I can't help but notice....

[bowlofpetunias]

ME TOO!

I have found personally that now I am 49, I can afford to do more recreational diving in nicer locations with nicer equipment. Unfortunately, the body is not keeping up with my salary nor my mental capacity. I still have the mentality of a 20 year old single soldier, but the responsibility of being a husband, father, and professional.

I am still in excellent physical shape, but I do have limitations, and I believe that is the spirit of this post. Ultimately I cannot be a burden to my dive buddies because I physically can no longer do something. Now if I want to go jump out of a plane and not pull my 'chute, that's on me. But with diving, I involve the entire group who will make the effort to rescue me. I promise to always be realistic about my capabilities as a diver. It's not just about me.

I agree.. we have to be realistic and think of others diving with us. We often arrange dive trips together with others of similar age. We have an understanding of our age related issues and how they relate to our diving safety. We make informed choices about the risks we share.

In reality I feel safer diving with my 50 and up dive friends. They are experienced, competent and maintain situational awareness with each other. We all take our age and physical limitations int consideration. I don't have to worry about one of them being up half the night partying, diving dehydrated, hungover or going for stupid personal bests.. such as depth etc.

IN short I would rather dive with a sensible old geezer than some hung over Adonis who has no concept of his own mortality yet.

 

[Schwob]

I agree.. we have to be realistic and think of others diving with us. We often arrange dive trips together with others of similar age. We have an understanding of our age related issues and how they relate to our diving safety. We make informed choices about the risks we share.

In reality I feel safer diving with my 50 and up dive friends. They are experienced, competent and maintain situational awareness with each other. We all take our age and physical limitations int consideration. I don't have to worry about one of them being up half the night partying, diving dehydrated, hungover or going for stupid personal bests.. such as depth etc.

IN short I would rather dive with a sensible old geezer than some hung over Adonis who has no concept of his own mortality yet.

Well, of course there are very considerate and careful younger people too as well as there are old hungovers or old geezers essentially full of themselves.

But I so understand what you are saying.
One way or another it is quite nice to dive with someone who knows what they are doing, why they are doing it, when and why not to do it, consider others in the big picture and essentially have nothing to proof, show off or be right about and, even better yet, occasionally are willing to help you raise your own game in an entirely non-belittling way... ... and occasionally may even allow you to return the friendly favor...

And then, e.g. when diving with my teenage son, although I am not exactly that experienced diver with all that wisdom (I claim "yet"), I do wonder how he sees me.
Is he looking up to me or is he putting up with me? Is he going to be a cool and thoughtful and considerate diver or a hungover and / or judgmental, self important "show off" some day? In both cases, I think and hope the former... and try to "work" towards it hopefully w/o beeing too much of a pain in his behind... which I am sure I sometimes fail at....

Time will tell...

 

[bowlofpetunias]

You are so right! I really hope I didn't come across as thinking all younger people are party animals or that age somehow imparts sensible behavior. I admit I described the extremenes on both side of my with my comments.

There are too many exceptions to stereotypes. I watched my son fighting the age bias when he entered the Ambulance service at 19. People couldn't believe he had been volunteering and competing in first aid competitions from the age of 12. He had assisted in delivering twins at the age of 18. Everyone assumed the older looking crew-mate would be the most experienced.

I would suggest @Schwob that you will succeed in imparting wisdom to your son by setting such a great example.

 

[Schwob]

I would suggest @Schwob that you will succeed in imparting wisdom to your son by setting such a great example.

Unlike when I was an invincible, all knowing teenager myself, these days I am always open for suggestions, not only, but especially nice ones like this of course.

 

[Hoag]

@bowlofpetunias, I had to chuckle when I read your comparison of the younger generation compared to people who have, well let's say "put a few years behind them". Although I didn't start diving till I was nearing my 40s, your description of behaviour of the two generations was as if you were describing me specifically, so I could definitely relate.

