Start my Cavern/Intro training!!

[kensuf]

People have a hard time running a line in the eye too. Yesterday, while sitting at 20' doing deco, I watched four teams get entangled entering and exiting because of one very poorly run line.

 

[Doby45]

Well I do know that running it into the Ear will blow your panties off if they are not on tight enough to choke you out. LOL I was honestly surprised a the very limited number of lines I saw ran into the system on this weekend. At no time did we see more than two lines, not counting our own. The first time I ever went into the well of the Eye as an open water diver and just sat and watched techs divers coming out, there was probably 6 lines going in.

 

[rddvet]

Both Von and I ran the line more than once. That is the downside to doing these class reviews as you get people nit picking the **** out of it, instead of getting the story. I did not give every single detail of either the Cavern or the Intro class. I specifically did that so the know it alls on this board would not be in a position to do exactly what you are doing. I would be more than happy to meet up with you and run a line if necessary.

Don't get your britches in a bunch. I was asking a simple question. As Ken said, some people can't run a line in the eye let alone the ear. Why? Because they're instructor didn't make them. Unfortunately there are a plethora of crappy cave instructors in cave country. I don't know much about Johnny's classes. I was simply asking because if your instructor chose to run line for you the majority of the dives then you need to have an open discussion him as to why so that the trend doesn't continue in your next class.

A cave cert is a license to learn on your own. Unfortunately, if your instructor doesn't show you the good paths to run a line vs the bad ones, or the proper tie off spots vs the bad ones you will be one of the people running spiderwebs through Ginnie.

I've enjoyed your posts. They brought me back to my classes years ago. But, if you don't want people on the internet asking you questions, then don't write stuff on a forum. Had your reply been that yes Johnny ran most of the lines for you, I would have simply PM'd you and explained that unfortunately that is on par with much of the degradation of training we're seeing in FL cave country so have a discussion with him before your next class.

 

[rddvet]

, I would point out that you probably meant to reference the Ear and not the Eye when talking about difficulty running the line....

Thanks. I actually meant Ear. I was saying Ear in my head, but mistakenly wrote eye.

 

[CptTightPants21]

Don't get your britches in a bunch. I was asking a simple question. As Ken said, some people can't run a line in the eye let alone the ear. Why? Because they're instructor didn't make them. Unfortunately there are a plethora of crappy cave instructors in cave country. I don't know much about Johnny's classes. I was simply asking because if your instructor chose to run line for you the majority of the dives then you need to have an open discussion him as to why so that the trend doesn't continue in your next class.

A cave cert is a license to learn on your own. Unfortunately, if your instructor doesn't show you the good paths to run a line vs the bad ones, or the proper tie off spots vs the bad ones you will be one of the people running spiderwebs through Ginnie.

I've enjoyed your posts. They brought me back to my classes years ago. But, if you don't want people on the internet asking you questions, then don't write stuff on a forum. Had your reply been that yes Johnny ran most of the lines for you, I would have simply PM'd you and explained that unfortunately that is on par with much of the degradation of training we're seeing in FL cave country so have a discussion with him before your next class.

I liked Johnny's homework dives and some of the real skill targeting dives, but to be fair, I too thought Johnny seemed to run the line a little more than average based on the class report. I'm not going to say it's wrong because every instructor has little quirks to their class, but I do understand where you are coming from.

 

[Doby45]

Don't get your britches in a bunch. I was asking a simple question. As Ken said, some people can't run a line in the eye let alone the ear. Why? Because they're instructor didn't make them. Unfortunately there are a plethora of crappy cave instructors in cave country. I don't know much about Johnny's classes. I was simply asking because if your instructor chose to run line for you the majority of the dives then you need to have an open discussion him as to why so that the trend doesn't continue in your next class.

A cave cert is a license to learn on your own. Unfortunately, if your instructor doesn't show you the good paths to run a line vs the bad ones, or the proper tie off spots vs the bad ones you will be one of the people running spiderwebs through Ginnie.

