So, just who is George Irvine III?????

[chrpai]

I think that might be where some of the negative sentiment keeps getting perpetuated from.
Some dive shops just want to protect their rice bowl; training and sales.

New divers hear it from the shops, and then they have the idea of GUE divers being arrogant planted in their heads.
Believe me....there's plenty of arrogance to go around in the diving bubble we all live in.

I've seen plenty of chest thumping from DM's.
Often people's enthusiasm get's perceived as arrogant.

I get a feeling that there are shops out there that love perpetuating the negative GUE thing....they might stand to benefit from that, no?

When you start hearing the anti-GUE "pitch"......consider why that might be.

I wonder what motivates Mr. Aleman's post above.
He sounds as bad as some of those postings from over a decade before.

Well, if my memory serves, Mr. Aleman was friends with and stood up for Moonglow. As I recall, that was some serious WTF?! chest pounding and our LDS and agency is the BEST chest thumping before she left for good.

 

[Pullmyfinger]

I knew the name seemed familiar.
The agency of awesomeness, and the LDS of the Gods!

We are not worthy! Haha!

Cheers,
Mitch

 

[TSandM]

Wow -- this thread was resurrected, and has resurrected some long-unseen posters! Glad to see you haven't changed your tune, Daniel Aleman.

Superlyte, there are long-standing political issues in Florida that just don't exist other places -- or at least, aren't perpetuated as viciously. The Zero G guys in Mexico are on good terms with the other divers there, and the other shops and explorers. Our GUE instructor here was, until a short time ago, a PADI instructor for one of our largest local dive shops. (He's too busy with GUE stuff now.) I've heard of people going into EE and feeling unwelcome. I've also heard of non-DIR people going in there and feeling very nicely taken care of. I've also heard of people going into one of our local dive shops that not only has nothing to do with GUE/DIR, but is rabidly against it, and coming away feeling just as ostracized. Dive shops are dive shops, and one's experience in a shop is very dependent on just plain who is manning the place on that particular day, and what kind of a mood they're in.

Another diver I met told me about going on a dive with DIR divers and mentioned incredulously how they spent 10 minutes going over each others rigs for a shore dive.

This one I'll plead guilty to! YES -- we DO do dive plans, and we DO do buddy checks. It doesn't take ten minutes, either, unless you're brand new to it and learning, and having to go through the whole thing very slowly and deliberately. What we don't do is get in the water with dry suit hoses disconnected, or without our weights; we don't get in with half-empty tanks (very often, anyway -- I posted a thread about failing to follow procedures and getting caught on that one!) and we all know when we get in the water where we are going and what we are going to do. You were taught to do that in your OW class, but my guess is that, like many divers, those good procedures and habits were lost fairly quickly. Read the Near Misses forum here, and see how many of those misadventures would have been prevented by a good pre-dive check and a dive plan reviewed with everyone involved?

There is lots of room in the water for people to use any gear they want and any procedures they want (or none). The way we dive results in a really delightful paucity of problems. I'll stick with it, personally!

 

[Pullmyfinger]

Another diver I met told me about going on a dive with DIR divers and mentioned incredulously how they spent 10 minutes going over each others rigs for a shore dive.

There's more than that too, and like I said earlier, I personally don't have a problem with DIR, but it seems obvious that they do have a perception problem.

I know.....10 minute pre-dive checks are just stupid. Nobody takes time to go over a pre-dive plan and equipment check, excepts morons and GUE divers, right? ;-)
The obvious perception problem that some people have, might have something to do with the observer.

I'm going to start gearing up and just jumping in the water. I don't want any other divers out there to think I was___________. I'm not sure. What's the current name that's used for us pre-dive/equipment checking idiots?


Not jumping on you.......you are just mentioning what you hear in your neck of the woods. So the perception IS out there. It's just kind of funny to me where that stuff really originates. I am really starting to feel that it trickles down from some kind of dive shop bias.

Cheers,
Mitch

 

[Superlyte27]

oh bull you know what. The issue isn't George, it's more related to their insistence on standards that while MORE than admirable eventually ends up having many more experienced divers splitting away. Their skills levels are excellent because of their GUE training, but they start to see others diving sidemount/ccr and doing bigger dives with less skills and discipline and they drift away, wanting to do that type of diving themselves. Or they just feel like they are stuck at "practice" forever and get frustrated and just quit. Very few divers can fully embrace the holistic approach lifestyle and diving discipline it would take to be wholly DIR. They need to find a way to still allow those of us who have "strayed" along the way still be part of their community... it's a very difficult balancing act for GUE.

That's probably close to reality actually.

 

[DaleC]

Well.. I think when we get into diving we find ourselves in an alien environment and look towards our training and agencies as a buffer between us and the unknown. Our initial instructors seem to "know it all" and our agency seems to provide the education pathway we are told we need.

There is very little thinking for oneself in the beginning, we just follow what we think sounds right. I sometimes see debates generated at this level by people on all sides; zealous believers who think they need to justify some decision. As an early solo diver I sometimes felt the need to defend that "turf" but this has diminished with time. I'm sure some DIR noviciates feel/felt the same way.

Hopefully, after a while, we begin to think critically about what we are doing and what we need to do it. At that point, some people make an intelligent decision to go the GUE/UTD way while others make just as an intelligent choice not to. In either case, the mature divers are able to recognize that "my way is right for me" can coexist with "your way is right for you".

