I drank the koolaid!

[vladimir]

We're on our way back from Hollywood Divers right now, feeling a little bit of sticker shock (but no buyers remorse). Charlie and I both just bought full Halcyon rigs, and I also purchased everything I need for GUE fundies, which I hope to start in November.

So y'all got yerselves an official convert!

I don't think it's official until you've written an account of your "Fundies" (not Fundamentals!) class, which should describe how humbled you were by the experience. This can usually be accomplished by stating that you "thought you were a solid diver" who is now convinced she has no clue or, for extra credit, may actually hang up her fins in disillusionment. It is de rigueur at this point to pay homage to your instructor's wisdom, patience, diving skills, and teaching ability. (Instructors are generally referred to by their initials only.) Some mention of "seeing the bar" and getting "hit by a bus" is also pretty standard, but not required. A few anecdotes describing, say, how your instructor summarily discarded a brass snap hook on your rig, how you sank five feet and lost "all SA" during an air share drill, and how all your fellow students were better than you would help nail down the humility nicely.

The account should also describe how tiring (not tiresome!) the weekend was. Exact logs of your sleep schedule are not required, but recommended. The long demanding (physically and mentally!) days should be emphasized, along with the sense of exhilaration that carried you through. Without explicitly stating it, you should convey a spiritual awakening commensurate with the revelation of a "holistic system." An anecdote regarding a shared breakfast at dawn can be worked in here to nice effect.

Ideally, one of your classmates would join the thread to bolster your account of the instructor's prowess and the demands of the class and dispute your assertion that you were totally incompetent (this would be a good opportunity for him to proclaim his total incompetence). The two of you should then make plans to do drills together for the next twenty weeks, either to get that "provisional" changed to a "pass," or to prepare for Tech 1.

You're not done yet though! The last step to making it official is to scour the Scubaboard assiduously until you come across a poster diving to 110' with an Al80 and, hopefully, riding his computer the whole way. This may call for a little patience. Once the quarrry is in sight, a lecture on rock-bottom, complete with calculations, should be launched into. You should express how appalled you are that he doesn't know this already. Trading virtual high-fives with your fellow fundied is encouraged.

Now it's official. If you can respond to a few inquiries about ratio deco with a derisive "Take the class!" that will help you take the next step.

:joke:

 

[ScubaFeenD]

Gotcha. I'm not DIR nor intend to be. I'll just keep diving DIRong (as my buddy says) even though my rig is essentially compliant. I just don't always carry a can light, extra mask, use an AI computer, etc. Thank goodness for excellent mentorship. Now I pay it forward any chance I get.

FYI can light, extra mask and an extra mask arent necessarily DIR.

I don't think it's official until you've written an account of your "Fundies" (not Fundamentals!) class, which should describe how humbled you were by the experience. This can usually be accomplished by stating that you "thought you were a solid diver" who is now convinced she has no clue or, for extra credit, may actually hang up her fins in disillusionment. It is de rigueur at this point to pay homage to your instructor's wisdom, patience, diving skills, and teaching ability. (Instructors are generally referred to by their initials only.) Some mention of "seeing the bar" and getting "hit by a bus" is also pretty standard, but not required. A few anecdotes describing, say, how your instructor summarily discarded a brass snap hook on your rig, how you sank five feet and lost "all SA" during an air share drill, and how all your fellow students were better than you would help nail down the humility nicely.

The account should also describe how tiring (not tiresome!) the weekend was. Exact logs of your sleep schedule are not required, but recommended. The long demanding (physically and mentally!) days should be emphasized, along with the sense of exhilaration that carried you through. Without explicitly stating it, you should convey a spiritual awakening commensurate with the revelation of a "holistic system." An anecdote regarding a shared breakfast at dawn can be worked in here to nice effect.

Ideally, one of your classmates would join the thread to bolster your account of the instructor's prowess and the demands of the class and dispute your assertion that you were totally incompetent (this would be a good opportunity for him to proclaim his total incompetence). The two of you should then make plans to do drills together for the next twenty weeks, either to get that "provisional" changed to a "pass," or to prepare for Tech 1.

You're not done yet though! The last step to making it official is to scour the Scubaboard assiduously until you come across a poster diving to 110' with an Al80 and, hopefully, riding his computer the whole way. This may call for a little patience. Once the quarrry is in sight, a lecture on rock-bottom, complete with calculations, should be launched into. You should express how appalled you are that he doesn't know this already. Trading virtual high-fives with your fellow fundied is encouraged.

