Festival Planning

Not much to report at present. I'm heading to Glastonbury next month. This may be my last time as a volunteer, or as the organiser. Then again, it may not. My going is dependent on whether or not I'm still in my current job. As a union member, I can organise my teams of bar volunteers to raise funds for the union at the festivals, which I've been doing since 2005 (my God, that's a long time). Were I employed somewhere else, or in a job where it wasn't possible for me to devote my time to organising the volunteers, this might not happen anymore, and it's not impossible for me to move jobs. That could happen next year, so I've decided to take advantage this year and enjoy Glastonbury.

Alas, I'm still doing the organising. See above t-shirt picture.

In One Way, Depth is Just a Number...

(I started writing this post back in 2010, came across it, and decided to revive it. As of 2013, I'm a Rescue diver, albeit I do need to go back to Lake Ellerton and practice fishing people out of the water some time soon. Funny how even back then I was picking holes in PADI's teaching methods...). 

And in others, it isn't.

As part of my Advanced Open Water Certificate, I'll be doing a "deep dive" whilst in Bute for the diving weekend I'm going on in March. For those not familiar with recreational diving limits, I currently have an Open Water certificate, which means I'm qualified to dive as deep as 18 metres.

In common with (I suspect) most Open Water divers, I have somewhat bent this rule - without getting myself bent, I hasten to add - whilst diving in the tropics. My deepest dive so far was 23 metres in the Maldives to see an interesting sunken ship. It was at the start of the dive, myself and my buddy had full tanks, I wasn't tired or dehydrated and I kept a close eye on my dive computer and air gauge, so I figured I wasn't running an unacceptably high risk of burning through my breathing gas or running out of bottom time. I was right.

A quick digression on some terms I'm using here:

Bent = getting the bends; decompression sickness causing by ascending too fast or staying down so long you can't come straight up but have to do decompression stops. Recreational or sports divers, like me and like everyone when they first start diving, do the sort of dives which don't require decompression stops, so that at any point in the dive, you can abort it and ascend to the surface, albeit at a slow enough rate that you don't get the bends. This is for safety reasons.

Bottom time = the amount of time you can stay submerged before you have to ascend. Governed by two factors; how much breathing gas you have, and how much nitrogen you have absorbed from breathing gas under pressure. The amount of nitrogen you have absorbed governs how long you can stay under without needing to do decompression stops to allow the nitrogen to leave your system so that you don't get the bends. The two factors are interlinked: If you're at a deeper dive, you go through your breathing gas faster, because it is delivered at a higher pressure. This also means you're breathing in more nitrogen molecules - it's a compressed gas, so there are more gas molecules in each breath you take in - so you absorb more nitrogen and have a shorter period of time you can safely stay under. Also one of many diving terms that causes juvenile humour to occur. 

For my "deep dive", I'll be going deeper than this. It's surprisingly hard to find out exactly how deep online - it's something I'll ask my instructor - but probably around 25-30 metres deep depending on the conditions.

This post starts "In one way" because a novice diver saying "depth is just a number" and leaving it at that implies that person hasn't fully grasped that deeper dives do come with a set of distinct challenges. These include the aforementioned shorter bottom time periods and the fact that they use gas a lot faster than shallower dives. They also include the unique aspect of getting the narcs.

The narcs = nitrogen narcosis. Essentially, the deeper you go, the more the higher concentration of nitrogen you're breathing makes you feel intoxicated. It's most commonly compared to being drunk, although symptoms vary from diver to diver. The narcs are harmless in themselves and go away if you ascend (safely) to a higher depth. The risk comes from feeling a bit drunk 30m below the water. It's even worse for technical divers, who have to fiddle around with their gases to try to come up with a mix that won't send them completely off their heads whilst 60m down.

But in one way, I believe that depth is just a number. Why? To me, it's in the mind. One thing I think PADI's Open Water Diver course does run the risk of is encouraging newbie divers to think "It's okay if things go wrong, I can always go back up again". I think that's the wrong mindset. Sure, there are times when a CESA (controlled emergency swimming ascent - swimming up to the surface if you've run out of air, but keeping your weight belt on so that you don't rocket up there, and exhaling to stop you from getting lung overexpansion injuries) or even the dreaded buoyant ascent are the right, i.e. only, options to handle the situation.

Buoyant ascent = ditching your weights so that you immediately become positively buoyant and fly up to the surface in an uncontrolled ascent. Extremely dangerous as you run the risk of getting lung overexpansion and the bends. Absolute last-ditch measure for getting to the top if all other hope is lost. Comes with a big AVOID DOING THIS IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN in the diving training manuals.

