End of 2019 and thoughts for 2020

[DBPacific]

2019:
Earned my scientific diving cert, Nitrox, and got my first full set of gear (minus tanks). Got a summer job diving and I even managed to get a hold of a cheap used drysuit. Bruised my ribs and had to take a short dive hiatus. Been dry since my job ended due to transport difficulties, no buddies, and classes.

2020:
Hoping to graduate and working on coordinating a diving road trip with old friends before the next life stage. Working on getting undergarments and arranging a dry suit course to open up more job and dive opportunities. I'll probably be too broke or busy to do so, but I'm hoping for a warm water dive trip and taking a self-reliant course. I also want to get cleared to service some of my own gear since work requires yearly servicing. Until my next dive, I just need to resist the urge to buy more gear. And avoid getting injured.

 

[Tug]

2019
-CCR Trimix
-Memorial Day weekend in NC
-Some local diving, not as much as I’d like due to buying and selling houses

2020
-Continue diving

 

[taimen]

We did well and are now actually out there enjoying diving again--intro-level cave diving, that is. Our plans at the moment are to just keep diving and free our brains of thoughts of further training. There is enough intro-level cave diving in N. FL to keep us busy for years if we should feel like taking that long.

Thanks @Lorenzoid ! I think your post should be made a sticky somewhere and referred in all those numerous training threads.
We dive for fun, and to enjoy.

 

[Marie13]

Hum, interesting. There is an airport nearby! I could probably do it in 3.5 hours in my rinky dinky airplane vs 9+ hours by car. Sounds like an interesting trip!

Whatever works. The scenery is gorgeous on the drive. The diving in awesome. If you’re qualified to do the deep, cold stuff, the Arabia is incredible.

 

[Saniflush]

2019
Got a 109 non-training dives in from PCB to St Lucia and a lot of places in between
Did my IDC and IE
Began teaching and have certified 21 divers and feel good about handling a class. (Most of you know, there is a big difference between knowing the material and teaching the material) I feel really good about teaching the material now.
Mrs Flush did not get to dive as much as I did because she is finishing up her doctorate but was very supportive of my diving schedule.

2020
Dive trips to Roatan and Aqua Cat for Mrs Flush and my birthday respectively
Flush 2.0 will be certifying this year so I hope to have a new dive buddy
Flush 2.1 may be certifying but he has not decided for sure as of yet
Teaching, teaching, teaching. I have really enjoyed the teaching path that I have gone down.
I would like to get into tech but do not think it will be in the cards this year.

 

[scrane]

2019: Dove.
2020: Dive.

 

[Sean Walberg]

2019 - My goal for 2019 was to dive the NC wrecks but life got in the way and I couldn't make any of the trips my LDS made. I did get 14 dives in at the quarry and improved my buoyancy and SAC to the point where I'm not self conscious about them anymore. Very happy with my move from an old jacket BC to a BPW.

2020 - My goal again is to get to NC. I'd also like to work on improving my buoyancy and SAC in my drysuit. Also taking some of my Scout troop to a liveaboard at BSA Sea Base in August.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

2019 - My goal for 2019 was to dive the NC wrecks but life got in the way and I couldn't make any of the trips my LDS made. I did get 14 dives in at the quarry and improved my buoyancy and SAC to the point where I'm not self conscious about them anymore. Very happy with my move from an old jacket BC to a BPW.

2020 - My goal again is to get to NC. I'd also like to work on improving my buoyancy and SAC in my drysuit. Also taking some of my Scout troop to a liveaboard at BSA Sea Base in August.

I will be starting a thread about NC diving for 2020. We will stay in touch.

 

[Ana]

That's what I wrote in the 2018 end-of-year thread. I was kind of despondent when I wrote it because I had hit a plateau in my training. But I reassessed my goals and took a different tack, and 2020 is looking bright!

