What are your biggest pet peeves?

[Steve50]

There's an easy fix for that ... assuming that you dive recreationally.

Borrow a set of doubles. Wear them diving for about 50 dives. Then switch back to your normal recreational setup.

It'll feel practically weightless ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I think I'd rather just complain

 

[DwayneJ]

Brand bigots... Brand x is superior to everything else.

 

[tddfleming]

Me too ... to my concern ALL the fishies are pretty ... even the ugly ones ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Such a sweet little fishie face.

 

[4sak3n]

People who brush up against my fins. It sounds weird but it gets to me BADLY.

So you have your shnozz up in my fins, now I can't kick. So I'll just move away from you so that I can kick again ... OH WAIT, I CAN'T MOVE WITHOUT KICKING.

I dive in a lot of kelp and every so often I get that "someone's face in my fins" feeling but it turns out it is justa piece of kelp. *sigh*

Irrational, I know, but it gets to me.

 

[Quero]

People who brush up against my fins. It sounds weird but it gets to me BADLY.

So you have your shnozz up in my fins, now I can't kick. So I'll just move away from you so that I can kick again ... OH WAIT, I CAN'T MOVE WITHOUT KICKING.

I dive in a lot of kelp and every so often I get that "someone's face in my fins" feeling but it turns out it is justa piece of kelp. *sigh*

Irrational, I know, but it gets to me.

How do you manage to teach? I find that my new divers tend to want to be closer to me than they ought to be if they don't want to get slapped with a fin. :shocked2:

 

[DennisS]

Buddys that think 3 foot above and 1 foot behind is a great place for a buddy

 

[TSandM]

Oh, I hear you, 4sak3n! From cave diving, I've got this built-in reflex that if my fins hit ANYTHING, I freeze. It makes doing dives with OW students really stressful, because they WILL insist on being behind me, and they DO get too close, and then I can't swim, and they can't hover . . . so it can become a bit of a problem. I've taken to turning around and facing them and just back-kicking

Peeves . . . relief valve failures are way up there, especially halfway through a 2 1/2 hour cave dive. People who leave big, honking, thick silt trails are up there, too. I loathe swimming through someone else's mess. Smokers on boats (or anywhere else, if I'm really honest).

And I have little patience with the dive buddy drama thing -- you know the kind of person I'm talking about, who always shows up without something, or something doesn't work, or they have to fuss and fix or go back to shore to get or . . . That kind of thing happens to everybody once in a while, but I'm sure we all know somebody who's like that ALL the time. The flip side of that is the person who's never happy . . . who always has to complain about the boat, or the site, or the crew, or the viz, or what they saw. I'm with airsix -- you'll never have a bad dive, if you look at what's there, and not what isn't!

 

[4sak3n]

How do you manage to teach? I find that my new divers tend to want to be closer to me than they ought to be if they don't want to get slapped with a fin. :shocked2:

With a great deal of tolerance.

Actually I haven't run up against this problem during my courses much. I usually have two DMs riding shotgun and are enough to keep my students reassured. I guess they get the fair share or students brushing up against their fins instead of me. Rank hath its privileges.

I actually spent about the first 10 mins back kicking for the first dive of my last OW course TSandM. It worked surprisingly well. The students were just getting used to the freedom of open water so they needed an eye kept on them and I had the freedom to do that while still moving.

 

[fisheater]

Brand bigots... Brand x is superior to everything else.

Don't you mean "Brand H?" :cool2:

 

[Thiad]

Bragging about how deep one goes. When most of the fun things to see are between the surface and 90 feet, have fun diving below 150. I'd prefer to see the fishies, thank you.