I enjoy the entire process of deco diving.
I enjoy the gear. There is more of it, more to maintain, to tinker with, to check and adjust and set up (or as my wife says, to
play with
). Last weekend my buddy and I drove over to the coast to dive for 2 days. We brought his rebreather, plus 4 sets of doubles for me, a mountain of deco/stage bottles, a bottle of argon, a T bottle of O2, 2 130cf decant bottles for his ccr, all the drysuits, lights , etc. and both our scooters. My truck was so weighted down in the back that the front was sticking up, my headlights were pointed up and everyone kept flashing that my high beams were on.
I enjoy the planning. Choosing dive location, depth and time and gasses and working through the profile.
I enjoy the gas mixing. We partial pressure blend our trimix and deco gasses. I enjoy going to the gas supplier and picking up gasses (although my buddy does that most of the time). I like hanging around the garage with my buddy mixing (although since he has gone ccr he has become a bit irritating in this area
). I like taking the bottles over to the LDS for air tops, doing the tops and shooting the breeze with the staff.
I like executing the dive. It's fun dealing with multiple bottles, maybe a scooter. I enjoy the precision of decompression diving - it's planned, not random, and I enjoy the intentional-ness of a tightly executed dive plan. I like doing the switches, which keeps me occupied so I'm never bored during deco - except at the 20' stop, and even there I am sometimes the most relaxed I ever am, just kind of meditating and reflecting on the dive.
I like the training. I like practicing for emergences and we do so on almost every dive. I'm not a thrill seeker, but I even like it when something unplanned happens and I am tested both psychologically and skill-wise, and my training pays off. Do enough deco dives and things will eventually go south. It's rewarding when (through your training) you can calmly and successfully deal with it. Deco diving is challenging, and I enjoy the challenge. I love enlarging my skills, and there always seems to be an endless pool of knowledge and skills ahead of me.
I like the people that deco dive. The personalities of people who enjoy decompression diving are fun to be around. They are usually more intense people, more head-strong, more self assured, both more serious (about training and skills) and more humorous (about everything else). These people are frank and don't beat around the bush. I like being around these divers for the planning, the preparation, the mixing, the drive to the site, the dive itself and the post-dive food/coffee/discussion. They stretch me as a diver and as a person, and I always learn something from hanging with these people.
I like it that the crowds don't go where deco divers can go. Even on a charter. Doing the Yukon once on a boat full of divers, I was the first diver in and the last one out, and never saw another sole during the dive. You stay longer or go deeper than the masses, and it's both exciting and peaceful. You see things everyone else can't.
I still enjoy bopping around on an easy shallow dive. But for me, technical diving has all that is offered to the non-deco diver, plus all the additional things I listed above.
