Quote: (Originally Posted by
Joe)
What you THINK you will do and what you ACTUALLY do when you are 2 breaths and 30 seconds away from the Grim Reaper are often times very different. Until you have walked in those shoes you do not know.
Absolutely. Okay, I have a little confession to make here. It's really pretty silly, but I think it illustrates the point.
Sometimes, things become so routine that you are doing them without thinking about them. As a result of this, here is what happened to me one day when I was practicing a solenoid stuck open drill.
So, I am swimming along, monitoring PO2, opening and shutting the valve per the drill. As I am doing so, I am thinking: "What would I do next if this were the real thing?" I am pretending that I have a long passage to swim before I can go to the surface.
Through rote memorization, I am touching around my equipment, making sure of being able to reach my OC regulator, working the valves, etc. I decide to look down and take a quick glance at my gauges. Really, I did this without thinking about it. (After all, I am already accustomed to looking at them every so often during the dive normally anyway.) I mean, I knew that I had plenty of gas before the dive. However, I looked down without thinking about it.
"Okay, no problem, 2200 psi of diluent. Let's look at the O2 gauge. What?! Zero psi!!!!!" For a second there, my brain forgot that I had the valve shut and all gas out of the line because I was working the valve at the tank with my hand. I mean, on the one hand, I knew that I was in the middle of the drill. But, on the other hand, the mind expects to look at the gauge, seeing that one has plenty of gas as during a normal dive before the rote memorization mind recalls: "Hey, idiot, you are in the middle of the drill. Of course your gauge should read zero. Duh!!!!"
For that second there, my mind was racing.
Don't think you will handle things so cooly as you do during a drill when it is the real thing and you grasp the possible outcome of the situation.