I've enjoyed your posts. They brought me back to my classes years ago. But, if you don't want people on the internet asking you questions, then don't write stuff on a forum. Had your reply been that yes Johnny ran most of the lines for you, I would have simply PM'd you and explained that unfortunately that is on par with much of the degradation of training we're seeing in FL cave country so have a discussion with him before your next class.

Asking questions is totally different then trying to size up the instruction of the class to "your" requirements. I never once saw in the class requirements that there was a specific number of times you have to run a line in order to properly complete the class and as stated before I did not include every single detail in my review. I think you will find that I personally have some rather thick skin and if you want to question me personally that is fine. I did not write the review to subject the instructor to "your" view of what is right or kosher. I would feel the same way regardless of who the instructor was, be it Ken or Pete or Rob or Edd or on and on and on.. Oh my gosh I also forgot to add in the details of my review that I had to do a valve drill on my doubles, man I sure am glad Johnny knew I needed to complete that or you might just take my card away.

 

[rddvet]

Asking questions is totally different then trying to size up the instruction of the class to "your" requirements. I never once saw in the class requirements that there was a specific number of times you have to run a line in order to properly complete the class and as stated before I did not include every single detail in my review. I think you will find that I personally have some rather thick skin and if you want to question me personally that is fine. I did not write the review to subject the instructor to "your" view of what is right or kosher. I would feel the same way regardless of who the instructor was, be it Ken or Pete or Rob or Edd or on and on and on.. Oh my gosh I also forgot to add in the details of my review that I had to do a valve drill on my doubles, man I sure am glad Johnny knew I needed to complete that or you might just take my card away.

You're obviously taking it a little too personally. Again, when you write on a forum you're opening yourself (and your instructor if you name him) to questions. Once you spend some time diving North Florida a little more, you'll understand why I asked what I did. The basic skillset is being lost more and more every year as more divers enter the sport. We're seeing spider web lines, new divers doing blind jumps, people running jumps over other peoples' lines, and people who can't even frogkick (and these people who can't frogkick are being trained by the same big name instructor you've probably already heard of). So when people that have slightly more experience in the area ask a question, don't think of it as a dig on you or your instructor. Some of us would like to see if there's a way to decrease some of the crap we're seeing. So as I stated earlier, if you'd said your instructor barely had you run line I would have nonpublically given you a nudge in the direction of asking him so you can hone that skill in the next class with more acumen.

I personally had an instructor not place high regard on a skill that I felt was important. When I discussed it with him, his reasoning was he felt I had that skill pretty well mastered. I told him that even if it looked like I did, I wasn't fully confident. He made sure to focus a little more attention on it, which got me over that hump of being uncomfortable.

I apologize if you've taken offense or feel you need to protect your instructor, but as I've stated twice there's a good reason I asked what I did.

 

[Doby45]

Then my apologies to you @rddvet as I have seen way too many times the "holier than thou" attitude on this board and I mistook your comment as being that. I assure you that I know perfectly well how to run a line and I ran a line more times than we had dives. I am not saying that I am perfect, I mean hell I am still learning, but I ran lines in my Cavern class and in the Intro class. Even if I ran the line 15 times over those four days do you think I still need more training or can I simply continue to get better as I do my intro dives? I understand what you are saying about people being lax in their skills as in my third Intro training dive I got entangled on a line that someone ran from the right side of the Ear entrance straight to the Reaper sign. There was no secure secondary tie off, there were zero line placements to keep the line low and out of the way. It was not an issue of these ties offs or placements came loose as the line was pretty much in a straight line with a very small amount of slack.

 

[tbone1004]

@Doby45 thanks for the clarification, I was scratching my head on @rddvet's concern as well.

Sounds like he had you guys do dedicated line running exercises and he ran the lines on the "dives" to help you guys save some gas so you could spend more time in the caves.

 

[Doby45]

Here is the bigger picture. Out of four Intro dives how many times should two students run the line if the instructor runs the line on the first dive? That leaves three dives for two students. So one student gets to run it once and one student gets to run it twice. Will running that exact protocol make uber excellent line runners? That would be the course standard if the instructor only ran the line once.