From The Outside Looking In

[Fishstiq]

You will spend upwards of $1,500 for a rubber jumpsuit that 99% of the people who know you will never see you wear.
52 degree water is nice and warm in your warped view.
You look forward to spending 45 minutes driving, an hour bs'ing and setting up gear, another hour bs'ing and breaking
down gear, another 45 minute drive home, another hour rinsing/drying/charging/maintaining gear, and countless hours
talking about a sport that you just actively participated in for 50 minutes.
You complain about how awfull it is to dress yourself in layers of black thermal clothing on an 85 degree day while you
voluntarily do so.
You brag when you can see 30 feet, as though this is an unheard of feat for all mankind.
You immerse yourself in chilly pea soup for hours on end looking for a creature the size of a dime that doesn't give a damn
that you were ever there.
You spend thousands of dollars and countless hours hoping to get lucky and catch a 3 second glimpse of a creature that
people see at the aquarium every day for a few bucks, or on Discovery for free.
You collect pictures of slugs.
Your friends are jealous of you when you buy a flashlight for $1200.
Some fanatics among you will risk losing close personal relationships and lifelong hobbies and interests to go swimming.
You will plan the vacation of your lifetime to an exotic destination for a week and never see the culture, lifestyle,
environment or geography of the place you visit.
You know the physiology of bubble formation in the body, the consequence of high PPO2 exposure, Boyle's law, and the
factors that contribute to nitrogen narcosis; you have no idea how to fill out the forms your boss just gave you.
None of your thumbtacks on Google Earth are on land.














You are a Diver.

[airsix]

It's more sane than racing. Work on car for 200 hours, drive 120 miles. Spend hour prepping car. Spend an hour or two waiting for tech inspection. Spend 1/2 hour walking the course. Spend 1/2 hour being briefed. Stand in baking sun for 3 hours doing your shift as a corner worker. Get your turn to drive which consists of 5 timed runs that last less than two minutes each. Spend an hour helping clean up the course. Go home with a sunburn. Diving has a much higher return on investment. (It's still crazy, it's just a much more rewarding crazy.)

[Grateful Diver]

Joe ... I can't for the life of me see what your point is ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

[Gooch]

YYYYYEAHHHHHH!!! At least, someone gets it besides me. Yoooo-hoooo!!!!!Right on! Diving rulz!

[LCF]

Having spent $35 apiece on gas, driven two hours, driven the boat a half hour, spent a half hour gearing up (Including the obligatory discovery of some piece of gear that doesn't work and has to be swapped out while your buddies call helpful (not) comments in squeaky voices from the water) to do THIRTY minutes of bottom time before deco, followed by dragging doubles and deco bottles back into the boat, a half hour back to the boat ramp, 45 minutes of heavy gear-moving back into the truck, and an hour and a half home, I found this post . . . refreshing.

See my sig line.

[Sounder]

Having spent $35 apiece on gas, driven two hours, driven the boat a half hour, spent a half hour gearing up (Including the obligatory discovery of some piece of gear that doesn't work and has to be swapped out while your buddies call helpful (not) comments in squeaky voices from the water) to do THIRTY minutes of bottom time before deco, followed by dragging doubles and deco bottles back into the boat, a half hour back to the boat ramp, 45 minutes of heavy gear-moving back into the truck, and an hour and a half home, I found this post . . . refreshing.

See my sig line.

Sounds like a pretty great day!!

[sheahanmcculla]

Thanks for summing it up for me Joe...I think I'm going to sell all my gear and get a Dirt bike!

[Sounder]

Thanks for summing it up for me Joe...I think I'm going to sell all my gear and get a Dirt bike!

I get dibs on your tanks.

[BASSMAN]

I agree, The time and money spent on this addiction seems to be way out there! Unless you are a NW diver.
I find it amazing that for every story or situation someone tells me, I have a Scuba story/situation to match it.
I find my self holding back information/Stories to my non-diving friends & family. Some call me "Scuba" at work now.
And That's okay by me!

Oh, and Sounder, Do you really need more tanks?

