Mostly lurking and learning in PA

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PirateFoxy

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Location
Somewhere on the road
I don’t dive and mostly plan to lurk, but I know myself and sooner or later I’ll end up chiming in on something random so I figured I might as well get an introduction out of the way as per the welcome message.

I found the board by way of someone linking to a thread in Accidents and since I’m very interested in safety and human factors I found a lot of the other threads interesting and signed up primarily to better keep track of which I’ve read and which have new posts and all of that useful stuff. (I have a non-traditional background in medicine and limited emergency response, plus for many years I rode horses which is also considered a relatively high-risk activity, as hobbies go, and I’ve found that you can learn a lot from what goes wrong and what attitudes people have in incidents even in unrelated activities, because the human part is always there.)

Since I’ve been reading I have warmed a little tiny bit to the idea of learning to dive - I have some health concerns (primarily controlled hereditary high blood pressure which seems to not be a significant issue if you are conservative and careful?) but the more significant barrier is concern I’d panic due to past experience as a kid with a really bad swimming ‘lesson’ that makes me get anxious when my head/face is under the water. I can swim fine on the surface if I keep my face mostly dry. It’s something I keep meaning to work on, just for various Life Reasons I haven’t had the time to do anything regularly which I think would be necessary to get less sensitive and build confidence. Even without diving I think getting highly stressed in fairly normal ‘in the water’ scenarios is not a terribly good plan if someone wants to spend time in the water, so it is definitely on the To Do list.

As far as diving, if I ever get that far my primary interest would likely be relatively shallow photography and general sight-seeing/marine life observing basic stuff in good visibility. My fiancé and I also have some thoughts about learning to sail and I gather from reading Cruiser Forum that some diving skills can be quite useful there, too, when it comes to things like in-water boat inspection/maintenance and checking your anchor, so that is in my mind also. (If I learned to dive my fiancé would probably look into it also. He’s also thought about it in the past but just had other stuff to be spending his hobby money on, so it wasn’t an area he pursued. We also don’t live in an area with lots of immediately inviting water to dive in - western PA rivers do not exactly say ‘come and see the sights! - much easier to put money and time into things that can be done locally like biking and hiking.)

Anyway, back to lurking. :)
 
There are more places to dive than the rivers in Western PA and nearby. Lakes and quarries offer much more than the rivers, which are too shallow to dive anyway, or are too dirty to see anything.
 
There are more places to dive than the rivers in Western PA and nearby. Lakes and quarries offer much more than the rivers, which are too shallow to dive anyway, or are too dirty to see anything.

I meant more that the water I most often see (day to day) is the rivers, which do not inspire thoughts of ”oh, I’d love to get in the water!” as compared to if I lived somewhere like Florida or Hawaii with lovely postcard waters waving hello every day. I can see the latter making learning to dive seem a much higher priority activity than it does around me because you’d be constantly reminded about it.
 
Suggest you see if you could do a Discover Scuba. Try dive in a pool.
 
I meant more that the water I most often see (day to day) is the rivers, which do not inspire thoughts of ”oh, I’d love to get in the water!” as compared to if I lived somewhere like Florida or Hawaii with lovely postcard waters waving hello every day. I can see the latter making learning to dive seem a much higher priority activity than it does around me because you’d be constantly reminded about it.
Where are you in PA? If you're up for a drive, New England has some pretty damn cool dives. @formernuke can give you ideas.
 
Also, for the face in water thing, wash your face in the shower. Not with a washcloth, with water running directly on your face. I used to *hate* it because I felt like I was drowning. When water hit my nose I couldn't breathe through my mouth. Eventually got really sick of that **** and kept washing my face. The problem is totally gone now.
Super easy to work into your normal schedule, and it seriously works. I now do maskless UW swims breathing through the reg during dive class with no issue.
 
Where are you in PA? If you're up for a drive, New England has some pretty damn cool dives. @formernuke can give you ideas.

