Nonsense.
First, in the ski marketplace you don't have manufacturers conspiring with ski slope operators to structure "training" so that you have to play "buy a card and listen to a 40 hour, high-pressure sales pitch for $2,000 worth of gear in the guise of a class" to go on the slopes. Nor do you have those very same manufacturers conspiring with the slope operators so you can ONLY buy their gear from those same slope operators "or we won't honor our warranties."
Indeed, all you need to do is rent the hardware (for $20-30) and buy a lift ticket. No instruction required. You do need a winter jacket in most places, but most people already own one of those, and a pair of gloves. If you buy ANY instruction at all, its usually part of a group trip and the cost is VERY minimal (like $30 or so.)
I have a pair of alpine snow skis and bindings in my garage. I have a pair of ski boots in my closet and a pair of gogles in my drawer. I used to downhill ski competitively in high school. There are no parallels between the ski and scuba industries in how they are structured, on dealer/manufacturer/site operator interference, or anything similar.
If you take a pair of skis into a pro shop for a binding adjustment, they'll work on them and probably get you back on the slopes in an hour or so. Even if they're not "dealers" for that brand. There is none of this garbage that you have in the scuba business where you have manufacturers intentionally trying to keep skiiers from making their own adjustments, nor is there any requirement that you have your bindings and skis "VIPd" every year or they won't let you on the slopes. Indeed, most bindings can be adjusted with nothing more complicated than a screwdriver, and instructions for setting them properly are contained in the box that the bindings come in - which you, the consumer, get. I can buy those bindings over the Internet if I want without hassles. If I have a set of bindings and skis, any shop will mount them for me for a very reasonable amount of money (typically $20 or so.)
Kane, you keep drawing "conclusions" that are simply not supported by the evidence entered into the record.
WHY?
As for supporting someone's RIGHT to dive however they want, no, you in fact don't. You have in the past refused to endorse exactly that freedom of choice, and in fact paraded around on another board trying to justify that diving "solo" was extremely dangerous, dancing on the graves of a few dead people while doing so. When called on your presentation of the statistics - that in fact they showed exactly the opposite, and that most solo deaths were due to unintentional solo diving (that is, starting with a buddy and "losing" him or her) you quit the discussion and not long after quit the entire board!
So I hope you'll excuse me if I simply don't believe that you "support" a diver's freedom of choice in this, and other related matters, because the record in front of all who care to look seems to say exactly the opposite.
Now if you've had a change of heart, then I say "bravo."
But until I see you take a public stand of at least equal vociferousness to your previous statements, and repudiate your previosly-stated views, I hope you won't mind if I simply don't believe your claim.
