Outliving your buddies

[kimbalabala]

I dive alone much of the time, or with what to me are kids. I really enjoy diving with people much younger, but I sometimes wonder if I enjoy being with them more than they enjoy having me along. Sometimes they get a little annoyed when we complete a dive and I have much more air left than anyone else. I tell them to slow down and really look at small things, and they tell me to keep up with them. They also get a laugh at my equipment, some of which was manufactured before they were born.

My husband just turned 59 and I'm 52 and we are both quite jealous of anyone who comes back to the boat with tons of air. There was a couple in Grand Cayman that did this every dive - and their advice was the same as yours - "slow down and look at the small things". That was the first time it really sunk in that when the captain says "be back in 45 minutes or at 500 psi" that it wasn't the start of a race!

All this talk makes me a bit sad because it's hard enough to FIND dive buddies. I don't want to lose any of them for any reason. I can't imagine what people do on vacation if they're not diving. I've become a bit small minded I guess. Vacation = diving.

 

[Scott]

Like many have already stated, buddies have come and gone, but what remains are the memories and in some cases friendships.
I still remember the buddy (Randy Wade) I had in my OW course, the phrase he used to say when answering the phone and the dives we made together after certification. I haven't seen or spoke with Randy in 25 years.
My OW instructor I see more frequently than some family members.
Of the candidates in my IDC, I am the only active instructor.
My OWSI Course Director, who was full of life about diving, no longer owns a piece of scuba equipment.
Buddies from clubs I used to dive with, like many, have new interests.
One buddy past in the last year from a diving accident.
I'm lucky that I have had the opportunity to dive with a number of people, I'm also lucky that I have a dive and life buddy of over 25 years.
I wonder if they think about how much fun diving was as I still do?

 

[j2s]

I stopped counting lost dive buddies years ago. It's what lead me to mostly solo diving. Seems like shortly after everything clicks with a buddy something happens and they aren't diving anymore. I am surely the last man standing (still diving) out of all the people I dived with during the 70's and 80's there may be a few still diving from the 90's. Some of us love diving others like and enjoy it for awhile then move on to some other sport. I'm not done being amazed yet! There are still a few dive buddies out there for me to meet yet. I'm working on my last dive buddy now, my wife. She'll be taking OW next month, we'll grow old making shallow dives during the summer!

Same, Same.....They come, they go.....I just keep doing my 'thing' and solo is a constant 'buddy'.......

 

[dumpsterDiver]

When i was a snot nose kid of 14-15, there were some local divers who took me out to the wrecks in NJ and taught me to dive solo. They were around 40+- yrs old. And used to come to my house and pick me up and drive me to go diving. One guy in particular was just super generous.. Mike Gebhardt...(or Gebhard)... He would be 80 now at least... I wish I had kept contact...so i could tell him now how much I appreciated his help..

I try to help out new divers now (if they listen to me) because I figure i need to pay it back a little.

 

[LAKelpDiver]

My next door neighbor growing up was a scuba diver, back from the early 60's. He dove then, then got out of it as all his buddies got out of it. In the late 70's a newer friend of his came up with the brilliant idea, "Hey, lets get certified to scuba dive!" His reply, I am, here is my name in a 1965 Skin Diver Magazine! So he started diving again. Through my neighbor, during my senior year of high school, I got a job working for an instructor in his side, primary business. Through him I got certified. This was now 1982. So with me now certified, working for an instructor, next door neighbor diving frequently, a friend now with the dive shop owners, member of their diving club, I was diving fairly frequently. In 1984 I enlisted in the Navy and went away for five years, I was no longer diving. When my enlistment was up and I went back home, everything had pretty much fallen apart from before and no one was diving. Not my neighbor, none of those folks. My brother-in-law was certified, I went out with him once, and that was it for me, if I was going to keep diving, I needed a partner that had a clue. It's now 1990.

Jump to 2011. A group of parents from a friends daughters school were diving regularly, he got his OW certification. They were diving once a month, then it began to become more infrequent. The cycle of people stopping is repeating. He said to me and another friend, we should get certified. I am, I was first certified in 1982! The other friend got certified in 2011 and they were going out at least twice a month. In May 2012 I jumped back into the water. In their first year they did just under 100 dives each, since I started back last June, I'm up to 25 now. It's working out good for the three of us, if one is not available for a dive, the other one is. As we are all long time married, it is working out well for that too. We can all use this to get away for a day and bitch about our SO. Don't get mad ladies, you know you do that too!

