Posted by JRM on February 02, 2001 at 15:28:57:
In Reply to: Crash posted by Chris on January 31, 2001 at 15:09:57:
Seriously though, I've actually been considering it for the more surgey spots. I was diving off of "thousand steps" in SB (aptly named, I'll never lug a tank down there again) with my wife, and nearly killed myself. It was one of those, "Well, the vis doesn't look real good, but we just dragged all this crap down those thousand steps, lets just get beyond the surfline and look" kind of moments. The surf wasn't real big, so we went out. The vis got a little better (read: like almost 5 feet), so we dropped and started looking around. The surge was bad, like ten feet bad. And since the surge was moving me further than I could see, I really didn't have a good chance to prepare for the very large rock that jumped off the bottom and ran into my head at great speed. Luckily I have an amazingly hard head, and thus was only slightly brained (having few brains helps here as well).
Now, thinking back to the time when I got beaned by a rock while climbing (and again, nearly killed), I figured maybe I'd start wearing my bucket. I haven't done any real climbing without it since (seven years). I have never seen anyone dive with a helmet except in "The Last Dive". Does anyone do this? It would seem to be a good idea to me. I was checking out the helmets the whitewater guys wear in the shop today, and really considered picking one up.
Any thoughts anyone? Is this overkill? I really would like to avoid a repeat of the whole "near-drowning" thing...
JRM