What event made you head toward/away from DIR?

[Dive time]

Diving is support to be fun, Right.     I got into diving because I was having a ball diving and exploring fun new underwater sites.  I have taken all sorts of classes and I find that just about everyone I know has a slightly different way of doing things.  I will confess that I do not dive DIR or any other style.  I dive my style, and I will add just about anything that works.  Anything that doesn’t work I don’t use.  I don’t care how useful it may be to others, or if other people have liked it a lot. If I can’t use it then I don’t.  I have however used many things that do work.  One example, I like the way DIR has lights attacked onto the harness, but I don’t take it to the extreme and bungee everything or have cut-a-ways on everything.  I like hard points.  I know that somewhere out there some DIR Guy is saying I’m a Stroke,  > but I’ve been diving some fun places and have never had a problem with my gear getting stuck, instead it seems that the whole rig will get hung up on something or in tight places on shipwrecks, and always in a place I can’t see and can’t reach.  ??? Don’t think for a minute that my rig is not tight, and very organized because it is.  Care must be taken to place thinks were (1) they are useful, (2) they are out of the way, and (3) they don’t block other pieces of gear.  DIR is a tool to use.  Add it to your configuration if it works for you, and use only those parts that work well.  In a cave system your gear is different than if you are diving Great Lakes Shipwrecks.  Doubles, Singles, or CCR configurations, bail out, and just plain diving is different for each diving application.  Only a fool would say that one way is the best and end all to end alls.  CCR diving is another whole topic, but related to DIR because CCR is most defiantly outside DIR and yet CCR will give you longer bottom times, better deco, more bailout options, a lighter rig, and gas consumption DIR couldn’t even dream of having.  So you tell me, if I dive CCR and dive deeper, longer, and with more bailout options than any DIR convert,  Is that a bad thing?   :-\  And If someone comes to me and starts spouting all sorts of stuff they know nothing about, because they THINK they dive DIR.  That’s more Entertaining than anything, because I have seen these same people in the water and they are anything but qualified divers.  I have also seen DIR guys who are very qualified, and most of them to there credit dive, and don’t talk crap.