Near Pittsburgh. There’s a diving shop we pass not infrequently, which kind of surprised me the first time I saw it because I don’t think of Pittsburgh as a diving place. I think they mostly do local lakes in state parks and maybe sometimes Lake Erie for ‘local’ trips? Not 100% certain.

Also, for the face in water thing, wash your face in the shower. Not with a washcloth, with water running directly on your face. I used to *hate* it because I felt like I was drowning. When water hit my nose I couldn't breathe through my mouth. Eventually got really sick of that **** and kept washing my face. The problem is totally gone now.
Super easy to work into your normal schedule, and it seriously works. I now do maskless UW swims breathing through the reg during dive class with no issue.

Oh, that’s a good idea! I’ll try that. Basically when I was quite little (4ish?) I had swim lessons and we got to the part where we were supposed to try floating independently (not holding anything) and I said “I’m not going to float” and they insisted I would.

I did not.

They fished me out quite quickly and I was fine, but of course to me it felt like forever and I got all traumatized. Luckily my parents at least helped me get back to being able to be in the water some, so I did learn how to swim, just my technique is slightly modified to keep my face/nose adequately out of the water. When I try to put my face in I tend to get so tense I forget breathing properly and run out of air and thus get water up my nose, which reminds me of then, which makes me more anxious, which is not a useful mental state for proper breathing control. So the shower trick might help a lot!

(Also if I’m ever teaching someone anything now and they say “not going to work” in the way I did, I take that to mean they are not, for whatever reason, ready for the next step and go back and try to figure out where they have weaknesses or questions. Because that’s usually a sign of some kind of issue that needs to be addressed.)
 
When I try to put my face in I tend to get so tense I forget breathing properly and run out of air and thus get water up my nose, which reminds me of then, which makes me more anxious, which is not a useful mental state for proper breathing control. So the shower trick might help a lot!

Try the shower trick, can't hurt.

Then try swimming the non modified swimming strokes, do a slow exhale (slow is key) while your face is in the water. If you can do that then think about doing a discover scuba.
 
Near Pittsburgh. There’s a diving shop we pass not infrequently, which kind of surprised me the first time I saw it because I don’t think of Pittsburgh as a diving place. I think they mostly do local lakes in state parks and maybe sometimes Lake Erie for ‘local’ trips? Not 100% certain.



Oh, that’s a good idea! I’ll try that. Basically when I was quite little (4ish?) I had swim lessons and we got to the part where we were supposed to try floating independently (not holding anything) and I said “I’m not going to float” and they insisted I would.

I did not.

They fished me out quite quickly and I was fine, but of course to me it felt like forever and I got all traumatized. Luckily my parents at least helped me get back to being able to be in the water some, so I did learn how to swim, just my technique is slightly modified to keep my face/nose adequately out of the water. When I try to put my face in I tend to get so tense I forget breathing properly and run out of air and thus get water up my nose, which reminds me of then, which makes me more anxious, which is not a useful mental state for proper breathing control. So the shower trick might help a lot!

(Also if I’m ever teaching someone anything now and they say “not going to work” in the way I did, I take that to mean they are not, for whatever reason, ready for the next step and go back and try to figure out where they have weaknesses or questions. Because that’s usually a sign of some kind of issue that needs to be addressed.)
Hah, my diving classes are near Pittsburgh. I wouldn’t have thought it’d have dive shops either.🤣🤣 as for where your local shop goes, you’d have to ask them. Because I don’t remember the different shops/their dive spots.

Nice thing about diving is, you can always breathe. As long as you have enough air- plan your gas well.😄
Being able to breathe through your mouth w/o getting water up the nose feels odd at first. But you get used to it relatively quickly.

I hate UW swimming (not in diving) because of the breathing pattern. So, I just pop my head out when I need to breathe. Screw a pattern. Lol.
 
Also, you’re only around 9-10 hours from MA and RI dives. Could make it a fun day or weekend trip. There’s also the Carolinas, approximately 9-10 hours away as well depending if you’re in North or South and what part.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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