However, I think that's a risky mindset. It encourages you to think that all problems are solvable and there's always a way out, whereas you should be thinking about how to prevent the problems in the first place. You can get the bends coming up from 12m or even shallower. Going deeper increases the risks, but the risk is always there.

Dive safely, folks. And remember... in British waters, there's frequently bugger-all to see at 30m in March in the Farne Islands. 15m is more fun, and there are seals!

Gym Guilty Pleasures

No, this isn't me.

I don't often blog about going to the gym, although I have done this 2-3 times weekly since I was about 14 or so. (Interesting fact: girls can do this more safely than boys as our bones stop growing earlier. I reached my full height about 13.)

I don't blog much about it because what appeals to me about it - the simplicity - doesn't generally make for a good blogpost. I like the gym because I spend much of my life employing the grey matter between my ears. The gym appeals because it doesn't require this in the same way. Let's face it, it works as follows:

1. Pick heavy thing up.
2. Put heavy thing down.
3. Repeat until step (1) is no longer an option.
4. Eat.
5. Sleep.
6. Repeat.

Actually, brainpower is involved, but in a different way. It's closer to meditation than brainwork; when I do my exercises, I mentally picture the muscles I'm using and try to focus on using only them, not any others. It helps if you picture them as being in bright colours, like those big wallcharts of people with their skin off that used to freak you out aged 12 in biology class at school.

This usually works, but not always, and sometimes you get distracted by annoyances and guilty pleasures. Namely:

Gym Annoyance 1
People who don't throw their bottle caps in the bin, but instead leave them lurking in the bottle holders on the treadmill. If you can run 2 miles, you can walk 5 metres and throw your damn bottle cap in the bin.

Gym Guilty Pleasure 1
Noticing that someone has left the machine that you are about to use on the correct weight setting for you, and you don't have to fiddle about with it.

Gym Annoyance 2
People who sit around for ages on the bench or seat for the equipment you want to use, staring at the football, then, when you ask, say "yes, sorry, I'm still using it". No you're not! You're watching Everton lose to Man U!


Gym Guilty Pleasure 2

When the someone in Guilty Pleasure 1 was male. 

Gym Annoyance 3

People who don't put their weights away. Seriously. I should not have to lift 200+kg of weights of the squat rack machine so that I can do my exercises (which use about 60kg, max). This annoys both myself and one of the senior instructors at the gym to the extent of spitting. His solution is to make tannoy announcements about banning people from the gym if they can be identified on CCTV doing this. Mine, I fear, will be that one day I'll snap and hand out some gymnasium justice with a 10kg dumbbell.

Gym Guilty Pleasure 3

Watching the unfeasibly muscular lads in Annoyance 2 going on the treadmill and blowing up* after ten minutes, because they spend so much time building muscle they do no cardiovascular work at all, and thus cannot run for shit. 

I can't run that well either, although I can do 3km without stopping and am pushing for the 4km. And I can put my damn weights away.

* not literally, thank God - the brains would take FOREVER to wash out of the bottle holders.

Cartoon of the CyclingDiver

Been a busy month so far, as I continue to learn about management. Apparently the main side-effect of studying management and leadership theory is the need to resist the urge to go into your boss's office brandishing a textbook, pointing at it and saying "See, it says here you're doing this bit wrong".

On a more positive and less boring note, a good friend made me this rather excellent cartoon for my birthday. It now hangs in the bathroom, which has the vague theme "Sea". (The other themes in the house are:

• Hallway = Cats
• My bedroom = Travel
• Living room = Nostalgia
• Kitchen = Cross stitch
• Spare room = Drying laundry
• Cupboard under the stairs = Diving-related crap)

I especially like the diver in the top right hand corner :-)

Around and Around and Around and Around We Go

I just wrote my annual round robin newsletter to my friends and family. These are most commonly written at Christmas, and indeed mine usually are. In 2013, it's taken until April to get to a point when the dust from the selection process, the house-buying, and everything I had to put on hold and then pick up again has settled.

Or, as I put it at the start of the letter:

Hello again, and welcome to the very delayed letter for 2012. Why the delay? Let me start by saying that I nearly began this letter by copying and pasting from last year’s, which began:


“And yet again it is time for my annual letter to friends and family. This one has been somewhat delayed, since I normally write this letter during my leave between Christmas and New Year, when I can look back over the year just gone and pick out the highlights. However, this year, I spent that time preparing for an interview on January 9th 2012. For my own job. Those of you who have spoken to me recently may well be thinking “What, again?” Because, yes, I did have to do that earlier last year. It has been a year of great change.

