Solo diving...is this a good reason?

[emttim]

I like to tell my dive buddies that if they're gonna sleep on the way home, I will too ... it usually keeps 'em awake and talking to me while I'm driving ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Bob, you always crack me up! I guess if I ever dive with you, I won't have the opportunity to sleep, ah well.

Some buddies I would rather have shut-up and sleep on the way home so I can have a nice quite ride.

Eh, if they're that annoying above water, don't they annoy you below water too? I try to avoid people I can't stand talking to regardless of the situation...

Are you sure your buddy would mind Spencermm? I know if my buddy had skills he wanted to work on (even ear clearing) I'd be happy to accompany him. I'd probably work on a few things myself. So maybe ask him/her first Or you could post here and find a buddy that is happy to just work on skills.

A good buddy should encourage this kind of dive anyway, most people don't work on skills anyway, they just get a few hundred dives then proclaim themselves a dive god even if they're just Open Water certified. The fact you want to improve on what you know is impressive and a buddy should realize that and help you out by being patient.

He ended a long post with "What I'm curious of though is what your guys' opinion is on this." That makes the entire concept the antecedent of "this." He's looking for validation.

It's not about arrogance, knowing everything, or decision making styles, and I never said anything about getting other opinions, per se.

It's about the choice of advice and the venue. When he first got into diving, did he post here a list of equipment he'd acquired, books he'd read, and a plan to go diving, and ask for approval? No, he obtained valid training IN PERSON. There is similar training available for solo diving. No, I'm not saying that's the ONLY path.

However, when it comes to being ready for solo diving, the opinion of a bunch of faceless usernames on the net, based only on his written description of the situation, is worth less than he paid for it. Have any of the respondents SEEN him in the water? It's irresponsible, and the height of arrogance to endorse a first solo dive without putting eyes on the diver's poise and technique in the water. If he can't get the validation he seeks from someone whose had the chance to assess his readiness from first hand observation, then he's not ready.

I've never seen anyone here endorse doing a "trust me" dive. He's just asked everyone here to perform a "trust me" evaluation of his readiness for solo diving.

Unless I was delirious from sleep deprivation after work, I don't recall putting a gun to your head and asking you to respond, so if you didn't like the premise of the thread then why did you post? Wait, nevermind, forget it. I don't really care; I'm just confused as to why you would seemingly waste your time. And of course you're wrong anyways, I was looking for an appraisal of my plan, not validation of the plan itself, but you seem to be wrong in a lot of your opinions so I suppose I won't get too annoyed about that.

I totally disagree with anyone who says "you have too few dives" as an argument not to do solo dives. The number of dives you have done says nothing about what you have experienced on your dives, how well you manage stress and emergencies, how good you are at preparing yourself for tasks and completing them or how good you are at analyzing possible risk factors.
Yes, less dives makes you less familiar with your gear and this have certain effects on your diving, but that is also part of the risks you need to analyze.
I dont buy the whole "I have more dives than you, so Im a better diver" philosophy some people subscribe to. You might have more dives than me, but what type of dives where they? What has gone wrong on them? What kind of stress management experience do you have?
Id rather dive with someone who has 10 dives and I know comes through if the **** hits the fan than somoene with 500 dives that is prone to panicking if things goes sideways..
Stress management is not something you neccesarilly have to learn under water.

You might want to check out the solo divers forum though and getting the rescue training is sane advice regardless of how youre diving.

Well, the problem is there seems to be a ridiculous amount of people here who think they're hot **** and they know everything simply based on dive numbers. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of the people on here with those hundreds or thousands of logged dives have logged the majority of them in either easy conditions and/or at the same sites, which of course greatly reduces the value in them as far as experience and skill goes. Granted, they would never admit that since it would take away their self-proclaimed image of dive god.

I agree with your assessment Tigerman on quality over quantity being more important...this is why I constantly look to get more dive training, dive new sites instead of familiar ones, and as a result I already have solid buoyancy control and good air consumption. That's the one thing I dislike about SB is the amount of Open Water dive gods with 500 or 1000 or whatever dives...but hey guess you have to deal with the BS to get the good opinions from the actual experts too. As far as this goes, Bob, your articles are excellent! I'm printing these out and putting them in my DM binder with my other papers & information.