I'm thinking, and hoping, that we stick with this for a long time, we are all really enjoying it now. We all ride motorcycles together, on and off road, played hockey together, golf together, fish, camp, do lots of stuff together. Maybe that's an advantage, we started out as friends first.

 

[CamG]

I am but a wee one in this group yet already discovered a trend among the chosen.
A good friend of mine has a mantra his father taught him, "Love many, Trust few, Learn to paddle your own canoe!"
I have learned that buddies can come and go but if you are going to achieve goals it is up to you.
Sounds lonely huh?
Not really I am of the grow your own buddies camp so I rarely dive alone unless I really want to.
I love to meet new people but truly love my mentors, instructors, friends, and buddies.

I have not buried any close ones yet but been around some who have passed.
I really feel that the journey is filled with characters that color our lives sometimes enriching them, sometimes challenging, sometimes moving us into areas we never would have dreamed of with out them.
I have revisited old friends and we take off like we never were apart but family is family!
I have been reflecting as some buddies are moving into the leadership scene fond memories of watching them OW certified now moving into the instructor realm.

I am enjoying things more diving, hobbies, wife, kids, dang I am getting old!
Watching my friends drop out always hurts a bit but just means visits might not revolve around diving.
Now we still talk of old times but I always jab them to see if they will one day return to the water.
No pressure, no judgement.

CamG

 

[MaxBottomtime]

When I was six, my oldest brother threw me into the water at Redondo Beach. I couldn't swim, but remember hitting the bottom feet first and pushing myself back to the surface. It was my first diving experience, and I hated it. Twenty-four years later, my first wife Marilyn, who grew up in the Nevada desert watching Sea Hunt and dreaming of becoming a diver signed us up for Open Water after free diving for a year or so. We made 626 dives together.
I met my friend Tim in our Divemaster class. He became my mentor for everything I came to know about diving deep wrecks. We made fifty dives together.
Later in life I met Susan. She was an instructor and DIR zealot. I practiced skills on nearly every dive with her, although she was unable to convince me that my solo, deep diving ways were bad.
Marilyn, Tim and Susan are gone now, but each gave me something that helped me to be the diver I am now. Rest in peace, buddies.
Others have shared my passion, some with more exuberance than I, yet they each have either given up diving or curtailed it to seldom jaunts.
I met Merry seven years ago while diving at Marineland. She was a new diver with less than forty dives. We hit it off right away, and now share a passion for diving and marine life. After more than five hundred dives together, we still surface grinning ear to ear, struggling to hold back the excitement at finding a new animal.
After more than two decades of diving, I'm more excited about it now than ever.

 

[divin'dog]

I've made some new friends locally, but I miss all the folks I used to know.

Anybody else dived long enough to go through this? It's rather disconcerting.

Wow... reading all the posts reminds me of myself. Just like all the posters here, I've been through different "eras" of dive buddies. I was certified in 1988. First starting out with the best dive buddy I ever had because we were certified together and grew together as divers. I can't ever remember getting separated from him while diving. After a few years, he started a family then moved away. Then I found a couple of guys that I would dive with regularly for the next few years. One of them moves away and I stopped diving for a while. Driving 2+ hrs just to get to the ocean gets to be a chore. After a few years of not diving, my old buddy convinced me to go to Honduras with him... and as he says, a monster was born. Now I try to go somewhere warm every year if I can afford it. I've also started diving back here off MA, renewing my lobster license and finding a few new people to dive with. I missed it but somehow my diving is now different as I'm a different person and diver...

What I'm struck with is the perspective that changes with your life as you get older. Like TSandM, I miss the people I dove with. All good fun memories! When all is said and done, it's the experiences and relationships that you've formed that make life enjoyable and memorable. Am I sounding like an old fart?

 

[Pedro Burrito]

Every time I read the title to this thread I have one thought ... I'm never going to dive with TSandM.

Sorry Lynne, I know I promised to dive with you but I don't want to die!

 

[Bob DBF]

The thrill and adventure of diving is why many learn to SCUBA dive, after the thrill is gone a lot move on to other adventures. On a few occations I have seen incedents, even minor ones, make the person decide that sucking air out bottle at 100' does not coincide with their long term health goals.

I've been lucky, or have a short attention span, so it is always an adventure to me after almost 50 years.

All my old buddies that have shed this mortal coil did not do it diving, and I plan on following their lead sometime in the future.


TSandM, you will feel really bad when a buddy moves on from diving that is the grown kid of a dive buddy from decades back. There are not a lot of divers that stick with it over the years, especially if they dive local in cold water. Let me know if you are still diving at the 20 year mark, trust me, it dosen't get easier as you get older, you have to really like diving.



Bob
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I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.