[Paddlewise] Safety legislation

> Alas, they do die, too!

Yeah.  Then they've gotten liberty AND death.

I spent many years on a dive-rescue team.  We performed both climbing and 
water rescues.  Kids going rock-climbing during an ice storm, trespassing to 
get to the really cool cave in the cliff so they could drink beer, leaving 
the geeky-looking PFD in the ski locker while they ran the overpowered boat 
into the wing dam at 25 knots or capsized the canoe into Spring's rushing 
high water with blue jeans, tennies and a sweatshirt that made them a cross 
between a Smurf and Resusci-Anne when we finally got them out.

I took pride in giving back to my community and working with the best Team 
of men and women with whom it has ever been my privilege to work.  But my 
enthusiasm gave way to a feeling that said, "Why are we risking our 
lives?" -- and making value judgments about both the few rescued and the 
many needlessly dead.  When those thoughts intrude, the unhesitating 
willingness to go into harm's way to help gives way to a cynicism that has 
no place in that kind of work.  I was fortunate in that I was able to 
recognize the beginnings of burnout and compassion fatigue in myself before 
it affected my work with the Team, and I took my leave.

When we did a recovery I always found a job that would take me as far as 
possible from the newly-bereaved family when they began that process 
everyone calls "closure" and which was all too often the only thing we could 
give them to go along with the rigid cold thing we found that was so 
recently their kid.  But it was never far enough, because there is no way to 
be out of earshot; even now I am occasionally awakened by that sound that 
shatters a peaceful night's sleep.

No.  You cannot legislate common sense and everybody knows their limits 
which usually include some degree of immortality.

But everyone who loves to live life on the edge should hear, if only once, 
the noise a mother makes when we start to rinse the gear.

Jim the washed-up Divemaster
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