In my short tenure, I've grown as a diver and I am able to equally allow DIR to have grown as well. My focus these days isn't so much on how you dive but rather, what do you do when you dive. The skills acquisition question has given way to the skills application challenge.

 

[Superlyte27]

You mean Halcyon.

Hmm, I have a one piece harness and an AL/Composite/SS plates from long before Halcyon existed. Was there a significant change in "modern" bp/w's after Halcyon was formed?

 

[lv2dive]

You can thank Dive Rite for the modern BP/W. DIR is for those of you who don't know how to dive, and never will.

Sorry... who is it that is intolerant and rude, again? The DIR crowd? or is it - maybe - ANTI-DIR zealots?seems like the mudslinging in this thread isn't coming from the DIR camp. Well, what do I know, I guess i am just od'ing on the sugah in the grape koolaid <SHRUG>

 

[elmer fudd]

Wow -- this thread was resurrected, and has resurrected some long-unseen posters! Glad to see you haven't changed your tune, Daniel Aleman.

Superlyte, there are long-standing political issues in Florida that just don't exist other places -- or at least, aren't perpetuated as viciously. The Zero G guys in Mexico are on good terms with the other divers there, and the other shops and explorers. Our GUE instructor here was, until a short time ago, a PADI instructor for one of our largest local dive shops. (He's too busy with GUE stuff now.) I've heard of people going into EE and feeling unwelcome. I've also heard of non-DIR people going in there and feeling very nicely taken care of. I've also heard of people going into one of our local dive shops that not only has nothing to do with GUE/DIR, but is rabidly against it, and coming away feeling just as ostracized. Dive shops are dive shops, and one's experience in a shop is very dependent on just plain who is manning the place on that particular day, and what kind of a mood they're in.


[/COLOR]
This one I'll plead guilty to! YES -- we DO do dive plans, and we DO do buddy checks. It doesn't take ten minutes, either, unless you're brand new to it and learning, and having to go through the whole thing very slowly and deliberately. What we don't do is get in the water with dry suit hoses disconnected, or without our weights; we don't get in with half-empty tanks (very often, anyway -- I posted a thread about failing to follow procedures and getting caught on that one!) and we all know when we get in the water where we are going and what we are going to do. You were taught to do that in your OW class, but my guess is that, like many divers, those good procedures and habits were lost fairly quickly. Read the Near Misses forum here, and see how many of those misadventures would have been prevented by a good pre-dive check and a dive plan reviewed with everyone involved?

There is lots of room in the water for people to use any gear they want and any procedures they want (or none). The way we dive results in a really delightful paucity of problems. I'll stick with it, personally!

This is one where I understand both sides. When I dive, the buddy check and the dive plan typically take about 2 minutes. It's pretty casual. Make sure he's not missing anything, that his hoses aren't wrapped around something and ask him how much air he's got. We do check each others drysuit zippers. Our dive plan generally amounts to something like, "let's swim out to the wreck at 80' and then make our way back in and over to the Volkswagen." And I have discovered at 20' that my drysuit hose isn't connected before.

If we've changed anything or intend to practice something or do something different we usually discuss that while we're suiting up.

I can certainly understand people who aren't comfortable with casual checks like that, particularly if they regularly do more dangerous dives and like to make safety a habit.


I can also see where I might be a little annoyed, especially if the checks seemed trivial. I wouldn't let it bother me though. I think the guy who was telling it to me found it ridiculous.

 

[TSandM]

Even one of my zealous DIR buddies found it ridiculous . . . I have simply made a decision that taking the time to check before going underwater is better than fixing something when I get there -- or, as my husband says from personal experience, "Nothing gets better IN the water."

Dale, you nailed it. I went from an OW education that was at best marginal, to amazement that there was SO much I hadn't been taught (and gratitude for the folks who taught it to me) to an awareness that there are many roads to a good diving education and good diving skills. Today, I know that the buoyancy, trim and non-silting propulsion I learned OUGHT to be pretty standard in any cave curriculum (but aren't); or any technical curriculum (but aren't). Some of the best divers I've dived with (Charlie99) have no exposure to either GUE or caves. One of my favorite cave diving buddies (Ben M) had only a little GUE instruction, and doesn't dive DIR (sidemount, when he can).

At the other end (I think) of the educational tunnel, with a Full Cave cert and a tech cert and a PADI DM cert, I have this to say: I am still enormously grateful to GUE, for creating extremely well trained and skilled instructors, and a community of amazing divers, who for some reason are some of the most giving and patient and supportive folks out there. I am grateful for a world of similarly trained people, to whom I can reach out if I travel, and ensure myself safe and enjoyable dive buddies almost anywhere I might want to go. I am grateful, especially when I cave dive, for an uncompromising education that has been a challenge to which I have not always been able to rise -- but even in failure, I have learned what the goal IS, and that I should strive to get there. I am a better diver for it.

I am not, by nature, an evangelist, nor am I much of a fighter. But in this much I have a mission: I think divers would be happier, and get more out of their diving, if they were more skilled and better trained, and if they had more reliable buddies. In the world where I dive, these things are a given. For this reason, I continue to promulgate this way of diving.