That was an excellent report! I feel compelled to run out and take the class. Good luck today!
Nightly F Report
- Thread starter Rick Inman
- Start date
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lord1234
Contributor
If I see one of these tonite...i will be gravely disappointed...you should have NO energy at all.
Great reports Rick and TSandM!! Good Luck for the rest of the weekend, and can't wait to hear the rest.
Mel
Mel
Reinoud
Contributor
Rick Inman:
Sadly that is the problem when people start 'training for DIR-F'... There are so much details in these things that it is simply impossible to get it right from the internet.
OP
SATURDAY UPDATE!
Well, we watched ourselves on video tonight. I was very pleased to see that I have three kicks nailed down:
1) The Flogger - have frog kick, half... I donno, something that no one else can do but me.
2) Back-wards Shrimp Dance (not sure why the "back-wards" part is there, since I didn't go that way).
3) The Spastic Helicopter Crash (self explanatory).
The other students must have really enjoyed watching me, 'cause they were smiling and even laughing with joy at my skill.
We also learned today not to dive below 12 feet without a gas called tri-ox-rec-heli-dir-mix (credit cards for the class accepted at the counter).
I spent some more money at the shop today, but not as much as -
Oppps!! That's a secret!
Anyway, a little more gear work tonight for me. Last night I finished at 12:AM.
Well, we watched ourselves on video tonight. I was very pleased to see that I have three kicks nailed down:
1) The Flogger - have frog kick, half... I donno, something that no one else can do but me.
2) Back-wards Shrimp Dance (not sure why the "back-wards" part is there, since I didn't go that way).
3) The Spastic Helicopter Crash (self explanatory).
The other students must have really enjoyed watching me, 'cause they were smiling and even laughing with joy at my skill.
We also learned today not to dive below 12 feet without a gas called tri-ox-rec-heli-dir-mix (credit cards for the class accepted at the counter).
I spent some more money at the shop today, but not as much as -
Oppps!! That's a secret!
Anyway, a little more gear work tonight for me. Last night I finished at 12:AM.
OP
Oh, BTW, I'm sure you'll get a more detailed report of today's class from TsandM.
Even in the class, if the instructor asks what the effect of pressure on air is, TsandM quotes Boyle's Law in Latin. I just say it makes my ears hurt.
Even in the class, if the instructor asks what the effect of pressure on air is, TsandM quotes Boyle's Law in Latin. I just say it makes my ears hurt.
lamont
Contributor
Rick Inman:
Sorry, but our entire DIRF class was doing it, too.
Somewhere there is film evidence of me trying to molest a dog underwater...
I still don't know why I got singled out by the videographer for that one... It was my first attempt at a back-kick ever and it was filmed... I think I'm still scarred...
Yikes.
Helicopter kick was one of the things that I actually did reasonably well. I don't know why I managed to do that one okay. I took all the small victories that I could, there weren't many.
I found that getting through the first video session got me over the hump...
Okay. It is totally my husband's fault that Rick beat me to it this time. I came home and he was watching some thriller movie and wouldn't talk to me, so I started my report and just then he came and said, "Come talk to me." Of course, he then started writing e-mails while I was eating a long-delayed dinner . . . you have to do something to deal with the complete debriefing of a DIR-F day 
Yes, bourbon was in evidence. He is NOT a DIR diver.
This morning began painfully early with my arrival (not quite last -- STEVE got there after me) at a foggy, chilly Cove 2, inhabited by us six DIR wannabees and SIX -- count them, SIX -- OW/AOW classes. Those who know Cove 2 will know that it would present no challenge for a major league outfielder to throw a baseball across it. It's not much space for thirty or forty divers, and we needed SHALLOW water in order to look as stupid as possible. Therefore, we ended up with two things: an entry at the opposite end of the cove from my jubilantly acquired and thought to be convenient parking space, and a long surface swim to the down line.
Everybody who has done Fundies knows the sequence: Practice kicks. Those of us who have never done them before have more trouble than others. Practice ascents. Those with more experience have less trouble than others, but nobody meets DIR standards. Hover, and try to control the errant extremities that want to help. And in the midst of it all, try to keep track of buddies who may or may not be experiencing various difficulties. It all comes out in the video review, which is the fun part to write about.
