What event made you head toward/away from DIR?

[schultz]

If any of you remember Aquanaut 's Techdiver email list (you know, in the before-time, the long, long ago - pre 2001, and certainly before this board), I remember a close friend of mine always getting into arguments with GI 3. It was often hilarious since in his own words, my friend "just loved hitting the hornets nest to see what would happen." Those times have passed (or have they?), but it was my first exposure to the DIR world.

That being said, at the time, it did not seem to be right for the style of diving I was doing at the time. I had just purchased a bunch of equipment. Much of it was two of whatever it was I bought. One could argue it was for redundancy, but in reality, the other set was for my wife. We tended to do a lot of recreational diving in the Caribbean, and around the state, and for that reason, DIR remained a definition in my SCUBA vocabulary.

Now I'm starting to do some diving that requires a little more than the equipment I initially bought or made. I've got the BP/wing rigged in Hogarthian style, but it still needs some improvements. My wife is even considering a similar set up for here own purposes - especially after talking to a woman in the Seattle area that does a lot of underwater photography (her only complaint about the BP was it was designed for men's shoulders - not those on a petite woman). For the both of us it seems like a natural (not via forced lessons, or dogmatic lectures) progression. I've gone a little bit further than she cares to with training, but she even acknowledges that she's outgrown some of her equipment.

My thanks for Gert and his training techniques. He is a patient instructor, and knows how to safely get you to realize why this stuff is necessary. He's got enough knowledge and experience to throw even the most educated divers. It took me two years to find and interview an instructor I could trust, but Gert was certainly worth the wait as well as the mileage from driving from Madison to Milwaukee all the time.

I would say my diving style has progressed to the point that now it's handy to adopt many, if not all the aspects of DIR. The distinction I make is that it depends on the situation. If I'm tooling around in 5-10 feet of water trying to help the Union get their piers in, I'm not necessary going to go DIR all the way. Carrying my bulky, rectangular camera housing with it's multiple flashes on elongated arms does not  necessarily agree with the philosophy of being streamlined. And I'm certainly not going to use all this equipment during pool sessions. While it may attract some newbies that eventually become great divers, It can and has scared some people away - especially with all this men-among-men-manly equipment. Like high performance cars you may see on the street, it makes others think I'm over-compensating for the lack of something else...