I’ll start by saying that yes, I was successful earlier this year, so I’m still employed by Newcastle City Council, hopefully for the foreseeable future. I say “hopefully” because although I have a permanent contract with the Council, like anyone else, I can be made redundant, which unfortunately has happened to several of my colleagues in 2011…”

Were I to change the interview date to “18 January 2013” and the year at the end of the last paragraph to “2012”, this would be a good description of the start of this year.

Still, let's not be negative. I spent most of the letter extolling the joys of having my own place, and holidaying in Scotland (cycling), Malta, Crete, and Oban in Scotland (diving). This year, I'll be off to Glastonbury. So here's to the future!

Assertiveness for Divers, Part 3: Your Buddy is Not a Telepath

And the final section of this little essay, and one of the trickiest things I've had to learn as a diver: assertiveness with your buddy.

By this, I don't mean aggressiveness, or in-your-faceness. I don't mean a situation where you're telling your buddy "We have to do it my way!" Unless they're proposing something completely hare-brained, like diving to 40m on a 10l cylinder, playing with Great White Sharks, diving in caves with one torch with elderly batteries, in which case, have at it and / or, find another buddy.

For me, it's always been a more of a subtle thing. It's easy not to rock the boat, particularly if it's your regular buddy. After you've done it a few times, a buddy check can seem a bit superfluous. And you know which route you're following round the site - after all, you've dived it umpteen times before. And you're pretty sure you've both got the same goal for the dive. And you don't want to sound too much like a newbie diver who does everything the PADI manual way...

...except that, without the buddy check, you might not realise that your buddy has recently started wearing integrated weights, not a belt. Or that they've bought a new BCD with different releases. Or that one of you wants to stop and take pictures with the new camera. And when you get into the water, it turns out that the visibility is a lot poorer than you expected. And your buddy still wants to take photos, and the next thing you know when you pause to look round, they're not there and you can't see them.

I could keep going in this vein, but I think the point is coming across. Admittedly, everyone dives differently. I wouldn't try telling more experienced divers than I am what to do with their buddies. I do know, however, that it took me a while to get this point in my head, and to have the courage to risk looking like I'm overly-cautious, or that I do it too much by the book, and ask my buddies to do a proper buddy check with me. I'll also ask everyone I'm diving with to confirm the plan for the dive, anything they want to watch out for on the dive, what the plan is if we get split up, and where the car keys are. (By which I really mean "If it all goes tits-up and we have to drag you back to land, what's the quickest way to get to the mobile phone and call the ambulance?").

As for under the water... I say this goes double. Maybe it's me, but I find it can be tricky to communicate with other divers at the best of times, which is why I now carry a slate and pencil at all times. Sign language is great when it's all going well, but throw in some more vis or an unexpected problem, and trying to get the point across can be tricky. I came across this on a dive to Malta (remember that?) when my BCD shoulder valve leaked on the first dive of the holiday, and dumped all the air out of the jacket, and thus out of my cylinder.

I think there's a temptation under the water to not want to have to hold up the dive, to stop and say "Actually, I think there's a problem". This is not helped by the fact that some divers like to take off like rockets into the distance. I'll admit this is a pet peeve of mine; I really wish more divers in groups would actually stop and look around to check everyone is okay and keeping up, rather than leaving it to anyone having a problem to signal this. There can be a real temptation, when the dive leader signals "Ok?" to reply "Ok!" instead of "Problem over here!" and just think, "hey, it'll sort itself out".

I fell prey to this. I did, eventually, manage to signal my buddy that I had problems, but that was twenty minutes into the Dive of the Leaking Jacket (albeit it took me ten minutes to figure out what was happening). The first time around, I tried writing on the slate "Jacket leaking?" My buddy checked and wrote "Looks fine!" (Of course it did, I later realised - it had leaked all the air out, and thus wasn't visibly bubbling - I should have filled it with air whilst she was looking!)

It took me another five minutes to pluck up the nerve to go back to my much-more experienced buddy and try again to say "Actually, this dive really isn't working for me". This time around, I figured the solution, and showed her my air gauge, which showed I'd used about twice the air I normally would on a dive at this depth for this duration. This got the point across, she swam off to notify the dive leader, and he and I headed off at 3m to return to dry land and repair the valve.

And again, I learned a valuable lesson. Don't misunderstand me. I would never abandon my buddy or leave them to struggle, and I know they would do the same for me. But when it comes down to it, you are going to go play in an environment where, as Captain Bob Bates memorably paraphrased it, "where a single breath of the ambient atmosphere will, kind reader, fucking kill you" (Snappy Banter website.) 

