Posted by Wayne on January 21, 2001 at 00:27:52:
In Reply to: Which regulator to take posted by Wayne on January 21, 2001 at 00:09:29:
A few months ago my oldest daughter was going diving with a bunch of strangers and decided to rent a regulator (long story in itself). She rented it at some dive shop near her cousin's apartment in the Ontario area and they all carpooled to the beach. When she got to the beach she assembled her gear and grabbed the rental reg. It was missing the mouthpiece! Just had the metal to hang on to with the lips! Was she ever mad. Mad at the shop, mad at herself for not inspecting the one piece of gear she rented at the unfamiliar shop, mad at me for getting mad at her after a previous dive when she did not rinse out her reg, which caused her to be renting this time.
All the divers she was with decided not to dive (wussies), because the other girls in the group did not dive and the boys did not want to leave them alone on the beach. Being the only female diver, she was furious about this, too. She put her gear away and freedove with her non-diving cousin.
When she got back to the store she read the employee the riot act about how he ruined her day with the defective rental reg. He told her that that store always rents them that way and all their customers must supply their own mouth piece and ty-wrap. This shop had done this for "years" and could not imagine that anyone would place a rental reg into their mouth with a used mouthpiece. (I worry less about the external rubber part and more about the hidden insides for harboring evil bugs. But diving is supposed to be dangerous, right?)
So far this is the only store I have heard of doing this. I wonder if more are coming. This month one of the magazines (either Alert Diver, Skin Diving, or Scubadiving -- I forget which) had an article on the cleaning and disinfecting of regulators. Very enlightening. I wonder what the future of rental regs and shared octos will hold...
Wayne