Since mid-2016 my goal had been to learn to cave dive. I had acquired the doubles, the drysuit, the primary light, and all that goes along with that, and had taken a doubles/drysuit course. I was diving GUE style because I had taken Fundies a couple of years earlier--before any notion of tech/cave diving got into my head--and so it seemed natural to continue with GUE, go for the tech upgrade to my Fundies pass, and then on to GUE's Cave 1 course. It sounded so, um, do-able. I devoted many hours in 2016, 2017 and 2018 to honing my skills to what GUE considers tech level. I kept a special log book devoted to this training and logged about 80 hours in total, including one or two days of coaching each year from a GUE instructor. Each time, the instructor would tell me I'm a little closer ... but not quite there yet. So last December when I posted my comment above, I was feeling discouraged. I was decidedly NOT looking forward to more of the same, yet felt resigned to it. Ever forward, no matter how slowly, right? Tedious sessions in shallow water, doing S-drills, valve drills, staged ascents, frog kick, flutter kick, back kick, over and over and over, selfies with the GoPro and critiquing every nuance. While there are a lake and quarry in local driving distance, in the winter these practice sessions meant weekend road trips to FL. The path I had chosen was not just difficult but also really expensive, with travel expenses and fills. I tortured myself with a nerdy mental image of a plot of my skills asymptotically approaching GUE tech level--meaning I would never actually reach that level, just get ever closer.

In the debriefing at a coaching session in early 2019, I learned I was closer than ever. Go figure. But this time it sounded different--maybe I really was actually within striking distance? All I needed to do, I was advised, was practice a teensy bit more, then schedule an evaluation with an instructor (but maybe with a little coaching the day before), then acquire larger tanks and a larger wing and, IF I were to earn the tech upgrade, I would be allowed to pay the $2k-3k fee for Cave 1. I have been writing this in the first person out of laziness, but the reality is that my wife has been on this journey with me. Together, we were probably spending over $5k a year on this. Household finances in general had been strained for various reasons in recent years, and now in our minds we tallied up how much more we would have to spend before we were past Cave 1. It was at that point that we decided to take a step back and regroup. Take a different tack.

In July we took an Intro-to-Cave course with a well-known instructor. It was the best decision in our diving that we had ever made (except maybe for the initial Fundies course). We did well and are now actually out there enjoying diving again--intro-level cave diving, that is. Our plans at the moment are to just keep diving and free our brains of thoughts of further training. There is enough intro-level cave diving in N. FL to keep us busy for years if we should feel like taking that long. And it's so economical compared with ocean diving! We also have a Mexico cave diving trip planned for January--not especially economical, but we are REALLY looking forward to it.

Wow... I mean, seriously wow. A couple of those paragraphs were intense, granted your reality was way more intense.

Caves have never been my thing, the ocean is my life. I met a few GUE divers in the 90's through rec scuba. Didn't quite "share" dives with them but did dive from the same charters many times and shared after-dive meals out of Boynton. Pretty soon I started resent them for the way they could suck the fun out of diving, I'm glad my brain is immune to this search for perfection when it comes to fun and pleasure.
A very good friend of mine used to carry tanks for them in Wakulla, every so often he was allowed to actually take 1 or 2 bottles to some stop few feet in whatever leg of the cave they were doing. They just got to him, he worried so much about being just perfect underwater, he no longer dives.

I thought of him reading what you describe about being so close to "IT" but oh no, you're not good enough yet. Go back invest more time and money, you are still not worthy to enjoy this ride. Pffffff doesn't sound like fun at all. No wonder some people used to accuse them of being a cult.

Glad to read you and your wife enjoy caves now.

 

[ofg-1]

Well, my goal for 2019 was to live long enough to collect full social security. Made it.

My 2020 goal is to try to collect these benefits while avoiding a lot of the old man problems, such as loosing urinary control, drooling, forgetting where my keys are, screaming at anyone on my lawn, having to eat pre-chewed food. And maybe some cave diving.