Diving in Head First
Yup, that's right. At the ripe young age of 11 I started diving off heights that are considered by many to be insane. At the age of 12 I took my first dive off of Butts Bridge in Herkimer, NY. A mere 45 feet from the bridge's cement railing to the 15 feet of water below. It required that you curve your body once you entered the water or you would sink your hands and head into the muck of the bottom of the West Canada Creek.
This might seem less nuts, but the problem I had was that I wear glasses because I am near-sighted. That means that I can't see anything at a distance. So ... when I'm preparing to dive from 10, 40 or 70 feet, I can't see the details of where I'm diving. To make up for this physical challenge I would drop a rock or stick or pebble and time how long it took to hit the water. That would show me how long I was to keep my dive before I brought my hands above my head to break the water upon entry.
If I didn't break the surface of the water correctly, then I would break my neck at heights of 50+ feet. I would lock my left hand around my right wrist and, depending on the hardness of the water or the height of the dive, my arms would get ripped along my body because of the intense impact.
Diving takes skill to know whether to do a swan dive (arms out to the sides with an arched back) versus a jack-knife (holding my ankles) as I dropped to the water below. In each dive style it was necessary to bring my arms into a locked position just before hitting the water. Luckily I'm a born drummer, so timing was never an issue.
I remember one time I was attempting a dive, at Trenton Falls, NY (1st hole) that required that I clear roughly 10 feet of cliff rock to make it to the water about 30 feet below. Everyone said I was crazy, but I just hooked my sneakers to the edge of the ledge I was on and used every bit of body strength I had to push off in hopes of clearing the rocks. To add a little distance to my dive I did a jack-knife so that my legs were further into the dive than if I did a swan. I missed the cliffs with about 5 inches to spare and made the dive. Needless to say, I didn't see the need to prove that one twice.
Another crazy dive was at the Train Bridge in Herkimer, NY where the river was usually on 5 feet deep near the abutment that we would jump off the 28 foot bridge into. We wore sneakers because as soon as you hit the water you were making hard contact with the rocks and had to push off to bounce back up into a standing position. When it rained this water got to about 7 feet deep with a massive current that brought the muddy water slamming against the bridge structure, making these near perfect, but insane conditions to dive off the bridge.
To dive into this small (2 foot wide) slot you had to move several railing poles to the right, on the bridge above to get the correct angle. Then I would dive into the water in a racing dive (sort of) and make sure that my hands were in front so I could push off the rock bottom to keep from smashing my head and becoming a West Canada Creek floater. That's one dive that took a lot of skill and confidence to do without ending up in the hospital or the morgue.
The reason I'm relaying this is because these dives took skill and confidence. We weren't crazy. We never drank or did anything to blur the mind so we could stay focused. The one thing this taught me was that if you combine skill and confidence you could achieve the most amazing things. I have used this same approach throughout my many years in the software industry.
I don't take on a project or start a company unless I know that I have the right team/skill. And it is through that team and the vision I develop of what we're doing that makes/keeps me confident that we will be successful - and to date we have always been able to achieve what others have thought was an act of a crazy person.
Enough said on that topic.
This might seem less nuts, but the problem I had was that I wear glasses because I am near-sighted. That means that I can't see anything at a distance. So ... when I'm preparing to dive from 10, 40 or 70 feet, I can't see the details of where I'm diving. To make up for this physical challenge I would drop a rock or stick or pebble and time how long it took to hit the water. That would show me how long I was to keep my dive before I brought my hands above my head to break the water upon entry.
If I didn't break the surface of the water correctly, then I would break my neck at heights of 50+ feet. I would lock my left hand around my right wrist and, depending on the hardness of the water or the height of the dive, my arms would get ripped along my body because of the intense impact.
Diving takes skill to know whether to do a swan dive (arms out to the sides with an arched back) versus a jack-knife (holding my ankles) as I dropped to the water below. In each dive style it was necessary to bring my arms into a locked position just before hitting the water. Luckily I'm a born drummer, so timing was never an issue.
I remember one time I was attempting a dive, at Trenton Falls, NY (1st hole) that required that I clear roughly 10 feet of cliff rock to make it to the water about 30 feet below. Everyone said I was crazy, but I just hooked my sneakers to the edge of the ledge I was on and used every bit of body strength I had to push off in hopes of clearing the rocks. To add a little distance to my dive I did a jack-knife so that my legs were further into the dive than if I did a swan. I missed the cliffs with about 5 inches to spare and made the dive. Needless to say, I didn't see the need to prove that one twice.
Another crazy dive was at the Train Bridge in Herkimer, NY where the river was usually on 5 feet deep near the abutment that we would jump off the 28 foot bridge into. We wore sneakers because as soon as you hit the water you were making hard contact with the rocks and had to push off to bounce back up into a standing position. When it rained this water got to about 7 feet deep with a massive current that brought the muddy water slamming against the bridge structure, making these near perfect, but insane conditions to dive off the bridge.
To dive into this small (2 foot wide) slot you had to move several railing poles to the right, on the bridge above to get the correct angle. Then I would dive into the water in a racing dive (sort of) and make sure that my hands were in front so I could push off the rock bottom to keep from smashing my head and becoming a West Canada Creek floater. That's one dive that took a lot of skill and confidence to do without ending up in the hospital or the morgue.
The reason I'm relaying this is because these dives took skill and confidence. We weren't crazy. We never drank or did anything to blur the mind so we could stay focused. The one thing this taught me was that if you combine skill and confidence you could achieve the most amazing things. I have used this same approach throughout my many years in the software industry.
I don't take on a project or start a company unless I know that I have the right team/skill. And it is through that team and the vision I develop of what we're doing that makes/keeps me confident that we will be successful - and to date we have always been able to achieve what others have thought was an act of a crazy person.
Enough said on that topic.
posted by Brion Carroll | 8:11 AM
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