Posted by MHK on April 12, 2000 at 17:55:40:
In Reply to: Re: Tech diving posted by SLANG on April 12, 2000 at 14:57:06:
Sounds like I'm in the minority, or perhaps I haven't made my points clear enough.. One of the reasons that I think it's a good idea to clearly define a recreational diver -v- a technical diver is a s follows:
There are way too many cowboys for my taste out there. When something happens to them, and it eventually will, I can see the recreational guys now saying * see what happens when you tech dive* I would therefore like to be in a position ahead of time to suggest that we, as a tech diving community, do not promote cowboy diving.
So to me, atleast, it seems like a good idea to divorce ourselves from dangerous diving practices and try to pursuade those that are doing this to stop.
I accept that not everyone buy's into the DIR mentality, and for the moment, I'm not selling it. ( although in the interest of full disclosure I do advocate there approach ). But that aside, in my view out here we are very disorganized as a tech dive community taken as a whole. I think it would be a good idea for those of us that do have a desire to do this type of diving to meet, discuss, share ideas and actually dive together. Whether you argee/disagree with the Floridians the one thing you can say about them is that they are out of the closet, they do dive and they do share ideas.
I'm hoping that, perhaps on a smaller level, those of us out here that have that desire can get together a little better than we are right now.
The only way I know how to do that is to open the discussion up, get people involved, exchange ideas.
I written 2 articles in California Diving News, we had a tech dive club that seemed to fade out last year, but at it's hieght we had 80 members. I put together a trip last year on the Great Escape that required 20 diver's to pay for the trip. I wound up needing 8 diver's from Monterey to join us to sell the trip. So I'm just trying here guys, give me a break :-)
I'm open to ideas.
Later