[girldiver]

I begin every class with the disclaimer: "Scuba is a very addictive sport. This addiction will cost you far more than any cocaine habit. It may cause friends and relatives to shake their heads and wonder how to rehab you from your addiction. They won't understand the world you've sunk into, no matter how hard they try. You will become reckless in your finances, allocating far more to the addiction than others deem sensible. I am a dealer. I make no apologies. I will be here to feed your addiction long after your first taste. That said...are you ready to move forward?"

And they laugh... (?????)

[BASSMAN]

I begin every class with the disclaimer: "Scuba is a very addictive sport. This addiction will cost you far more than any cocaine habit. It may cause friends and relatives to shake their heads and wonder how to rehab you from your addiction. They won't understand the world you've sunk into, no matter how hard they try. You will become reckless in your finances, allocating far more to the addiction than others deem sensible. I am a dealer. I make no apologies. I will be here to feed your addiction long after your first taste. That said...are you ready to move forward?"

And they laugh... (?????)

Wow!
The hardened truth sinks in...

[Norris]

Joe,
sniff - Poetry man....poetry

[eliseaboo]

Having spent $35 apiece on gas, driven two hours, driven the boat a half hour, spent a half hour gearing up (Including the obligatory discovery of some piece of gear that doesn't work and has to be swapped out while your buddies call helpful (not) comments in squeaky voices from the water) to do THIRTY minutes of bottom time before deco, followed by dragging doubles and deco bottles back into the boat, a half hour back to the boat ramp, 45 minutes of heavy gear-moving back into the truck, and an hour and a half home, I found this post . . . refreshing.

See my sig line.

And this is why I don't tech dive. Yet.

[dwashbur]

Hey, diving accomplishes something: knowledge, appreciation of the underwater world, sheer enjoyment, and people helping people, to name just a few. Consider some other pastimes, such as golf: "You get up at six o'clock in the morning, and you go out, and you hit a ball. And then you walk after it." (that from Bill Cosby) You spend a thousand dollars on a set of weird-shaped sticks so you can curse at them when the ball goes someplace you didn't want it to, curse at the group ahead of you that's moving too slow, curse at the group behind you that thinks you're moving too slow, curse the weather, curse the equipment, curse the course, throw your bag of sticks back in the car with enough excess force to damage both them and the car, go home and kick the dog. This is called "fun."

I'll take diving any day.

[Paulicarp]

I’m frequently shocked and amazed at my non-diving friends just don’t get it. What is it with their remarkable ability to maintain total apathy toward diving- even when I show them dive videos?! (What sane person doesn’t get totally stoked up watching dive videos??!!)

I thought this thread was worth resurrecting with a story about something that happened to Trevor and me when we were just getting out of the water at Mukilteo.

It was a few weeks ago now, and at the end of MMM dive 2 we emerged from the water under the quickly fading evening light. Climbing up the steps from the shore we slowly made our way toward our parked cars, answering the usual questions about viz and water temp from several divers standing around talking.

While we were still fully geared up, a vehicle approaches from the street side and makes its way thru the parking area to pull under the hotel. Quizzically the driver looks up, stops and rolls down his window to get our attention. “What are you guys doing? Diving?”

“Yes, just finished a dive,” we respond.

Quickly comes his reply, “Why? What for?”

Trevor stepped right up to the plate and explained that we were just doing a recreational dive for the fun of it and that, yes, there are things to see down there. Shaking his head in disbelief, the guy in the car was somewhat amazed that there was such a thing as diving in Puget Sound “for the fun of it.”

My turn.

After a momentary lull in the conversation, I jumped in with both feet. “HA HA, naw, really we’re agents for Homeland Security, doing an underwater survey of the ferry terminal.”

“Ahh,” says our new friend in the car, “that explains it.”

We said goodbye and he drove away satisfied that we had finally quit pulling his leg about voluntarily diving at Mukilteo for the fun of it.

[Old Nubbins]

Thanks for summing it up for me Joe...I think I'm going to sell all my gear and get a Dirt bike!

hmmmm.... I have 3 motorcycles sitting in my garage that have gone unused since I started diving.....