For me, many factors come into play. For starters, I can no longer recover as quickly as I once could, but much more importantly, I realized that if I spent my hard earned money on a vacation to do a specific activity and my behaviour impacted my ability to do that activity then I have wasted my time and my money. It really doesn't matter what that activity is. It could be a 3:00 am wake-up call to go to a remote location to photograph the Milky Way. It could be skiing or diving. If I go to a certain place to do a certain activity, then I will do my part to ensure that I am able to do it.

I think you nailed it with your observations. As I stated earlier. I am well aware of my limitations, and I behave accordingly.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

You guys made my day. I had to cancel the hoped for dive for a cortisone injection into my shoulder. There is always next weekend

 

[Marie13]

Being aware of limitations...hah!

I've discovered that I can't work out the day before or day after diving due to my knees (either pool laps or bike at gym). Have to have a day off in between.

 

[kelemvor]

Another angle of observation:

A straw pole among the doctors and operators at the hyperbaric chamber I've helped out at concluded the fat, the old and the dehydrated get bent most frequently. My observations from the docks conclude this is the most common characteristics of vacation divers as well.

Difficult to conclude if there's as a significant cause and effect correlation or simply a coincidence in demographical distribution.

Another issue I've considered is the large amount of unreported near misses. If the diver doesn't end up dead, I suspect the young 'shake it off' and don't publish at a greater rate. Perhaps this is a stereotype?

.... It just so happens I'm happy diving with the aged or rounding divers... Far less likely to accidentally wear my wetsuit or enamor my date. Underwater, there's far more important factors than body type or age in what makes a good or safe buddy.

We're all going to die somewhere doing something. Myself, provided I conveniently float up for scooping up in a dip net, would like to die underwater doing what brings me peace.

Dive safe,
Cameron

It's the often used but never worn out phrase at work. Correlation != Causation. People often forget that, though. Especially when you're talking about dive accidents where the real cause might never be known (or disseminated).

Stereotypes and bigotry should be avoided. One stereotype never justifies another.

I don't like this particular one any more than you since we're in the same boat. Hopefully we're sitting on opposite sides so we don't tip it. Nevertheless, I think stereotypes in general are a useful tool that humans have used for thousands of years. Until we actually know it all, we have to generalize and stereotype in order to make guesses in a reasonable timeframe.


While there may be a correlation between weight and diving deaths or tourism and diving deaths I think the strongest correlation is this: People who are scuba divers are most often the people involved in dive accidents. Therefore, scuba divers should not dive. See? I solved the problem!

 

[Hoag]

One time when I was on a live aboard, one of the customers decided that all of us "had to" sit in on what he deemed to be a "mandatory" briefing on Global Warming. How he figured that one guest could deem a briefing mandatory for other guests is beyond me, but most were too polite to get up & leave.

He had the briefing done on his iPad, and of course, it had the infamous "Hockey Stick Graphs" and attempted to draw a causation between the Industrial Revolution and the sudden increase in the global temps. I tried to explain to him that correlation ≠ causation, but he wasn't buying it. It didn't fit his briefing. He really wasn't impressed when I drew a similar Hockey Stick graph on the white board that he was projecting his briefing on and made the same "definitive" causation statement that iPad usage caused Global Warming.

He found my hypothesis about as amusing as I found his briefing.

 

[kelemvor]

One time when I was on a live aboard, one of the customers decided that all of us "had to" sit in on what he deemed to be a "mandatory" briefing on Global Warming. How he figured that one guest could deem a briefing mandatory for other guests is beyond me, but most were too polite to get up & leave.

He had the briefing done on his iPad, and of course, it had the infamous "Hockey Stick Graphs" and attempted to draw a causation between the Industrial Revolution and the sudden increase in the global temps. I tried to explain to him that correlation ≠ causation, but he wasn't buying it. It didn't fit his briefing. He really wasn't impressed when I drew a similar Hockey Stick graph on the white board that he was projecting his briefing on and made the same "definitive" causation statement that iPad usage caused Global Warming.

He found my hypothesis about as amusing as I found his briefing.

You may be on to something. I did a quick analysis and found that you are correct; there is a fairly close correlation between iPad usage and Global Warming. Very interesting.