent physical skills, but lack the judgment and real-world experience to put them to use properly.
Fortunately, the vast majority of DIR-trained divers understand that ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)