Now it's official. If you can respond to a few inquiries about ratio deco with a derisive "Take the class!" that will help you take the next step.

:joke:

I totally wish I had this outline when writing mine, then I would have known what to do.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

You also have to learn the phrase "like-minded divers" and use it in every post. Once you get the gear figured out, learn the mantra and sign up on Dive Matrix, you'll be among the elite.

 

[DwayneJ]

What is special about the Halcyon gear in particular? We are just talking about BP/W, long hoses, continuous webbing etc.. Correct?

Dwayne

 

[Leejnd]

I don't think it's official until you've written an account of your "Fundies" (not Fundamentals!) class, which should describe how humbled you were by the experience.

...

Now it's official. If you can respond to a few inquiries about ratio deco with a derisive "Take the class!" that will help you take the next step.

I'm saving this post so that I will be able to write my own appropriately self-deprecatory and instructor-worshiping report of my personal mega-humbling. I will prepare myself now by standing in front of the mirror in my new Halcyon gear, which I currently have no idea how to use, and yell "YOU SUCK!" 15 times. While wearing split fins.

I will also be sure to bake up a DIR Chocolate Cake for our end-of-class celebration.



Phil, I already registered on Dive Matrix, but I don't post there. People keep saying things like "then I did a quick ratio decompression algorithm on the fly" and "we did a few barrel rolls on our scooters", and I feel like the unpopular girl in high school again.

Just FTR, I swear I'm NOT doing this for the sole purpose of healing my psychic pain caused by never being part of the "in" crowd in high school. (Well, okay, that's not ENTIRELY true....)

 

[Captain12Pk]

Gotcha. I'm not DIR nor intend to be. I'll just keep diving DIRong (as my buddy says) even though my rig is essentially compliant. I just don't always carry a can light, extra mask, use an AI computer, etc. Thank goodness for excellent mentorship. Now I pay it forward any chance I get.

... oh, you will be.

 

[Leejnd]

What is special about the Halcyon gear in particular? We are just talking about BP/W, long hoses, continuous webbing etc.. Correct?

Dwayne

Dwayne, you should go do what we did - spend a couple hours with Karim. There were other options (some less expensive), and we evaluated many of them - I've actually been doing research on what DIR-compliant gear to buy ever since our DIR day in Laguna. In the end we weighed everything we learned and decided to go with Halcyon. Quality (an example: the interior bladder of the wing) was one selling point, but there were others as well.

It's definitely not the cheapest option, and I can't necessary say that the advantages of Halcyon are fully worth the higher price. But we happen to be doing okay financially right now (we're both working), and decided to take the plunge and pay the higher price. If we had to be more budget-conscious, we would have gone a different way and I'm sure been very happy. There are some excellent choices out there.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

DIR is the best thing that ever happened to cave diving. So many divers died or had near-death experiences that a unified protocal had to be implemented. Then someone decided that if it works in caves, it would work just as well in open water. Now we see dozens of divers with fewer than 500 dives calling themselves DIR because they spin around on scooters, hold perfect trim in mid water and spend thousands on gear, just to make the same dives as Joe Diver in his cheap BC and aluminum 80. I frequently see divers on the Giant Stride and Island Diver jumping the Haggerty's Crane at 55 feet and the Avalon in 67 feet using doubles, 80 cu ft stages, HID lights and scooters. They then write reports about how much fun they had with their group of like-minded divers, but none of them can identify a single animal they saw. I question why they are even diving. Sometimes they post videos of Channel Islands trips, but the entire video is of other divers waving to the camera or hovering in place, looking into oblivion.
Most will say they took Fundies because OW training is woefully watered down. I have found that you get out of a class what you put into it. For the price of an OW class, there is no way you will get an exhaustive session of back kicks, valve drills and perfect buoyancy, however you can still learn to dive and perfect those skills as needed.
As George Irvine said, there are only a handfull of divers he would consider DIR. The ones I see on the West Coast with scooters in open water, monkey diving and doing barrel rolls are simply playing under water. They could do the same dive in a large pool or a lake.
If you really want to get something out of diving and become a better diver, the best advice I can give is to dive more often and find an interest that scuba enhances, whether it's marine biology, photography or working underwater.

