So, just who is George Irvine III?????

[rjack321]

It's like a guy who buys a Harley but still takes baths.

Like the biker pretenders in Wild Hogs?

Not all that dissimilar from divers who can afford $5000 for GUE Cave1+2 courses in MX actually.

 

[chrpai]

I do "all right" in the $ department, but certainly not a "1%"er. I have to justify every purchase I make for this hobby. Then I read some guy talking about how he and his buddy are both on rebreathers with redundant shearwaters.....

I know envy is wrong, but sometimes I just want to sit down and cry.

 

[DaleC]

Try making better quality video when all you can afford is a Go Pro and a dive light

 

[Pullmyfinger]

Like the biker pretenders in Wild Hogs?

Not all that dissimilar from divers who can afford $5000 for GUE Cave1+2 courses in MX actually.

I'm not sure that I'm following you on this. If you don't live close by to cave diving, then it's going to cost more money to pursue it.

Anybody that has saved up $5,000 to take Cave 1 in Mexico has likely given up on other pursuits in order to focus strictly on that class in Mexico.

Pretending?....seems pretty real to me.

Cheers,
Mitch

 

[-hh]

What's a DIR pretender? Anybody who isn't doing seven hour dives at 300 feet?

I took my training through Jarrod's agency, and I dive the way I was taught. Most of my diving is pure recreational and often shallow, because I like light in which to take pictures. Does that make me a pretender?

It is obvious that this "pretender" bit is merely a softened rehash of the old Stroke and DIW mantras.



-hh

 

[danvolker]

It is obvious that this "pretender" bit is merely a softened rehash of the old Stroke and DIW mantras.



-hh

HH, I think they are describing a phenomenon that really does exist... some divers that read alot of the DIR material, adopt alot of it, or all they can get their hands on, and then INTERPRET it as an "End all" that needs to be pushed by each DIR Diver with as close to the original FERVOR that they experienced vicariously through Cavers or the Tech List, or even a few of George's classic articles, like the famous BAKER'S DOZEN...
See it here:
The Bakers Dozen - 13 reasons why we do not use 80/20
by George Irvine

1. This gas was introduced in an effort to overcome the inability of unqualified student "tech" divers to control their buoyancy in open water, and is as such is yet one more concession to doing things in a convoluted fashion to offset a self-inflicted set of problems brought on by the "doing it wrong" thinking that pervades diving today.

2. A heavy sea is not a problem for a deco stop if it is not posing a lung-loading problem. Look at your depth guage in a heavy sea and "see" for yourself what the changes are - insignificant, and if they are not, you should either not have been diving or incurring a decompression liability of this magnitude in the first place. In the event of a change in conditions during the dive, see below where the 80/20 becomes a liability rather than an asset.

3. In the interest of using a standardized set of gases for which you can permanently mark your bottles, it is a poor concession to inability to sacrifice the benefits of pure O2 to accommodate a real or perceived lack of skill - learn to dive before taking up techdiving.

4. In this same interest you will find that when you graduate to real diving, as in caves, you will not want to accelerate your ppo2 at lower depths while still being faced with a long decompression at shallower depths, and making bizarre mixes to do this is a dangerous mistake (just like the fantasy of holding an accelerated ppo2 on a rebreather throughout a deco). I am anticipating the thinking that the 80/20 crowd would then go to an additional oxygen in cave without accounting for total exposure, and subject themselves to the risk of tox in the final deco steps. Tox you do not get out of - bends you do.

5. The 80/20 mix is in fact totally useless and contraindicated as a deco gas. At thirty feet it is only a 1.52 ppo2 (the real 1.6 ppo2 gas would be 84/16) and as such does not either provide the right oxygen window, nor does it does it work as well as pure oxygen without an inert gas at any depth. The gas mixing in your lungs has already lowered the effective ppo2 enough to prevent spiking at 20 feet anyway with the use of pure oxygen - in other words, we are dealing with a simplistic misunderstanding here, or "old wives tale" that is typical in diving.

6. If 100% oxygen is a perceived buoyancy control risk at 20 feet, then why is the same ppo2 ( intended) not a risk at 30 feet? This shows the total lack of reasonable logic involved in the decision to use this gas, as well as a lack of understanding of the whole picture (see the rest of this discussion).

