Challenge Question

[allen]

If you need to leave a directional cookie, you could have notches on your cookies. That way only you and your buddy know which direction the cookie points. To everyone else it is just a cookie.

[Jay]

After ruminating over this thread for a while I am also starting to lean towards a directional bail-out cookie. Bail-out is the key word here. There should be no reason why a good team should ever need one, which is all the more reason to have one. A good buddy may push their gas limits to do a buddy search and the bail-out cookie could help prevent a close call.

During some dives, teams may also agree to split up for exploration or other reasons and it would be useful then also, knowing your buddy has completted the agreed upon tasks and has exited or headed toward a predetermined spot in the direction of the exit.

[Tony]

Could be something simple... but it has to be a large enough 'notch' to be able to feel it in low to no vis...

[Cindy]

1. Everything is dynamic and nothing is ever the best it could be.

2.personally i like the idea of a line arrow with a strobe and timer....
3. it will have "Skip" written in bold letters.

4.learn to dive the cave, not the line.

(I know we all know this, but just thought I'd remind everyone.)

-skip

5.PS: Cindy, now look what your challenge question has created! Cookie Monsters!

1. I totally agree, that's why we started all this...
2. Put the strobe on your buddies butt, it will work better!
3. I'm sure that will make it ALL better! LOL... Paramont in your thoughts should be that todays explorations will provide tomorrows dive sites. Run your lines were you can do accurate survey, don't make things too confusing for yourself or others. Run them so people can exit smoothly and not damage the cave and don't get killed in the process. The rest will sort itself out in time. Besides in Cow Crap cave you are the King!
4. Honey I want to see you do that in most of the caves I dive. Come on down and I'll take you to one or two, you can work on that theory.
5. You just shot my diet....Thanks...Cindy

[BabyDuck]

in the event i'm ever in the #### and it would be helpful, my cookies are marked in a way that would be directional to me & my buddy, and non-directional to anyone else. i burned one edge into a blob.

remind me to tell you the 'i slapped a yankee over the way i marked my arrows' story sometime...

You brought it up. Let's hear it.

[BabyDuck]

okey doke...

a bud (suthnbelle on sb [and here, but only to read, not sure if she's ever posted]) and i went to 'beneath the sea' at the meadowlands last spring. we were sitting in a bar talking to some friends of hers from new york/new jersey and drinking right smart.

we were talking about marking arrows. i had tried that supposedly waterproof slightly puffy paint (in pink, of course, on my pink arrows that wayne gave me...nother story involving motorcycles...).

well, after about 10 dives, it started coming off whole. just hadn't stuck well to the slick arrow surface. so the four of us were talking about different ways to mark arrows. i don't have a drill, most people notch & how would i know mine from any others, just a general conversation.

and someone else comes up. he knows the guys, but not mel or i. he had been drinking right smart, too, and joined in the conversation. he was horrified that i had tried paint on my arrows.

'i can't believe you did that, that was stupid' 'your instructor should never have let you in the water with those' 'i would have told you to go home and mark them right or never come back' 'that will kill you someday' and the biggie - 'your instructor must really suck!'

so i said 'i agree with you, the paint didn't work, we're thinking of other ways to mark, here' then 'ok, i get the point, you can stop now' then 'this conversation is over' then 'shut the #### up!'...

then i slapped him. one of the guys got a pic of him shaking his finger in my face, just before i did. and hey, he shut up! only time i've ever hit someone.

i've come to the realization that the thing i don't like about stereotypical yankees (and i've married 2 yankees, so it's the stereotype, not necessarily the reality of course...) is that they have to argue about #### that ain't their business.

later i told mike o'leary that i defended his honor. he said i didn't have to, but i think secretly he was glad...

[Angie Reim]

Bahahahahahaha! Now that's a good story! I bet his eyes got big.

[Angie Reim]

We need a new purpose build cookie made. It needs to be Round like a non directional then on one side have a point to show direction but be distiguishable from a line arrow, Which should NEVER NEVER EVER point any way but out to the nearest exit, It should be White and about 3 inches around so you can write your inicials nice and big.
The only time you use it is to mark "This is Me, I found the line here and I am going this way." What do you think?

Curt

We do, it's called a clothspin. I was taught to install the clothspin on the side of the tie-in that you traveled.

Dale

Ya know....I still use clothespins too. You can put your initials on the big plastic type. You can wrap the line around it in a heay flow. I think my buddy was picked on me a bit, but he also mentioned that's how he knows that it's my tie-off when we're are on separate teams at the same time in the same cave, etc.

Reminds me...I need to initial some more of those. They be cheap but they don't last forever. Some get lost. etc.

[brianstclair]

That just reminded me... You can always take two clothespins, clip one to the line and then clip the second to the first so that it points whichever direction you want. That'll give YOU directional information, but no one else.

Brian