Our trio survived dive one, and surfaced, and Steve asked us how we felt about it, and I said, "It didn't go nearly as bad as I anticipated." These were fighting words, which clearly set up the second dive for our trio, which went as badly as I could have imagined . . . or maybe not quite. The second dive for our group was a Three Stooges movie, with no diver who could maintain position, depth or attitude, and all of us trying to run over poor Steve, who was serving as instructor and videographer.
A couple of interesting points: I had grave difficulty with the frog kick, doing it basically backwards, until Steve got behind me, grabbed my feet, and patterned it for me. Actually FEELING the movement under water, with my fins, let me grasp it. It is very easy to do this wrong. Bob was SO right to tell me NOT to try to learn or practice these things until I had the right instruction. I could have spent a lot of time ingraining the wrong movement in my brain. It's like those automobile ads -- professional diver, do not try this at home.
Second, most of us could hover. Most of us could hover motionless, because the video caught it. So why do we end up finning and pushing ourselves about? And why do some of us (imagine chagrined look) not KNOW we are doing it?
And third, my personal small triumph for the day, was that I found myself clipping stuff off without thinking about it . . . actually having to go back and say, "Did I clip that off?", and checking, and discovering I had. Considering that a month ago, clipping and unclipping my SPG under water resulted in a flounder in the silt, this is incredible progress.
After the first dive, we did a weight check. A proper weight check, which I had never done before. That, of course, requires bleeding the tank to 500 psi, which, given that I surfaced with 2200, required a bit of a bleed. I was worried about freezing my reg, given air temps in the 40's, so I kept it under water the whole time I was bleeding, and ended up with a free flow nonetheless. I tried the things I know -- putting my thumb in the mouthpiece, breathing against the regulator, and banging it on the palm of my hand, and nothing worked. I told Steve (we were of course on the surface at this point) that I had a free flow, and he took my regulator apart and fixed it, right there in the water. Wow.
I think he was quite surprised at his inability to take any weight off me. He took weight off everybody else, I think, and he had made some disparaging comment about overweighted divers the day before, saying he had seen a woman my size diving with THIRTY POUNDS of weight . . . I had said, "Well, that's pretty much what I'm diving," and he had raised his eyebrows. Well, he tried to take weight off me today, and none was going anywhere. Between my native buoyancy and the several dozen undergarments I wear in an attempt to stay in the water for an hour, I NEED all that weight.
I did distinguish myself in a unique way today . . . I managed to fall down three times getting into and out of the water. I told everybody, "That's why I have knee pads on my drysuit." Cove 2's shore is composed of small, round rocks which are highly unstable and slippery, and since I am carrying an additional 70 pounds on my 120 pound frame, my balance on my feet is not very good. I have reduced my other instructors to helpless laughter, watching me do my entries. Luckily, Steve did not see any of this.
Speaking of other instructors, my OW instructor was there today, teaching an AOW class, and since I ended up spending some time talking to him, I introduced him and Steve. It was an awkward moment, rather like introducing one's current boyfriend to one's prior . . . It was not a well thought out impulse on my part.
After the dives, I had a brief opportunity to duck into the fishnchips place and get some oysters and fries, which I shared with Rick when their group (which clearly did better than ours, or worse, because they were down a whole lot longer) surfaced and began to pack up. Rick had never had anybody greet him as he came out of the water with a fried oyster, and thought it was a rather nice gesture.
Back we went to the shop for the video review . . . but before the video review came the parade of purchases. Bolt snaps, line of various sorts, and other not-to-be-mentioned items found their way into people's possession. (Did I mention that one of the reasons I couldn't do the kicks very well was that I had entirely the wrong sort of fins? We are not going into any greater detail because I am trying to preserve my marriage.) You ever heard the complaint that diving classes are just a way for dive shops to make money selling learning divers equipment? Well, DIR classes are NO different in that regard
The video review: Everybody has read about this. It's the humiliation of Fundies. It's Bob saying, "Who IS that in my drysuit?" Well, I am here to tell you all that, if your expectations are low enough, the video review isn't bad at all. I was amazed to see that I basically maintained good trim (until I got worried about my buddies). I was delighted to hear that my modified flutter wasn't too bad. I wasn't surprised to see that my frog kick was backwards, but somewhat surprised at just how backwards it was, and happy to see that it made progress toward correct after Steve's intervention. I was thrilled to see the hover motionless, even if I later failed to reproduce it. Even the second dive had some good moments -- I managed the regulator removal and replacement without any change in buoyancy, even if I held my breath in the second half of the regulator exchange and gained about five feet. I'm no DIR diver, but I've come SO far from the descents on my back when Bob met me that I'm not devastated at all. Unlike SeaJay, I didn't come into this thinking I was all that, and the fact that the video proves it doesn't bother me much.