7. Along those lines, all we hear is howling about "oxygen cleaning" above 40% mixtures, and dive shop proprietors on here complaining about scuba tanks with oxygen in them being filled in their shops. With a pure oxygen system, the tank only ever gets filled with oxygen from oxygen tanks, not from every dive shop compressor it sees. Again, this shows the total inconsistency of agency thinking, and reveals that the true reason for this gas is to pretend to lower liability for teaching incompetents to dive, which is bull, and to attempt to accrue some inventive accomplishments to the dive agency pundits who themselves prove that they do no real diving by making this recommendation in the first place. This is like the colored regs, the stages on either side, the quick-release buckle, and the poodle jacket: nonsense of the most obvious nature developed through one-dimensional thinking by those whose universe of understanding is not only severely limited, but blinded by the hubris of not being the "inventor" of the techniques that work.

8. Any perceived decompression benefit of using a higher ppo2 at 30 feet with 80/20 is then given back by the lowered ppo2 at 20 feet, not to mention the fact that the presence of the inert gas in the breathing mixture defeats the purpose of using oxygen in the first place (see the Physiology and Medicine of Diving) . The ppo2 of 80/20 at 20 feet is 1.28, not much of an oxygen window, and at 10 feet it is 1.04 - useless for deco. To make matters worse, you can not get out from your 30 foot stop in an emergency (not doing the other stops) on the 80/20 mix without really risking a type 2 hit.

9. This is a dangerous method to achieve a greater total volume of gas for the bad breathers (another obvious reason the gas is in vogue), who should not be incurring these decos, and even that benefit of having more gas is lost since it is breathed at 30 feet, and then has to last for the other stops. The fact is that gas is effectively saved by using the lower deco gas up to this point, relying on the pressure gradient to both achieve the deco and provide a break from high the previous gas's higher PPO2 prior to going to pure oxygen where the spike could be a problem on an extreme exposure without an adequate low ppo2 break (again this shows that the 80% user is a neophyte diver with no real experience or understanding of the true risks of these dives).

10.The 20-30% longer 30 foot time on the lower ppo2 is not only overcome on the pure oxygen at the next stops, the breaks do not come into play until the initial good dose of pure oxygen has been absorbed, since you are not spiking from a high pervious dose without a break that is effectively achieved on the previous gas. These things need to be understood and taught by the agencies, not some superficial convolution that is designed to obfuscate the problem rather than openly acknowledge and deal with it in a responsible fashion.

11.In an emergency situation, getting onto the pure O2 for 20 minutes or so (for long dives something approximating the bottom time or a any decent interval) would give you a real good shot at getting out of the water having missed the rest of your deco and living through it with pain hits only. You have to think these things all the way though, not go for the transparent superficial thinking of those who merely are trying to "make their mark" with some "great" idea they can call their own. The acid test is, as always, is the calibre of the divers who adopt these practices.

12.If there is some problem with your deco or you otherwise develop symptoms and need oxygen either on the surface or back in the water, it is silly to have not had it there all along. 80/20 is a joke for that purpose, unless you have asthma, in which case any accelerated oxygen mix would be a nightmare. This is again part of the "thinking it all the way through" philosophy which is obviously missing from the 80/20 argument.

13.Only a card-carrying stroke would do somethng like this, and showing up with 80/20 is no different than wearing a sign on your back saying "I am a stroke, and have the papers to prove it". It announces to all the world that you have no clue, kind of like wearing clip-on suspenders or having dog dirt on your shoes.

________________________


The Bakers Dozen was how George did DIR on the Cavers list...it was a style he used for the media he was in.... However, it was not anything like George in person.... If you want a real insight into how George actually discussed DIR in real life, see the transcript linked below..... And please LIKE my page while you are at it


https://www.facebook.com/pages/SFDJ...755?id=143570335699755&sk=app_599788450050788

 

[boulderjohn]

13.Only a card-carrying stroke would do somethng like this, and showing up with 80/20 is no different than wearing a sign on your back saying "I am a stroke, and have the papers to prove it". It announces to all the world that you have no clue, kind of like wearing clip-on suspenders or having dog dirt on your shoes.

