You Need One Too!

Your gear isn’t the best. Cool your jets.

You have spent hundreds of dollars on regulators or wings, or thousands of dollars on lights or drysuits, to say nothing of $10+ grand on rebreathers or scooters. And when you drop that kind of coin you’ve got to justify it to yourself. Sunk cost.

But you know what? There are shortcomings to your kit. And that’s OK.

I’m sure you like it. That it works for you. That you find it intuitive and comfortable and that it suits your purposes. I’m sure that it’s exciting to own and fun to use and you’ll have lots of happy times underwater with it. Which is why you got it in the first place and what makes the whole endeavor worthwhile. It is best, perhaps, for you.

I get it. I’m a gear geek myself. I sometimes wonder if half the reason I enjoy this sport is because I get to tinker with esoteric shit and build my own kit out of parts from Home Depot and McMaster. I’ve got lots of lights and scooters and drysuits. A metric ton of regs. A couple of rebreathers.

I love all my stuff. Love it. Bought a house in Mexico which is, itself, dive gear where I can hoard all my precious dive gear. And I want more. Of all of it.

And all the things I have and all the things I ever get will have strengths and weaknesses. Things I like and things I don’t. Great design elements and questionable design elements.

And that’s OK. If there actually was any one piece of kit that perfectly mirrored the Platonic ideal of dive gear then there would be no reason for variety or choice.

I’m glad you like your stuff. But do you really need to browbeat everyone who will listen about how it is the greatest thing invented since the spoked wheel? Who are you trying to convince?

I do like having a shrine full of old, broken, useless, and/or stupid dive gear, though. And I do wish there was a UTD manifold in there; that, at least, is one thing that is all shortcoming and no strength.