fgriffith
Guest
Mostly DIR (I still use a dive computer).
Poll: DIR vs. Non-DIR vs. Undecided
- Thread starter Knavey
- Start date
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H2OHead
Guest
That's like being mostly Right then, huh? The dive **** is never MOSTLY right about anything. To answer your question, in a nutshell, there arent any DIR divers on this web board. Shocked? To know DIR is to know GUE and the Quest list. I learned a lot during my time on the Quest list, but had to quit going there because I just couldnt read one more word written by the self-proclaimed center of the universe himself, George Irvine (the dive **** incarnate). Keep in mind folks that the Quest list isnt free. People PAY cash to go there and read what George thinks. There cannot be any DIR divers here because George would have them banned from diving. Reading posts on a website from strokes is certainly frowned upon (makes George wonder if they truly worship him or have strayed) and could have serious consequences.
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First Post? Gotta be a troll....
You're right, of course, but your still a troll....
James
Dude...go back to quest and keep kissing GI3's ******...let me know how that works out for ya.
H2OHead
Guest
Nope. Im not a troll, just new here. I spent all of my time typing on the Quest list for a long time and just couldnt put up with the blind following of the zealous lunatic. I have come to embrace my own strokedness and dive much happier now. I have my gear very well configured, but cant take the constant barrage that Irvine puts out. Fins put it pretty well and I agree. The constant redneck slander and cursing at every turn not only grows old, but has to seriously make one wonder about how well GI has his head screwed on. Rational and well put together people just dont act like that. I cant see using a Scout light when a guy makes the exact same thing at home on a lathe and sells them on ebay for ½ the price. The whole thing has turned into a marketing scam for Jablonski and Irvine. I keep looking for Halcyon regs, sneakers, washcloths, and dental floss to come out. Ill do a lot of things to make my diving safer, but I refuse to floss with cave line!
Unless you have spaces big enough in your teeth to run gaps, you will find the #24 and #36 too large for flossing.
cornfed
Mindless lemming
Just curious, thanks.
cornfed
Mindless lemming
Alright then... cough it up, who are you?
Drew
OP
fins wake once bubbled...
This is one heck of a skewed question. I promised myself never to be involved in an official "DIR" issue on a U.S. board, but really, what sort of a poll is this?
You're either PADI/NAUI/SSI or you're DIR? Or in-between? Huh?
PADI is still, in the main, a great recreational agency (despite the excellent DSAT TecDeep course), NAUI has superb recreational training and excellent tec courses, whereas the only DIR agency, GUE, has no recreational introductory scuba training at all (as yet ...) but some very interesting cave classes and some pretty nifty OW tech classes.
This is another thread where technical diving is equated with DIR and GUE. Nothing wrong with GUE's training per se from an OC viewpoint, but there are other technical diving agencies out there. Ever heard of TDI or IANTD? NAUITEC? DSAT's technical division? ANDI?
Am I DIR?
Well, I use Halcyon gear, JetFins, a long-hose and all the superficial trappings when diving OC. I don't smoke, I don't approve of solo diving or deep air and I detest incompetent and lazy instructors, particularly the ones who find their teaching certificates in a corn flakes package at breakfast.
On the other hand, my mindset is way too PP to make me a true DIR diver. Whatsmore, my RB commitment automatically disqualifies me. And I find the St George act (red neck antics, profanities, obscenities & all) wearing pretty thin ...
So then I'm just another recreational warm-water diver with an '80 on my back? (Not that there is anything wrong with that!)
Uh ... no. And there are many like me out there, I'm not exceptional in any way, shape or form. Quite unremarkable, actually.
Can I learn from the DIR mindset? Yup. Will I accept everything from Saint George and his choir as gospel? Nope.
At the end of the day, who cares? We're all divers, and presumably we all want to dive as safely and for as long as we can. What works for you, might not work for me, and vice versa. That doesn't make me right and you wrong, and vice versa again. That said, I do believe GUE has shaken up the technical community quite a bit and it does need shaking up, getting its standards adhered to etc.
But for the purpose of this poll, I've not voted at all. It would be like voting in a "do-you-still-beat-your-wife-poll, yes-or-no-only?". Which for somebody who has never beaten any female at all seems a very skewed question ...
Sorry if I wasn't as clear as you would have liked me to be Fins...you have to understand though, that my exposure is very limited to other than the major agencies. Half of the abbreviations that you have in your post, I don't know what they are...RB commitment? PP? I haven't been diving long enough to know the nuances of the lingo.
The ONLY reason I posted this poll, was to get an idea of who had which mindset...its not meant to be a troll, it even asked that we NOT debate the merits of the different systems. I only want to know the mindset of the different divers on the board.