I have to say that one of the divers taking this class with us had EIGHT total dives before he started this class. That's guts. In fact, that's brass ones. At eight dives, I was still trying to SURVIVE under water.
Once video review was complete, we returned to theory. Tonight was gas management, and I have to say that there was basically nothing (except Steve's wonderful stories) about that part of the class that I didn't get from Bob's gas management seminar. It was a review of familiar material, which was fine. We went on from there to gases, and heard about the DIR proscription against diving deep air (or air at all, if possible). The story Steve told, which is his own, was an amazing argument against deep air. It really will make me rethink my own parameters for diving, although I have no intention of learning to use trimix.
We talked a little bit about deco, and bubble models, and the DIR practice of breaking the "three minute safety stop" into three separate stops, all of which makes good sense to me. We talked about deep stops, and on- and off-gassing, and I was delighted to discover that all the stuff I have read on Scubaboard and links that SB members have provided me had given me an excellent basis for understanding this part of the class.
And I have to say that this was the level of theory teaching I wanted when I learned to dive. And this was "theory light" for DIR.
Yes, bourbon was in evidence. He is NOT a DIR diver.This morning began painfully early with my arrival (not quite last -- STEVE got there after me) at a foggy, chilly Cove 2, inhabited by us six DIR wannabees and SIX -- count them, SIX -- OW/AOW classes. Those who know Cove 2 will know that it would present no challenge for a major league outfielder to throw a baseball across it. It's not much space for thirty or forty divers, and we needed SHALLOW water in order to look as stupid as possible. Therefore, we ended up with two things: an entry at the opposite end of the cove from my jubilantly acquired and thought to be convenient parking space, and a long surface swim to the down line.
Everybody who has done Fundies knows the sequence: Practice kicks. Those of us who have never done them before have more trouble than others. Practice ascents. Those with more experience have less trouble than others, but nobody meets DIR standards. Hover, and try to control the errant extremities that want to help. And in the midst of it all, try to keep track of buddies who may or may not be experiencing various difficulties. It all comes out in the video review, which is the fun part to write about.
Our trio survived dive one, and surfaced, and Steve asked us how we felt about it, and I said, "It didn't go nearly as bad as I anticipated." These were fighting words, which clearly set up the second dive for our trio, which went as badly as I could have imagined . . . or maybe not quite. The second dive for our group was a Three Stooges movie, with no diver who could maintain position, depth or attitude, and all of us trying to run over poor Steve, who was serving as instructor and videographer.
A couple of interesting points: I had grave difficulty with the frog kick, doing it basically backwards, until Steve got behind me, grabbed my feet, and patterned it for me. Actually FEELING the movement under water, with my fins, let me grasp it. It is very easy to do this wrong. Bob was SO right to tell me NOT to try to learn or practice these things until I had the right instruction. I could have spent a lot of time ingraining the wrong movement in my brain. It's like those automobile ads -- professional diver, do not try this at home.
Second, most of us could hover. Most of us could hover motionless, because the video caught it. So why do we end up finning and pushing ourselves about? And why do some of us (imagine chagrined look) not KNOW we are doing it?
And third, my personal small triumph for the day, was that I found myself clipping stuff off without thinking about it . . . actually having to go back and say, "Did I clip that off?", and checking, and discovering I had. Considering that a month ago, clipping and unclipping my SPG under water resulted in a flounder in the silt, this is incredible progress.
