heliflyer:
Glad you found us here on SB. I'ts nice to see real icons of the industry on the board.
I hope you visit more often and give us some of your great insights on diving,dcs,etc.
Thanks, Lanny. I've actually been a member since 2002, but have only been an occasional lurker. I used to spend a significant amount of my free time on various electronic dive forums (the original CompuServer tech diving forum, techdiver, rebreather list, etc.) -- I even wrote an article about the forums in aquaCorps magazine years ago. But life has become increasingly busy of late, and I just can't find the time to stay on top of it these days. My hope is to rectify that, and become a regular participant in this and other forums -- but at the moment, the stack of stuff in my "to do" pile at work is still huge...
mislav:
Haha I hope you don't mind me posting link to that video here.
Mr. Pyle, it's an honor to have you here. Here in the Mediterranean there are still so many of the oldschool and pioneer divers around and I've met and dove with some. It's a privilege. Nothing beats the stories you guys can tell.
No worries on posting the link. I have to explain a little bit of history about that video clip. I actually had absolutely no idea that the microphone was picking up our words, until much later when I finally saw one of the clips with the audio turned on. I thought it was so funny, that I put together the video with subtitles etc. to show to friends at our usual post-expedition party. At about that time, I started looking into Google Video as a way to share video clips of fish specimens as "virtual vouchers" for making scientific checklists of species. I needed to upload a test video to see how the process worked, and I wanted to show that Christmas Island clip to Joe Dituri in California, so I used that clip as my test case. My intention was to take it off Google
immediately after Joe saw it, but in the three days between when it was posted on Google Video, and when Joe had a chance to see it, someone had apparently stumbled on it by accident and posted the link to RebreatherWorld. I was mortified, because it was never intended for public consumption. I was going to take it down right away, but after I saw how much people seemed to be enjoying it, I didn't want to be a fuddy-duddy, so I left it up there (against my better judgement, I'm sure). I have no doubt that I will deeply regret it some day; but for the time being, I guess it's serving more good than harm (Although I hear that someone was offended by what they perceived as a disparaging reference to Tourette Syndrome -- a serious disease that should not be mocked. I hope that most people recognize that I was in no way mocking the disease, but rather adopting a common vernacularism, used frequently in popular culture, that is now far distant from its medical origins.) I know I'll rue the day when my kids stumble on it, though.
As for the oldschool, I do not lump myself among the guys who I truely regard as oldschool pioneers -- many of whom I grew up idolizing here in Hawaii. I was lucky enough to start my diving career at a time when the real oldschool guys were still around and actively diving. Some, like my dive partner John Earle (among others) are still active divers. I will always hold them in the highest regard as the real pioneers of diving.
Mike Veitch:
Hi Richard, good to see you on here. I will pass the message along to Brian, I would guess he is still fibre glassing his boat, should be done for the weekend so he will be getting in the water again.
Thanks, Mike -- I got an email from him yesterday -- I guess he's been having problems connecting.
Mike Veitch:
I am trying to get him to show the Tourette's video to our guests one of these nights
He is the star, after all (I'm just the "narrator").
seemybubbles:
After reading part one and then seeing part two I kept waiting for him to remember past mistakes.
Yeah -- I know. But I guess that's part of the overall take-home message from it. My first screw-up in Palau resulted from a much deeper dive. In the twisted logic of my mind at the time, the dives at Necker were
completely different. I honestly didn't associate the two events until later. That was the real stupidity -- to regard 100 feet as "shallow", and completely unconnected to the "deep" dives that I was doing in Palau. For some reason, I subconsciously thought, "hey -- it's only 100 feet -- the worst that can happen is a sore shoulder". And the real kicker is that this was a trap I already
knew about, and had even
written about years earlier. I guess that just goes to show how insideous the trap can be -- that regular deep/trimix/decompression divers can easily "forget" that 100 feet is still plenty deep to get into some
serious trouble. In a way, they can be even more dangerous than dives to 300 or 400 feet. It's that complacency thing that's the real killer.
seemybubbles:
Just on a side note, I sent the Tourette's video to quit few of my military friends in Irag and Afganistan. I bet I've gotten at least 50 e-mails since last night saying thanks for giving them something to laugh about. One of my close friends over there said that they get "pick me ups" all the time from the states, but this was the first one they've gotten that made them laugh till they cried, "and that was something my troops needed". So thanks again!