The more I dive, the more I firmly believe that if you are not prepared and able to complete the dive using your own resources, if you are relying on your buddy to get you through it then, unless it's a teaching environment when your buddy is the instructor and is there to keep an eye on you, you are in a really dangerous situation. To quote another scuba website, "It's a buddy, not a crutch". You don't need to be prepared to do the dive if it all goes right. You need to be prepared to handle the dive if it goes wrong. If something happens to your buddy (leaking regulator, cutting themselves badly on some sharp wreckage, severe cramp meaning they can't swim), then you are going to have to be prepared to take charge of the dive and get the two of you safely back to terra firma.

I love diving. I also love driving my car. In both cases, I keep my skills in tune, my equipment maintained and an eye on the prevailing conditions. And because I do that, I've returned safely from every drive and every dive I've had (so far). And I find that when you include the risks in your dive plan, you can head out feeling more secure than if you ignore them, because you know what to do.

Happy diving, folks.

Assertiveness for Divers, Part 2 - Self-Assertiveness

I was originally going to write this as "Assertiveness with your buddy", followed by "Assertiveness with yourself", but found that didn't work, as the one in many ways precludes the other.

In sense, what I'm writing about is not assertiveness at all, but honesty with yourself. Perhaps self-assessment is a better term than self-assertiveness?

I suppose what I am getting at is this. I don't know whether what I'm about to describe is true for all divers; the answer is "probably not all, but some". I feel there's a tendency among newer divers to fail to take full responsibility for their safety when diving, and if this continues as a habit it can be a real danger.

The reason for this is pretty simple. When you learn to dive, you are learning to do an entirely unnatural activity in an environment that can kill you. This is not unlike learning to drive, and both activities involve a very early stage where you have little idea what the hell you are doing, you don't know what all this equipment does, and you must have absolute faith in your instructor. With diving, even more so than with driving; your instructor literally has your life in their hands. They know far more than you do, and in the interests of learning to do it safely, you must suspend relying on your knowledge, place your trust in them and let them guide you.

The main difference between the two activities is that when you pass your driving test, you will shortly afterwards find that you are in a car, on your own, with no-one there to hit the brakes for you if you bugger it up. This is the point at which you realise they make the driving test so bloody hard so that when you find yourself in this situation, your skill level will be high enough that you should be able to get yourself out of the inevitable mistakes you'll make without killing yourself or any bystanders.

With diving, however, you continue to dive with someone else, due to the buddy system. And, due to your own lack of experience, this person is more experienced than you. It can be very, very tempting to rely on them to do a lot of the hard work of planning a dive - choosing the location, timing and date, checking the tide and weather conditions, planning the route and, not least, planning what to do if it all goes horribly wrong.

In the early stages, this is pretty inevitable. It takes quite a few dives to really get the hang of managing yourself and all your gear in the water, much as it takes quite a lot of driving experience after you pass your test before you master it to the extent that you can drive the car without thinking about it. However, there comes a point where you must start to take responsibility for yourself.

Why? Simple. Because you only get one life.

I had this knocked into me when I overbreathed my regulator at 22m in the Farne Islands, with my two buddies out of sight in front. The sensation of being unable to get enough air to breathe properly with 22m of water overhead is uniquely horrible. It scared the hell out of me, and to this day it's why I'm not sure I'll ever try technical (decompression) diving. I made it back safely then by resisting the urge to hit the inflator button and rocket to the surface by repeating to myself "You are getting enough air to survive the few minutes it will take you to rise at a safe speed to the surface, and once you're up there this horrible feeling will go". The thought of having a near-panic attack with twice the water over my head and no possibility of a direct ascent to the surface scares me rigid just sitting at my desk writing this.

And from this experience, I took away a useful lesson: you have one life, which you take down there with you, and if you don't manage your dive properly, you are the person who will feel the consequences. Not your buddy. I don't blame my buddies for what happened. I should have realised that I was overexerting myself and slowed down to stop the situation before it started. But when that happened, it was me who felt like I was suffocating, me who nearly panicked, and me who, if I had panicked, would quite possibly have ended up in a hyperbaric chamber with a nasty case of the bends (or worse). Not them.

This is not me having a go at the buddy system, which I think is an essential part of recreational diving. It's me saying that I don't always know if every diver really takes on board the fact that if there's any aspect of the dive you personally didn't plan or think about, you're putting your life in the hands of the person who you trusted to do that - and, if they didn't do that, that's your safety at an unnecessary risk.

So be assertive with yourself. Ask yourself if you really know what the dive involves, what equipment and skills it requires, and whether you can handle it if it all goes wrong. If not, think twice about doing it. Because, again, you only get one life.