After the first dive, we did a weight check. A proper weight check, which I had never done before. That, of course, requires bleeding the tank to 500 psi, which, given that I surfaced with 2200, required a bit of a bleed. I was worried about freezing my reg, given air temps in the 40's, so I kept it under water the whole time I was bleeding, and ended up with a free flow nonetheless. I tried the things I know -- putting my thumb in the mouthpiece, breathing against the regulator, and banging it on the palm of my hand, and nothing worked. I told Steve (we were of course on the surface at this point) that I had a free flow, and he took my regulator apart and fixed it, right there in the water. Wow.
I think he was quite surprised at his inability to take any weight off me. He took weight off everybody else, I think, and he had made some disparaging comment about overweighted divers the day before, saying he had seen a woman my size diving with THIRTY POUNDS of weight . . . I had said, "Well, that's pretty much what I'm diving," and he had raised his eyebrows. Well, he tried to take weight off me today, and none was going anywhere. Between my native buoyancy and the several dozen undergarments I wear in an attempt to stay in the water for an hour, I NEED all that weight.
I did distinguish myself in a unique way today . . . I managed to fall down three times getting into and out of the water. I told everybody, "That's why I have knee pads on my drysuit." Cove 2's shore is composed of small, round rocks which are highly unstable and slippery, and since I am carrying an additional 70 pounds on my 120 pound frame, my balance on my feet is not very good. I have reduced my other instructors to helpless laughter, watching me do my entries. Luckily, Steve did not see any of this.
Speaking of other instructors, my OW instructor was there today, teaching an AOW class, and since I ended up spending some time talking to him, I introduced him and Steve. It was an awkward moment, rather like introducing one's current boyfriend to one's prior . . . It was not a well thought out impulse on my part.
After the dives, I had a brief opportunity to duck into the fishnchips place and get some oysters and fries, which I shared with Rick when their group (which clearly did better than ours, or worse, because they were down a whole lot longer) surfaced and began to pack up. Rick had never had anybody greet him as he came out of the water with a fried oyster, and thought it was a rather nice gesture.
Back we went to the shop for the video review . . . but before the video review came the parade of purchases. Bolt snaps, line of various sorts, and other not-to-be-mentioned items found their way into people's possession. (Did I mention that one of the reasons I couldn't do the kicks very well was that I had entirely the wrong sort of fins? We are not going into any greater detail because I am trying to preserve my marriage.) You ever heard the complaint that diving classes are just a way for dive shops to make money selling learning divers equipment? Well, DIR classes are NO different in that regard
The video review: Everybody has read about this. It's the humiliation of Fundies. It's Bob saying, "Who IS that in my drysuit?" Well, I am here to tell you all that, if your expectations are low enough, the video review isn't bad at all. I was amazed to see that I basically maintained good trim (until I got worried about my buddies). I was delighted to hear that my modified flutter wasn't too bad. I wasn't surprised to see that my frog kick was backwards, but somewhat surprised at just how backwards it was, and happy to see that it made progress toward correct after Steve's intervention. I was thrilled to see the hover motionless, even if I later failed to reproduce it. Even the second dive had some good moments -- I managed the regulator removal and replacement without any change in buoyancy, even if I held my breath in the second half of the regulator exchange and gained about five feet. I'm no DIR diver, but I've come SO far from the descents on my back when Bob met me that I'm not devastated at all. Unlike SeaJay, I didn't come into this thinking I was all that, and the fact that the video proves it doesn't bother me much.
I have to say that one of the divers taking this class with us had EIGHT total dives before he started this class. That's guts. In fact, that's brass ones. At eight dives, I was still trying to SURVIVE under water.
Once video review was complete, we returned to theory. Tonight was gas management, and I have to say that there was basically nothing (except Steve's wonderful stories) about that part of the class that I didn't get from Bob's gas management seminar. It was a review of familiar material, which was fine. We went on from there to gases, and heard about the DIR proscription against diving deep air (or air at all, if possible). The story Steve told, which is his own, was an amazing argument against deep air. It really will make me rethink my own parameters for diving, although I have no intention of learning to use trimix.
We talked a little bit about deco, and bubble models, and the DIR practice of breaking the "three minute safety stop" into three separate stops, all of which makes good sense to me. We talked about deep stops, and on- and off-gassing, and I was delighted to discover that all the stuff I have read on Scubaboard and links that SB members have provided me had given me an excellent basis for understanding this part of the class.