Wow! I'm utterly speachless!
Thank you for sharing that! This alone WAY makes up for even a hundred people offended by my reference to "Tourette Syndrome", or the fear that my kids may someday stumble on it. Like I said -- I'm speachless. My wife's brother is in Iraq now, and it never even ocurred to me to send him the link as a "pick me up". I'll do that right now.
caveseeker7:
You post like one. :shakehead Seriously, dude, you need guts for that kind of diving, and luck if you do it the way they did.
Thanks for this, and for the extremely kind remarks that followed! However, I have to point out that I actually agree with the essence of what Lehmann108 posted. I already mentioned about the distinction of "brave", "crazy" and "stupid". "Brass ones" is a term associated with "brave", and I would never consider what I currently do (or even most of what Tom, Sheck, and Hal do/did - with a couple of exceptions) in the "brave" category. "Brave" is doing something risky, with full understanding of the risk, for a noble cause. The firemen running
up the stairs of the World Trade Center were brave. Guys like my brother-in-law who disable explosives are brave.
"Stupid" is doing something risky without a robust understanding of the risk -- whatever the motivation or reason. I have, over the years, seen evidence of such stupidity in the diving world. 'Nuff said.
"Crazy" is the word I think best describes many of us who voluntarily expose ourselves to risk, doing our best to fully understand those risks, for reasons that are perhaps justified and maybe even admirable, but not noble. For the most part, the reasons revolve around personal passion. But the distinction between "crazy" and "stupid" ultimately boils down to the "pink matter". We graduate from "stupid" to "crazy" when we obtain a robust understanding of the risks to which we expose ourselves. I agree 100% with something Lehmann108 said: I absolutely
did dive like an idiot -- moreso in Palau than Necker, but what I did in Necker was even worse than stupid -- it was foolish (a new category, that I hadn't considered before now). Foolish is when you have a robust understanding of the risk, but neglect that understanding in your actions.
Diver Dennis:
But that's the way it was back then. Diving has come a long way.
It's certainly true that diving has come a long way, and I can probably hide behind the excuse of "the times" for some of my previous actions and decisions -- but I have to say that even back then, my actions and attitudes in Palau were utterly naive and unjustifiable. It had much more to do with the arrogance of an "immortal" teenager, than it did with how diving was done at the time.
Before I sign off, I wanted to make one last comment about the "Christmas Chill" video. When I've shown it to some of my deep diving friends, they laugh at the foul language of course (indeed, the people who know me find it much more funny because I generally don't use those kinds of words very often) -- but the part they find the funniest is the "How deep are we going to go?" line. Inevitably, I get snide comments like "nice dive plan", etc. -- but most people don't realize that this is characteristic of almost
every deep dive we make. Such is the nature of exploration. We go where the fish are, and if we knew that in advance, we wouldn't need to do the dive in the first place. We do have a dive plan, the specifics of which vary on a dive-by-dive basis, but the guiding principle is "stay within our limitations" on any given dive. If you plan to do a dive to 100 feet, and find something really cool at 60 feet, are you recklessly violating your "dive plan" by chosing to stay at 60 feet (assuming your buddy is aware of and compliant with the decision)? In our case, we know what our maximum depth limit is (based on bailout gas and a bunch of other factors), and we don't exceed that. Oftentimes, we don't get that far down because we find something interesting before we get there.
Okay, I should probably get back to work. I want to again thank everyone for their thoughtful comments.
Aloha,
Rich
