Posted by seahunt on May 09, 2001 at 22:10:03:
In Reply to: Re: choices posted by MHK on May 09, 2001 at 17:59:08:
>>>You can't turn on and off a mindset..
Why not? Just because I don't choose to buddy dive, do you think I
cannot adapt to a tight buddy dive when I want to? It's not hard. Do
you think I don't carefully talk to a buddy before a dive? I do. (Not
only that, but because I usually only "buddy" with complete newbies, I
make sure we understand the dive plan). Communication is an art/hobby
of mine.
I hate to say, but I don't think you know my mindset. It's not that I
put safety at the bottom of the list, it's tht I consider safety to be
taken care of by my gear and procedures. I assure you that if I didn't
have an extreme sense of safety with the skills and experience to match,
I wouldn't be alive.
Minor note... I have a stronger safety mindset than you might think.
Certain things you do when windsurfing in the ocean set off alarms that
are made for diving, like distance from shore. I have trouble shutting
off automatic alarms like that. Also, when racing, I had to turn off
all of my safety inhibitions and rules. Otherwise, you just can't race.
I assure you, my safety is ingrained deeply. You don't know and you can't
judge beyond yourself.
>Chris does NOT exercise the requisite judgement skills to be
>commenting on this area, nor do you..
You don't have the judgement skills to judge me. I live in a world that
don't know. You haven't even been able to get a description of my gear
right. Not only that, but could it be that you are even a bit biased?
Didn't you go off about my innocuous tips? I think that that showed
some interesting judgement. I think that you just can't tolerate any
diver with an opinion different from your own, no matter how good it
might be. You didn't think about those tips, you just went off like
you do on anyone that gives an opinion different from your own.
*
Just for me, at this age and time, I don't think it practical for me to
consider taking up technical diving and when it was, it wasn't feasable
(and I was just having too much fun sport diving up and down the
whole coast).
You guys doing that kind of diving are rare now and were less common
than unicorns 10 years ago. There is so little occasion for deep diving
on the west coast that "tech" diving was pretty low tech then. It usually
meant deep air, past anything that could be called a sane depth. The
message that 3 of those 4 recent deaths show, is an old one in CA. Go
too deep and you will die.
That shouldn't come as a shock to you. That was the story of the
Florida Caves. Dive them and you die.
As you love to inform us, techniques were developed for safely exploring
the caves. Your bringing mixed gas tech diving to the west coast is opening
a new niche of deeper diving, like the Moody or Matterhorn that simply
could not be safely visited before. I think that with the current gear
being what it is and other things, tech diving on the west coast will
grow.
Still, you do not have a monopoly on safety or a safe mindset. What you
have is your own self importance and self rightousness.
That mindset of safety you say I don't have, is plenty strong
enough to have kept me from ever doing a dive anything like what has
been described in these recent accidents.
You don't do what I've done and dived where I dive for 30 years with no
accidents at both dangerous work or play, without a pretty good mindset
of safety.
I've never been bent. I hear that JW can't say that and I doubt that
you can either. Really though, even that doesn't say that you necessarily
have a dangerous mindset, it just says that you have a mindset that
accepts the risks of what you are doing. So do I.
Really, I think your deep diving, even with gas, is more dangerous than
my solo sport dives. You described a 300 foot plus dive this week. That's
incomprehensible to me. That used to take one of those big solid pressurized
suits or hoses to the surface, not scuba. You can do it if you want and I
wouldn't mind trying it, but it's not time for me to tech dive... I wouldn't
mind seeing the metridiums on the Moody though. I'm diving just fine.
Enjoy, seahunt