 

[ScubaSam]

To the OP, new scuba toys are always fun and congrats for signing up for the class.

I'm so excited for you cause I know the fun and the learning that awaits you in class!!!!

Let us know how the class goes.

 

[Leejnd]

DIR is the best thing that ever happened to cave diving. So many divers died or had near-death experiences that a unified protocal had to be implemented. Then someone decided that if it works in caves, it would work just as well in open water. Now we see dozens of divers with fewer than 500 dives calling themselves DIR because they spin around on scooters, hold perfect trim in mid water and spend thousands on gear, just to make the same dives as Joe Diver in his cheap BC and aluminum 80. I frequently see divers on the Giant Stride and Island Diver jumping the Haggerty's Crane at 55 feet and the Avalon in 67 feet using doubles, 80 cu ft stages, HID lights and scooters. They then write reports about how much fun they had with their group of like-minded divers, but none of them can identify a single animal they saw. I question why they are even diving. Sometimes they post videos of Channel Islands trips, but the entire video is of other divers waving to the camera or hovering in place, looking into oblivion.
Most will say they took Fundies because OW training is woefully watered down. I have found that you get out of a class what you put into it. For the price of an OW class, there is no way you will get an exhaustive session of back kicks, valve drills and perfect buoyancy, however you can still learn to dive and perfect those skills as needed.
As George Irvine said, there are only a handfull of divers he would consider DIR. The ones I see on the West Coast with scooters in open water, monkey diving and doing barrel rolls are simply playing under water. They could do the same dive in a large pool or a lake.
If you really want to get something out of diving and become a better diver, the best advice I can give is to dive more often and find an interest that scuba enhances, whether it's marine biology, photography or working underwater.

Wow, Phil, I gotta say this is kind of a buzz kill. Was that what you intended?

I can't speak for any other divers who refer to themselves as DIR. I can only speak for myself. I am not qualified to say what is or is not "DIR". And maybe after I've completed Fundies and passed, I still wouldn't qualify as DIR, according to George Irvine's standards. In fact I'm sure I wont.

But I can share the reasons I'm choosing to do this. I have no intention of ever going into a cave, or even a wreck. Not interested in overhead environments. I probably will never want to go tech - I doubt I'll ever even dive in doubles. I DO have interests in my diving far beyond the "team" aspects of diving - although I see strong benefits to that concept. I am way more interested in seeing critters - that's my main draw in diving. I also have recently gotten into underwater photography - I don't post my photos here because frankly I suck compared to some of you, so I post my photos on my Facebook page where my non-diving friends and family go berserk telling me what an awesome photographer I am. Hell they think shots of Spanish Shawls are the coolest thing ever.

The true reason I'm taking Fundies is to become a better, and safer, diver. I'm about to hit dive #200, and I still struggle with certain aspects (not going to say what - now I'm afraid I'm going to get a classic SB drubbing). I've read up on all of my options for continuing my dive training, and the class that appeals to me most is GUE Fundamentals. I tried diving with a bp/w, and loved the feel of it, and believe that a GUE Fundies course will best help me to learn the proper way of using that gear configuration.

I don't want to take a bunch of PADI courses, racking up the certs to improve individual aspects of my diving. I prefer the idea of one, intense course that blends it all together in a holistic approach. I'm sure there are aspects of the course that are overkill for the type of diving I intend to do. But I don't see that as a problem - better to be over-prepared than under.

I also find the social aspect of it appealing - a bunch of divers with the same dive philosophy. Not because I want to think I'm *better* than everyone else - hell I've been "Doing It Wrong" for four years now, and have never had a problem with it. I was actually completely kidding when I said I wanted to "join the in crowd". It was a joke.

After I take Fundies, I will gladly NOT claim to be "DIR". But I do hope to be a better diver, more comfortable in the water, more comfortable in my gear, with better skills. Not so I can float around and marvel about how cool we all look - but so I can enjoy my dives better, looking at cool critters, taking photos, and even occasionally bug-hunting. Most of my dives are going to be with my husband anyway - after 26 years of marriage, I don't think I need to take a Fundies class to impress him.

I can't help but wonder what your intention was in posting this. What it DOES do is make me want to avoid Dive Matrix or Diver.net like the plague, because I've been slaughtered over there with posts like this before. It's friendlier here (usually).