SeaJayInSC
New member
Wow... They were that way to you? Sorry to hear it. Not all DIR divers are that way.
The hose concept was pioneered by Bill Hogarth Main, so it's called a "Hogarthian" rig. It's the standard in "technical" diving, and especially found in overhead or cave diving. It's been made popular by Global Underwater Explorers, which is a certifying agency like PADI or NAUI. In GUE, they call the concept of their diving "Doing It Right" or DIR.
DIR divers often appear to be zealots, especially the new ones. We jokingly refer to ourselves as "The Dark Side" because most DIR divers dive exclusively black gear. As gear fades from sun and use, black is still black... Pink turns to flesh, blue turns to periwinkle, and neon green turns to lima bean... So black tends to be the color of choice for most divers that dive all the time and tend to wear out their gear. Hence - "The Dark Side."
There's other humor, too, in DIR... When I first joined GUE, I called them "DIR Nazis," and the WKPP "The Third Reich."
When someone is wearing gear that makes them look silly, we call it a "Rule 6 violation," which implies that there's rules #1-#5... Which there isn't. Kinda an inside joke, really.The antithesis of a DIR diver is jokingly called a "stroke" because whenever a standard, recreational diver gets around a DIR diver, they tend to try to qualify themselves with outlandish accomplishments... "I invented scuba diving," or, "I used to be a Navy Seal," or, "I dove to 900 feet yesterday..." Since they're stroking their own egos, we call them "strokes." By definition, a "stroke" is anybody with an unsafe attitude, which actually can be a DIR diver or a non-DIR diver. An example of an unsafe attitude would be someone who does not care for their gear properly, drinks lots of beer prior to the dive, or does things repeatedly that you see are going to someday get him in a lot of trouble while diving.
...Anyway, DIR is a minority group within the minority group of scuba divers. Some of them appear to be "holier than thou," and some of them don't. Don't let one person's crappy attitude give you a certain impression of the entire group.
The Hogarthian rig is exemplified on page 8 of the PADI Advanced Open Water manual, so it's not like it's a DIR-only thing. The idea behind it is that a donating diver donates the regulator that's surely working to an out-of-air diver... The one that's in his mouth. From there, the donator would switch to his own backup reg, which is necklaced around his neck. Theoretically, this can be done without using his hands, which is a tremendous advantage when your hands are already occupied by a scooter, a light, a reel, slate, and a set of tools.
It also has the advantage that it's the same setup that most doubles use, and most rebreathers, too... So the idea is that if you dive Hogarthian, you don't have to learn new stuff to switch to more advanced forms of diving.
A regulator donated from someone using a Hogarthian rig has a whopping seven feet of hose on it, which is necessary to swim out of a cave or shipwreck if you have to leave single-file though a restriction. Anything shorter won't allow for the divers to swim single-file, which can make it impossible to exit a restriction in an OOA situation.
...So yeah, I can see how someone would tell you that if you were diving a "standard" "short" hose setup, they wouldn't dive with you... After all, you're not equipped in many situations to donate and keep your buddy alive.
That said, it's obviously not an issue if you aren't diving overhead or staged decompression diving.
There are positive and negative ways of explaining it to someone... To be abrasive about it is not the right way.
Sorry you had that experience.
The owner of 5th D is Andrew Georgitis... He's a great guy and very cool. He's also an excellent GUE instructor. I took my first GUE classes with him. Talk to him.
Life events..hmm, married, new home, 2 week old chitlin...yeah, that'll do it. 