I agree, you CAN interpret it with your wife beating interpretation, but its just meant to classify you under one of the three major categories that I set up originally. If I knew all of the sub categories (DIR only, DIR gear, DIR philosophy, DIR ****, Trad only, Trad gear, Trad philosophy, TRAD ****, Leave me alone...I just want to dive) that this thread has brought out, I still think I would have tried to narrow it down to just the three I had.
I find it interesting that the board is approx 50% DIR/Other...still won't use the non-DIR title since I don't like the connotations it has.
The percentage is what I really wanted to see. If you would have asked me before hand I would have said there were about 10% DIR...they were very vocal but now I see we actually have a balance on this board.
Thats all I am trying to do folks...not trolling, just trying to get a feel for the makeup of the board.
Thanks for keeping most of the debate in other threads!
Knavey
fins wake
Guest
On a general board like this, the mistakes lie with me. It does appear a bit arrogant of me using the abbreviations without explaining - which was never the intention - so I'll start by elaborating a bit:
ANDI = Technical diving agency.
TDI = Technical diving agency.
IANTD = Technical diving agency.
NAUITEC = the technical diving agency part of NAUI.
DSAT = handles (among other things) the technical diving agency part of PADI.
PP = Personal preference. To generalize a bit: This is a classic IANTD or TDI principle: "what works for you is the best for you, anything that you feel safer with is safer". GUE takes the opposite approach, i.e. that many divers don't understand or know what is safe for them and that a rigid and tested configuration identical for all is better. PADI is somewhere in-between (on its TecDeep course), that is you will be allowed some things, but not all (unless you're incredibly persuasive in your arguments) and NAUITEC is going increasingly GUE-like.
For example, I have the rig I've outlined before (Apeks, Halcyon, two Apeks first stages, long hose etc.) but I have my BCD inflation on the left post, not on the right post. This is my (cold-water) preference, and that in itself makes me non-DIR. Another example, an acquaintance of mine recently passed the Tech1 course, but is left-handed so originally wanted to donate his longhose on his left side. He wasn't allowed to so he complied. Would I prefer a left-handed person to hand over the regs the way they feel best in an emergency rather than something which has been trained in through effort? You bet ...
However, there are some divers' personal preferences that I find absolutely beyond the pale or downright dangerous (e.g. different deco gases in manifolded twin set, no redundant 2nd stage or diving rebreather scrubbers twice as long as recommended etc.) and this is the one area where GUE does a lot of good for all divers. They question bad diving habits and practices, which keep other agencies on their toes. (Then of course, many go beyond that and that's what sets off the agency and other flaming.)
RB = rebreather. There are various kinds of rebreathers, so I don't want to get in to that. I not only dive rebreathers, I like them, and that's not DIR. The only rebreathers GUE divers consider DIR and will touch (at least officially
) are the old Halcyon PVR BASC and the new RB80. Incredible records have been set by GUE instructors like Jarrod Jablonski and Andrew Georgitsis, and by EKPP (European cavers close to DIR) divers like Reinhard Buchaly and Michael Waldbrenner on the RB80:s. Even then, George Irvine who is Mr DIR, will not recommend them (despite having dived them himself). Most DIR divers are hence pretty RB-averse, even to their own rebreather. Paragraph 1.4.6 of GUE:s general training standards, policies and procedures (which limits the use of rebreathers in all other technical training) ensures that GUE certainly is not at the forefront of the rebreather revolution. That said, however, Andrew Georgitsis himself is a world-class rebreather instructor (and I would imagine Jarrod Jablonski is, too.)
Yes, this is typical on many boards. That's why the whole phoney "recreational 5-dives-since-certification diver VS. just-done-a-2-km-push-in-Wakulla DIR diver" position comes up so frequently. It's a false choice. Or rather, not real-world and complex enough.
That makes the limited choice even more unfair.
And you've got it!
Be careful, though: H2O-diver, although perhaps a little blunt in his initial posts, is perfectly correct. Most people on this board who profess to be DIR or - that little oxymoron - "almost DIR", in fact are not! They often pursue some "little" deviancy from DIR which in fact is so big it makes them complete "strokes" in DIR parlance, such as advocating solo diving or smoking. You can't have it both ways. If pressed, I quickly fall down in the non-DIR camp, but to be honest, there are some very good things in the DIR system that I wholeheartedly agree with. But it would wrong to say I'm DIR.
That's the impossible part. Well, at least if you like to think for yourself. Incidentally, I think using the term DIR ****, or dive **** whatever, is absolutely beyond the pale.
Correction: half the people who've been bothered to read through the threads profess themselves to be DIR. Not half the people on this board! And even so, the respondants probably include their fair share of smokers, solo divers and maybe even - gasp! - those true emissaries of Satan, the odd electronic closed-circuit rebreather diver.
Anyway, the thread did give a few of us the chance to change a few misconceptions, perhaps?
EDIT: for typos and clarity
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