And I have to say that this was the level of theory teaching I wanted when I learned to dive. And this was "theory light" for DIR.
(Part II, since I'm too wordy for the SB software)
We talked at some length about team diving. One very good point that Steve made, that I hadn't ever thought about, is that when you are, for example, doing a charter dive, the boat captain and the divemaster leading your dive become de facto team members, and you have to evaluate whether they are people you want on your team. By these criteria, the boat captain on the Australia trip we just took excelled . . . he had our backs. But I had never thought about things quite that way. That, of course, led to a question about recreational diving (since that's all I ever intend to do) and following divemasters, which led to Rick talking about diving in Spokane as the closest thing to a DIR diver short of Puget Sound. He asked if, in the interests of diving a solid team, he should refuse to dive with non-DIR divers. Steve said, very clearly, that he does not subscribe to that philosophy, because he finds it exclusionary. But he said that, if you dive with people who are trained differently, you need to consider their skills and training in the context of what KIND of dives you are going to do with them. And he pointed out, precisely as my OW instructor did, that when he is diving with people like US, he is essentially a solo diver. Therefore, he keeps the dives extremely shallow (and I thought he did it just to enjoy watching us flail around) and his own risks accordingly vanishingly small. At any rate, I was very pleased to hear a rational, non-judgmental response -- which is all I have heard so far this weekend.
Tomorrow is another day, and we will be challenged further, and it will undoubtedly get worse. It's pretty clear that it's unlikely any of us will pass this the first go-round, but I didn't expect that, anyway. I do not think this is the strongest DIR-F class that Steve has ever seen. But all the feedback has been dispassionate and kind, even if uncompromising, and that's what we came here to get.
I have to write here a huge acknowledgement of the time and patience that Bob Bailey has put into helping to train me. I was much better prepared for this class than I thought I was. I know you guys have heard me sing Bob's praises ad nauseum (my husband just rolls his eyes), but as Uncle Pug brought up in an old thread, a good mentor is absolutely priceless, and I would never have developed my skills even to the point where they are, nor would I have followed this direction nor taken this class, had it not been for Bob.
We talked at some length about team diving. One very good point that Steve made, that I hadn't ever thought about, is that when you are, for example, doing a charter dive, the boat captain and the divemaster leading your dive become de facto team members, and you have to evaluate whether they are people you want on your team. By these criteria, the boat captain on the Australia trip we just took excelled . . . he had our backs. But I had never thought about things quite that way. That, of course, led to a question about recreational diving (since that's all I ever intend to do) and following divemasters, which led to Rick talking about diving in Spokane as the closest thing to a DIR diver short of Puget Sound. He asked if, in the interests of diving a solid team, he should refuse to dive with non-DIR divers. Steve said, very clearly, that he does not subscribe to that philosophy, because he finds it exclusionary. But he said that, if you dive with people who are trained differently, you need to consider their skills and training in the context of what KIND of dives you are going to do with them. And he pointed out, precisely as my OW instructor did, that when he is diving with people like US, he is essentially a solo diver. Therefore, he keeps the dives extremely shallow (and I thought he did it just to enjoy watching us flail around) and his own risks accordingly vanishingly small. At any rate, I was very pleased to hear a rational, non-judgmental response -- which is all I have heard so far this weekend.
Tomorrow is another day, and we will be challenged further, and it will undoubtedly get worse. It's pretty clear that it's unlikely any of us will pass this the first go-round, but I didn't expect that, anyway. I do not think this is the strongest DIR-F class that Steve has ever seen. But all the feedback has been dispassionate and kind, even if uncompromising, and that's what we came here to get.
I have to write here a huge acknowledgement of the time and patience that Bob Bailey has put into helping to train me. I was much better prepared for this class than I thought I was. I know you guys have heard me sing Bob's praises ad nauseum (my husband just rolls his eyes), but as Uncle Pug brought up in an old thread, a good mentor is absolutely priceless, and I would never have developed my skills even to the point where they are, nor would I have followed this direction nor taken this class, had it not been for Bob.
Now "that" was a DIR-F report - well done TSandM - Have a great night resting your fingers after all that typing
Aloha, Tim
Aloha, Tim
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