jvevea:
The idea is to achieve redundancy. How you do it is probably secondary to how you approach thinking it through. For example, not all ponies are created equally. Different ponies have different sizes, different mounting techniques and different benefits and drawbacks. Which pony you buy and how you mount it an use it (eg. keep it open vs. open it when you need it....) needs some thought. Maybe in the process of that you'll decide on a different form of redundancy, like a twin-7 or twin-10, which has it's own set of benefits and issues.... The point being that thinking it through is the most important thing. The proper solution will result from clear thinking. Essential in this, of course is being able to *manipulate* all that redundancy. It does you no good at all to have twins if you don't know how to do a shutdown or you can't reach your valves..... practice in a confined environment like a swimming pool is essential.
Door to door thinking treats the solo dive from the point where you kiss your lady g'bye to to moment you say "honey I'm home". Why? Because the most dangerous part of the dive isn't the under water part. It's driving to the dive site, getting in the water and the like. If you get a flat-tire driving out and you're an hour late, will she phone 911? If you filed a dive plan with her, then she probably would. Plan to phone or be phoned at certain times to check if you're on plan or not. A cell-phone is therefore essential gear for a solo diver.... Also, you need to plan to deal with *all* problems alone. A good example of this is something that happened to a buddy of mine. He was getting in the water on a dike and he slipped on the rocks. He got his leg jammed and fell over sideways. Needless to say he got a really nasty broken leg. If you're alone in the middle of no where, you'll have to get your gear off, crawl your way back to the car and phone 911 yourself. My friend said he was in too much pain to have done that and he would have had to lay there and wait until someone came along to help him...... these are the kinds of contingencies you really need to plan for. Door to door means planning for what can happen above water as well as what happens under water.
Not necessarily. It would certainly help to have experience solving problems under water but what I'm trying to convey to you is that you must be the type of person who takes control and solves problems that would make other people panic or become passive. Have you ever been at the site of serious automobile accident? It's amazing to see.... 90% (or more) of the people there are standing around like stunned cows while a very few actually deal with the situation and take action..... You probably know which type you are already. If you're a "deal with the problem" type of guy then you have a big advantage. So what I was saying with that is that your character/personality plays a very big part in whether or not you'll make a good (solo) diver.
IN the context of the number of dives, the "stunned cow" types can get 1000 dives but unless they really work on training their reactions they'll still be stunned cows when Murphy dumps on them. That's what I was getting at.
R..