[Dive Monkey]

You will spend upwards of $1,500 for a rubber jumpsuit that 99% of the people who know you will never see you wear.
52 degree water is nice and warm in your warped view.
You look forward to spending 45 minutes driving, an hour bs'ing and setting up gear, another hour bs'ing and breaking
down gear, another 45 minute drive home, another hour rinsing/drying/charging/maintaining gear, and countless hours
talking about a sport that you just actively participated in for 50 minutes.
You complain about how awfull it is to dress yourself in layers of black thermal clothing on an 85 degree day while you
voluntarily do so.
You brag when you can see 30 feet, as though this is an unheard of feat for all mankind.
You immerse yourself in chilly pea soup for hours on end looking for a creature the size of a dime that doesn't give a damn
that you were ever there.
You spend thousands of dollars and countless hours hoping to get lucky and catch a 3 second glimpse of a creature that
people see at the aquarium every day for a few bucks, or on Discovery for free.
You collect pictures of slugs.
Your friends are jealous of you when you buy a flashlight for $1200.
Some fanatics among you will risk losing close personal relationships and lifelong hobbies and interests to go swimming.
You will plan the vacation of your lifetime to an exotic destination for a week and never see the culture, lifestyle,
environment or geography of the place you visit.
You know the physiology of bubble formation in the body, the consequence of high PPO2 exposure, Boyle's law, and the
factors that contribute to nitrogen narcosis; you have no idea how to fill out the forms your boss just gave you.
None of your thumbtacks on Google Earth are on land.

















You are a Diver.

I feel like you have been spying on me

[sheahanmcculla]

Thanks for summing it up for me Joe...I think I'm going to sell all my gear and get a Dirt bike!

hmmmm.... I have 3 motorcycles sitting in my garage that have gone unused since I started diving.....

What?

And you live by lots of logging roads and Walker Valley is sooo close. It's hard for me to wrap my brain around a scooter costing as much as a dirtbike or quad.

[cardiver]

How about a mt bike costing as much as a 250cc dirt bike? A good bike will set you back 2500-3500 bucks!

[scottsax]

Your friends are jealous of you when you buy a flashlight for $1200.

A flashlight that you can't use when the power goes out at your house.

[Sockmonkey]

Your friends are jealous of you when you buy a flashlight for $1200.

A flashlight that you can't use when the power goes out at your house.

You should invent a cold water filled bubble that goes over your HID light to use it on land and not melt the light head.

-Eric

[scottsax]

Your friends are jealous of you when you buy a flashlight for $1200.

A flashlight that you can't use when the power goes out at your house.

You should invent a cold water filled bubble that goes over your HID light to use it on land and not melt the light head.

-Eric

You sir, are a genius!

[Jaksonbrown]

I gave up my previous addiction so I could stay married... this time... Hanggliding.... An all day/weekend long sport that you spend thousands and thousands on...Drive hundreds of miles to a site, wait all day standing on a mountain top kicking rocks waiting on the wind to be just right, to perhaps only get a 10 minute flight.....

Diving is soooo much like that though... one of the things that I loved the most about hanggliding and that I now have found in scuba is the escape from reality it provides... I used to try to explain to my friends my addiction by trying to get them to understand that even if,.. saaaayyyyy.....you were sentenced to die in the morning... while your up there(hanggliding).. or down there(scuba) your not gonna think about tomorrow, or anything else, but what your doing right now...
And that is soooo rare a thing to find.

[Joshua Smith]

while your up there(hanggliding).. or down there(scuba) your not gonna think about tomorrow, or anything else, but what your doing right now...
And that is soooo rare a thing to find.

I agree completely. Very, very few things in my life can quiet the chattering monkeys that live in my head and make me "live in the moment" the way diving does.

I like firearms. I have a small collection- although I hardly shoot them any more, since I started diving. One of my favorites is a Remington PSS in .308- basically a civilian version of the M-24. It's an incredibly accurate weapon- sub moa. It's far more accurate than I'm capable of using effectively, at any rate. What I really loved about shooting it was that if I could get "in the zone" and empty my mind- I could shoot really well. It's not an easy thing to do, though. Diving sort of automatically puts me in that same head space.

[Gooch]

Josh- you think the chattering monkeys only talk to you. Please. And I've already been worried about your proclivity for firearms....I hope my IP address hasn't totally given away where I live.


---just kidding- sort of.


I have to say- diving has given me a lot of fun and piece of mind. I love every trip I do with it. It does help transport me to another place that (I think) precious others have been and I want go again, as soon as I can.