why did GUE , DIR take so long to adopt sidemount.

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Every cave dive and deco dive should be considered a big deal. Otherwise complacency sets in. Or worse yet, some idiot reads on the internet that a 3 hour cave dive in Mexico is not a big deal and decides to go try it without any training.
Well said, thank you. I'm surprised that people disagree with that.

@NWGratefulDiver
How many times do you want me to repeat the same thing? I think doing multi hour dives with new people is stupid. Yes, I think that stupid and you don't. Whether you're in deco or not, you're still in a cave.
Have you made a single point other than 3 hour cave dives are not a big deal in Mexico?
 
Makes me glad I don't have to live in those places and deal with the egos and politics on a regular basis.
You're such a joker, I called you out on unsafe diving practices, YOU have called me names in almost every of your post. And I'm style over substance and chest thumping?
 
You're such a joker, I called you out on unsafe diving practices, YOU have called me names in almost every of your post. And I'm style over substance and chest thumping?

... therein lies the issue ... you don't know a damn thing about me. You labelled me "unsafe" on the basis of a difference between how you choose to dive and how I do, and because I took issue with your choice of words and your bombastic way of insulting people you disagree with. Then you went into making claims about things I never said.

None of that has a damn thing to do with diving.

... Bob
 
Have you made a single point other than 3 hour cave dives are not a big deal in Mexico?

I didn't even make that point ... you conveniently left out a couple of words in order to take what I said out of context so you could find an excuse to be insulting.

Therein lies the problem ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 


A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Okay folks, this Thread has started to get a little "personal" with all the back and forth. Stick with discussing the topic and forget about the personal quips while doing it.
 
Perhaps it's semantics, but I disagree. Complacency has no place in scuba diving ... not even on a 20-foot reef dive. And I'm not here to protect idiots from their own poor decisions.


Yes, I agree ... it's called personal choice. We're all different. We all dive for our own reasons, make our own choices about training, equipment, preparation, and risk management. There's more than one way to do it. And just because someone else makes those personal choices in a manner that differs from yours doesn't make them stupid. I get tired of the rhetoric and chest-thumping. Sometimes it's entertaining ... but it's the worst part about going to places like Gainseville or Tulum. Makes me glad I don't have to live in those places and deal with the egos and politics on a regular basis.

But you're right, this conversation has veered off-topic. In fact, the original topic has long since been forgotten.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Part of my risk management is deciding who I will dive with. I've only been to Florida a few times, but I've been to Tulum quite a bit. I actually don't find a lot of chest thumping going on there. I've actually found the "local" divers quite helpful. I think most of the chest thumping happens online or behind the windshield of a moving vehicle. We all get tougher when there's a screen involved.
 
You labelled me "unsafe" on the basis of a difference between how you choose to dive and how I do, and because I took issue with your choice of words and your bombastic way of insulting people you disagree with.
Finally you get it, you're an instructor and you publically say that a 3 hours cave dive is not a big deal. I call that irresponsible, unsafe and you're, as an instructor, setting a bad example for beginners that read these posts too.
Is there anything you wanna discuss or do you just wanna ramble on? I've tried to make my point like ten times now, granted @gearhound said it better.

I didn't even make that point ...
Here is what you said: ... 3-hour cave dives in Mexico often won't even put you in deco ... it's not a big deal, in some cases.
 
Part of my risk management is deciding who I will dive with. I've only been to Florida a few times, but I've been to Tulum quite a bit. I actually don't find a lot of chest thumping going on there. I've actually found the "local" divers quite helpful. I think most of the chest thumping happens online or behind the windshield of a moving vehicle. We all get tougher when there's a screen involved.

Tulum's better than north Florida, to be sure ... but there's still a lot of politics and "you're gonna die" attitude to be found there, as evidenced by the continued wars between people who disagree on how the lines should be marked ... and some of the outrageous behavior that's occurred because of that disagreement. It's amazing to me that no one's been killed by it yet.

Part of my risk management is also deciding who I will dive with. That doesn't mean I'll exclude anybody because of the letters on their card, or because of how many dives we've done together. It takes a conversation and a couple dives, at most, to assess someone's abilities. If anything makes me uncomfortable I'll decline any further opportunities to dive together. But that's not what was being discussed. I'm not talking about untrained instabuddies here ... cave diving isn't a boat in Bonaire, where the DM is going to try to randomly pair you up with someone you've never even had a chance to talk to. And that's the analogy I perceive is being put forward in this conversation. They're apples and orangutans. Some of my all-time best cave buddies turned out to be people I had only known right here on ScubaBoard prior to meeting them in Florida or MX for a dive trip. Without exception they turned out to be great divers and team mates, and we meshed well together despite never having met in real life prior to meeting for a week of cave diving together.

My problem with all this talk about "big deal" dives is that it attracts the wrong sort ... people who want bragging rights to the "big deal" dives, and who become so goal-oriented that they often ignore warning signs they should pay attention to. While you're concerned that downplaying these dives will attract the unqualified, I'm more concerned that designating them as "big deal" dives will do the same thing. And I think being goal-oriented is at least as big a problem inside a cave as being complacent ... because it makes people push the limits when they should know better. I've seen too many people come out of a cave with less gas than they should have because they just had to push to reach a specific spot ... for no reason other than bragging rights. Sure, they made it ... but if they'd lost access to one of their cylinders for any reason, they'd have run out of air before they got back. Dumb ... and for what? So they could claim they'd done that "big dive"?

My biggest problem with a lot of this rhetoric is that it only considers the extremes ... you're either a rock-star or a muppet, and that's how the arguments get phrased. The reality is that most of us fall somewhere in between. We're not doing the "big dives" ... and no, Pet Cemetery to Blue Abyss and back doesn't qualify as a "big dive" in my book (that's just one example, I'm sure you can think of similar dive profiles down there). It's just a long swim with a couple of jumps ... anybody who has full-cave training and knows how to use a stage bottle should be able to do it. And yes, I do pay attention to training and experience ... and attitude even more so. I'd be more inclined to shy away from somebody who talks about "big dives" than I would somebody who just looks at the profile and figures out how to best approach the dive like it's not a big deal. That tells me a great deal about their reasons for doing the dive, and how likely they would be to push things when they shouldn't, for the sake of "notching" the dive. I don't want that kind of mindset with me when I'm inside a cave.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
To get back to the original topic.
I do not do "big dives", but if I ever will, I will not act differently.
I have the same level of trust you seem to imply when meeting a GUE diver with any sidemount diver.
I know he can do his own diveplan and will find out for sure when we double check (as every team should).
I see his gasmanagement plan by counting his stages when entering the water and comparing to my own.
When reaching bubble check depth I know he can do gas-switches, buoyancy and all the other basics.

With a sidemount diver I also expect more or less the same skill level as I would expect of a 'tec fundamentals' diver.
Frog-kick, perfect buoyancy control, backkick, valve-management... all part of of any basic sidemount training.
 
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