2 Big 2 Fail
Contributor
Newer than new, because the OW course isn't until December when my wife and I will take it. Meanwhile, I'm reading everything I can get hold of. Can't think how I made it this far without scuba. I've had a lifetime in emergency services (police, fire, EMS, including high-angle rescue) and have played in ultralights and skydiving and grew up in the water.
So far, it looks like diving presents most of the same issues. Most people who get hurt or killed exceed their training or abilities, have a preventable hardware failure, and/or, at a point of critical decision making, go forward on hope alone, rather than realistic judgment or assume that they'll get away with it this time the way they did those times before. (Hey. They were immortal, right up to the point where they got killed.)
It's also pretty clear that there's no way in the short time in the OW course anyone can even try to pass along more than a tiny fraction of what you ought to know. Like a lot of such things, it's just a license to begin learning.
We spent some time in the pool making sure we would have no problem clearing a mask or mouth breathing without a mask. I was glad to hear my wife say the other day that she's starting to think of herself as a diver, because that means she's thinking about how things work and what can happen and how to deal with it. Turns out she has really good instincts about diving situations for picking the immediate problem to be dealt with first. We're old enough that we won't be doing anything too extreme, so it should be easy to keep it simple and be meticulous. Twelve days 'till we get started.
So far, it looks like diving presents most of the same issues. Most people who get hurt or killed exceed their training or abilities, have a preventable hardware failure, and/or, at a point of critical decision making, go forward on hope alone, rather than realistic judgment or assume that they'll get away with it this time the way they did those times before. (Hey. They were immortal, right up to the point where they got killed.)
It's also pretty clear that there's no way in the short time in the OW course anyone can even try to pass along more than a tiny fraction of what you ought to know. Like a lot of such things, it's just a license to begin learning.
We spent some time in the pool making sure we would have no problem clearing a mask or mouth breathing without a mask. I was glad to hear my wife say the other day that she's starting to think of herself as a diver, because that means she's thinking about how things work and what can happen and how to deal with it. Turns out she has really good instincts about diving situations for picking the immediate problem to be dealt with first. We're old enough that we won't be doing anything too extreme, so it should be easy to keep it simple and be meticulous. Twelve days 'till we get started.
