Somebody asked me about being a Police Diver

I was having a small break today at Nick's Inn with my partner Sizzles when a guy that everyone knows locally came up and asked, " Hey aren't you two on the URT?". And of course I would never miss the opportunity to break into a lengthy conversation about this fact and I sure as hell wasn't going to pass this chance up today..so I replied " Well yes we are, are you in need of our services??", hoping to be able to get off the highway and into DIVE MODE!!!! That was not too be the case though..he started talking about how he just received his open water certification while he was down South this past winter and he'd like to voluneer if needed to dive with us. All knowing Sizzles just gave me one of his look's and shook his head as he knew what was to come next. Seeing I never know what to say, ( Yeah Right!!) I of course started in immediately with the "hey great" I can always use a new set of hands to hoist a decomposing body into a bag, or help with a new set of eyes to find some small pieces of evidence at the bottom of a lake covered in loon shit. I then went on to how Sizz and I recovered a guy that had been UW for 3 YEARS and when I grabbed hold of his arm , IT CAME OFF!!! Then I went on to extoll the virtues of 83lbs. of full turn out gear to make the dive in, me it's actually 95 lbs. as I really like to be negatively bouyant if I have to deal with any kind of current, but hey buddy, you wear all of this stuff on a dive and trust me, you'll be one hell of a chick magnet. The woman just love divers, (even when every inch of your body is covered!!) LOL!!! He went on to say that he thought it was just the basic SCUBA gear we used, along with a drysuit of course because of the cold water, and how friend's of his took their Advanced Open Water dive courses and started a salvage and recovery business out of the back of their boat shop in Ontario. I then reminded him of the fact that THOSE kind of divers are the kind that WE recover. It's funny how some people have this misconception that just because they have a C-Card for diving they can do anything now. When in reality your first C-Card is just like a learner's permit for driving a car. It's the first step!
Seeing as how summer is just around the corner I wanted to mention this as a lot of you may dive or have friends that dive, please.. no un-needed risks!! Do what you are able to do, not what you think you can do!!! Trust me, Sizzles and I DON'T want to make new dive buddies by getting you from a lake, onto a stokes, and into a bag!!!