To me this illustrates a lot about the overall history of this debate.

I was well acquainted with this article when I took my TDI trimix training, using the older TDI instructional materials that have now been replaced. My TDI instructor knew next to nothing about either George or DIR in general, and he frankly didn't care. He was amused, though, when I showed him this article. There was then a section in the TDI materials that talked about deco gas choices, and the wording clearly referenced this article in a negative way, talking (I don't recall the exact words) about people strutting about, thumping their chests, and declaring that real divers only use pure O2 for shallow deco. As someone originally raised through DIR, I was able to see clearly that negative reference and at least one other such reference in the TDI materials. The rancor between them must have been pretty fierce back then.

In our training, we talked about why one might choose 80% over O2, and there were some pretty decent reasons, reasons not mentioned in Irvine's baker's dozen. Those reasons were apparently good enough to make it a very popular gas where I was doing my training. My instructor preferred it, and the shop we were using for our gas kept 80% banked it because it was so popular. Almost every tech diver on the boats we used then used it for their dives. I joined them despite my earlier DIR training so that we would all be using the gases, and I managed to live through the experience.

I did some tech dives in Cozumel recently in which we used 36% as one of our deco gases. Why? Because it was readily available and much, much cheaper than custom-mixed 50%. I didn't raise a fit. I just adapted my profile to it.

Which brings us to his 13th reason. Apparently to George, much of the world was filled with strokes. For some reason some of those people took umbrage to the description. Today, though, I think people are more inclined to be like my TDI trimix instructor. He was mildly amused by it, but beyond that he didn't much care. I suspect he forgot about it shortly after I showed him.

 

[danvolker]

Which brings us to his 13th reason. Apparently to George, much of the world was filled with strokes. For some reason some of those people took umbrage to the description. Today, though, I think people are more inclined to be like my TDI trimix instructor. He was mildly amused by it, but beyond that he didn't much care. I suspect he forgot about it shortly after I showed him.

John, as you mention, I think this does frame the problem George created, as well as why it drove DIR from being something a tiny group of 100 divers in North Florida used, to something that divers all over the world are aware of... The "style" of slamming the "Worst" Cave or tech divers with the "Stroke" description was "FUN" for many on the Internet Discussion Boards of the 90's. It was like watching Pro Wrestling on TV, but with actual knowledge that could be gleaned from it as well( unlike Pro Wrestling).

George making his card carrying Stroke comment at the end of the Bakers Dozen article, was exactly like the Wrestler/Actor known as the "Rock" ( Dwayne Johnson) doing his Eybrow raising Glare at another Wrestler....it was a signature that helped "sell the fun".

Unfortunately, several of the DIR Pretenders around are now trying to serve up "signature moves" , a decade after they went out of fashion, and without consideration of how they will be perceived in the world of today...not to mention, whether they were trying to copy the moves of "the Rock", or of George Irvine, it would be largely impossible for 99.9% of the imitators to do what the original did.

 

[rongoodman]

The obvious response to the Baker's Dozens article is a CCR!

 

[traveler218]

I consider myself a "new" diver in that, while I received my OW Cert in 1975, other than the occasional free dive, I have been largely absent from the sport for 30 years. I started diving again last year after taking a refresher course and have sense logged 13 dives, giving me a lifetime total of only ~30. I found the refresher course to be largely useless (other thab giving me time in the pool with equipment) and rely predominantly on information I have been able to find on the internet, in a couple of books and other divers. I have been following this thread out of curiosity and the hope of learning some useful information. I have to say I have learned some things from this thread. One of the interesting things is that it pointed me to a couple of GUE and DIR websites.

I am not at all familiar with the individuals or organizations discussed here and have no real bias from the ancient history. What I have found is that the GUE and DIR websites are a great resource of useful information. I have found it difficult to find really useful information about how to set up and deploy my equipment and why. I understand that some of this is "personal preference" but it is nice to have a starting place that makes sense. Never have cared for people with the attitude "my way is the only right way", but it does give some good perspective.

Thanks for the interesting thread!

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