The sooner you realize most divers suck,
This made me laugh... and the last part of the sentence should read "But you don't have to!"
We're all on a learning curve somewhere. Most divers don't "suck", they're just somewhere else on that learning curve. The big take-a-way is to learn as you go. Develop new skills, and improve on old ones. Find a mentor if you can. The best though, seem to be dementors, and they'll teach you to be safe.
and we're just two of countless divers who have done the very same thing and lived to tell the tale.
The busiest part of ScubaBoard is our accidents and incidents forum. It's all about the not-so-countless divers who didn't come home alive. I've been on lots of guided tours of wrecks as well as caves. I always plan an exit strategy. In fact, I plan two or three. Always. My first dive was in 1969, and in those 55 years and thousands of dives, I've never been bent, never been seriously hurt, and have never died. Being brain dead doesn't count. I've made plenty of mistakes, plenty of trust-me dives, and way too many near misses. In those 55 years, I've learned to plan, plan, and re-plan. No, not for the dive to go as planned, but for it to go upside-down and even sideways. You can't bring too much gas, but there never seems to be enough time. A failure to plan, is a plan for failure. There, I've run out of tropes. But really, don't be complacent and never ever let your life be in the hands of another. There's nothing down there worth dying for. Whoops, there's another trope.
