DIR

ok. well. i don't really know what to say about my class.
what i can inform you about is how good of a class i think it was.
anyone who's really serious about diving needs to skip all the other people out there who will just teach you the basics for recreational purposes.

this class drives home the idea of neutral buoyancy: hovering in one spot and maintaining that postion while undertaking a task.

it's so much easier said than done. for instance, in my open water class that wasn't through 5th dimension/GUE, they had you kneel on the pool bottom while removing your mask and replacing it back in postion. simple.
in the GUE class, they have you hovering about a foot or so from the bottom of the Sound, so when you eventually get your mask reapplied, you can either see how much silt you've kicked up, or you can see how much you've risen in the short amount of time it took you to put the mask back on. it's daunting. you think to yourself that you remain stationary, but when you regain visibility, all your classmates are 10 feet below you!

the other thing i liked about this DIR class is like i said, they teach buoyancy control, but also streamlinedness. on saturday, as seen when looking at my pictures, there are tons of people diving in our same location. however, where we have every possible entanglement tucked away or removed, almost everyone else there (i wish i had an example) had snorkels, octopuses, lights, SPGs, and other such objects wildly flailing and ready to impose its ability as a snagging hazard and ultimately a killer (if used properly).

this mentality spawned from the two co-founders of GUE, who were pioneers in cave diving.
they teach this streamlinedness not only for ease of movement in the water, but also, of course, safety; caves can hold some tight squeezes.
with safety in mind, they also teach the rule of thirds, where you should always return to the surface with a least a third of your air.
the reasoning behind this is to suppose that even if your buddy runs out of air, that after you've dove using a third of your air, you head back, so both you and your buddy will have a third of the tank for the return journey.
in open water, this isn't so serious, as you can just surface in an emergency, but in a wreck or cave, this is vital.

again, with caves in mind, they teach a style of transport that i've never seen before. basically, you hold your body totally horizontal (ok, not that novel), but with your legs bent at the knees.
so you look something like: Z____0
supposing that the 'Z' was your legs and the 'o' your head.
from there, they teach a frog kick or modified flutter kick, which basically keeps the kick from pushing downward and instead pushes it backward, offering better propulsion.
not only does this work to improve efficiency in movement, but it prevents the stirring up of silt.

but the greatest realization that i think this class gave me was with respect to buoyancy.
when i took my initial plunge, i thought that the BC (buoyancy control/vest [actually wing now, in my case]) was the sole means for controlling buoyancy.
boy was i wrong! it does a great deal of work, and is definitely needed when you initially descend so you don't crash into the bottom, but once in a position where you want to be, just breathing itself can significantly displace your depth.

taking a deeper breath, while still maintaining your breathing, but just keeping your lungs more full, will actually put you on an ascent to the surface until you exhale enough air to regain your stability.
the same goes for exhalation. if you're too high and want to drop a few feet, just breathe out more air, yet still maintaining your breathing, but with less overall volume in your lungs.

it's amazing how effective it is.
for one of the dives, after an initial fill of my BC, i only used breathing to control my depth. it worked rather well. the only time i really needed to dump air was when i got really shallow on an upward slope. (in waters about 10' - 15', that slight change can greatly increase the air pressure held in your BC, which is one of the reasons why GUE prefers to test in shallow water, not to mention safety.)

what more can i say?
this class exponentially increased my knowledge of diving.
i also got to meet a woman (the one who filmed us) who has been deep diving since before it actually had a lot of the safer technology that we take for granted today (and she's only 30 something! she co-owned her own dive shop when she was 19!)

which reminds me:
the filming was also integral to my learning experience.
after the first dive, i realized how wildly i was sculling the water to keep neutrally buoyant.
the second day of diving i set out to kill that habit.
i thought i had done a very good job of it, but the camera told otherwise.
dammit!

so once again that's my biggest problem. buoyancy.
i'll have to get in more dives and just practice.
hopefully this fatty bruise that should appear on my right thigh any day now won't hinder my progress too much.

damn, diving is cool.
it's just so crazy how hard "good" diving is.
it's like learning to walk all over again.
cuz i guess to an extent it is like flying, just in water.

the right positioning, muscle use, and proper air use all contribute to maintaining buoyancy.
if any of those are slightly off, you have yourself a problem.

FUCK, I NEED A DRY SUIT.
i think my diving experience would be even that much more enjoyable.
the wet suit i really don't mind when in the water.
it's the being totally wet on the windy surface that's the killer.
that and it takes FOREVER to get out of a wet wet suit, which of course leaves you exposed to the elements even longer.