In addition to the most intense moment of the re-exploration of the Gouffre de la Forêt de Génieux, I have had several other bad moments in my life. Generally speaking, I owe those bad moments to my differences. Even if I always do of my best in order to satisfy the expectations of other people, there is always a lot of misunderstandings. Being a stranger in a more or less permanent fashion generates a lot of difficulties, appearing very clumsy because one is troubled isn’t the main problem. Regarding some projects in which I was involved or some people I have to deal with, the only possibility has been to split up: it was impossible to communicate. Not all the bad moments are sorrowful afterwards. It is worth to describe some of those them. Those who also illustrate some trends of the society inside which we are immersed. There is a link with the notion of survey I brushed in chapter 4, for you can only see things afterwards.
1992–1997
As a student or when you practise scuba diving, you are mainly looking for diplomas. In addition to fuel the system, they are the milestones that allow to go farther. But during my doctorate, in 1992, I was already looking for something else. This is why I began dive under ice. I was not particularly looking for this activity, and I met it by chance. I just selected it because it seemed more interesting than other possibilities. During the winter, I was skiing in a massif of the French Alps named Queyras, near the city of Briançon. Very simply, I saw a poster with some information, and I contacted the club. Of course, as in many scuba diving clubs, it was quite expensive. I subscribed for a week of five dives. It was full of novelties regarding many aspects (Pictures 12.1 to 12.6). One had to use skis to reach a lake 2,500 metres above sea level. It was named was Lac Sainte-Anne. The preparation for the dive and the dive itself were very dependent upon the surroundings. For instance, the dive was possible only at precise moments during the day, when there was enough sun. In case of too-bad meteorological conditions, the dive had to be cancelled or postponed. A hole had been bored into the frozen surface of the lake. Each night, a new layer of ice formed, and we had to break it before diving. With the splints and slabs, we made strange ephemeral sculptures. We used tissue dry suits and very thick underclothes. Only hands and face were not protected by this kind of suit. We wore thick neoprene gloves for our hands and, of course, a mask for our face. As tanks, we used twin 12-litre tanks. Those tanks (Picture 12.7) were back carried and were independent regarding gas. On the contrary of many tek diving tanks, each of them had only one single valve.
I wrote we, for, after few dives, I had been asked by the team if I wanted to join them. Of course, I accepted. I still regarded me as a trainee because I was not perfect. It was a kind lifelong learning, different by many aspects from the exams I had to pass. From the point of view of motor skills, diving with tissue dry suits is something difficult. Such a suit is unstable, for it contains a lot of air. With proper underclothes, it is very efficient for thermal insulation, but you have to balance permanently. If the suit contains too much air, you are lifted, the volume increases and the lifting force increases. The contrary occurs when the suit contains less air than needed for a neutral buoyancy. Even if the perfect buoyancy is reached, one must be careful to one’s body position. In some positions, particularly the horizontal one, too much air can displace towards the legs. In such situation, an important torque (a tendency to rotate) appears. Then there is a strong trend to have one’s head below, one’s legs above, and to lose any control. A controlled ascent or descent with such a suit is also complex and interesting. Of course, we wore buoyancy compensators for safety. If such a suit had a leak, it would lack almost its buoyancy. One would quickly reach the bottom of the lake without any possibility to go up to the surface!
We used a guideline in order to be sure to retrieve the entrance hole. However, surroundings were not the same than inside sumps, so the guideline was different. It was a thick mountain rope, connected with carabiners to ice screws or rods stuck into the thick ice. Of course, it was impossible to break the ice and to find free air in case of problem; it was too thick. So a guideline was really compulsory. In addition to be used for orientation purposes, this guideline could be used for buoyancy and balance purposes. During such moments, strong efforts are exerted, and a guideline like those used in sumps couldn’t bear them. Several vertical ropes with a ballast allowed to reach the bottom of the lake, some 20 metres below the ice. It was flat, very muddy, but not like the clay one can found in some sumps. It was a wither rock flour generated by the former glacier responsible for the formation of the lake. We had made some examinations and found some living small organisms, such as worms. The ice, more than one-metre thick, had the special blue transparency that can be seen only when diving or when descending crevices inside glaciers. Even covered by snow, it allowed enough light to enter, and we did not need any kind of artificial lighting. The sounds were more faded than in sumps or in sea. Diving in such silent twilights is one of the most beautiful things I can remember. Our main activity was to initiate scuba divers to the activity. The level was very low, and I’m still very astonished that even ‘monitors’ were unable to learn quickly and properly how to use the material and to understand the surroundings. In addition, some of them were unable to ski! More precisely, we afforded two kinds of diving. We proposed to beginners an underwater tour where they have just to profit from the aesthetics, and we proposed a true learning to more advanced people. Sometimes it happened that the true learning turned to the simple assisted tour. This tour was the most interesting for the instructor, for it was very close from rescue operations or underwater work. As instructor, you have to manage your dry suit, the client’s one, and to be careful to orientation and air consumption. If something goes wrong—for example, if the client is unable to breathe at ease with the regulators—you have to bring back him/her to the entrance hole and to the free surface.
The leader of the club and another member were commercial divers. They had deeper knowledge regarding the practice of diving than all the instructors of scuba diving I had never met. It was interesting to listen to them. Sometimes I still regret not having chosen this professional activity despite the fact it is in strong regression. One of these commercial divers had told me that he had participated to dives under ice in polar regions in order to produce a film. He had told me that he had got lost inside an iceberg and that he had found the exit only by chance at the last moment. Of course, I had been very impressed. He knew also very well a former companion and boss of the famous cave diver Bertrand Léger. I once met this man who still worked as commercial diver and boss of a company. He was regarded as an expert diver. This was also very impressive.
Because of this kind of activity, we did not manage air consumption in the same fashion than during cave diving. We used special regulators, mostly the Supra Arctic of the brand Spirotechnique. This regulator was filled with glycerine, which prevented freezing in very cold water. It was not very easy to dismount or even to understand. Despite the fact it was more reliable than other materials, sometimes failures occurred, and I can remember a dive during which both regulators froze and failed. By chance, I was looking at the sediments in the bottom of the lake, not far from the entrance hole! Since, I have learnt how to pinch the hose or close the valve in order to stop this failure. Anyway, few optimisations took place because we hadn’t to go the farthest possible and at the same time to keep enough safety margins. The only optimisation was the one of doing the greatest possible number of dives before being obliged to fill again the tanks. We had a kind of cabin. It was a metallic hut carried by mechanical means at the beginning of the season, near Christmas or New Year. It was brought back down in the valley at the end of April. This allowed us to store the material, including a compressor in order to fill the tanks. In order to protect our steel cabin against the effects of wind, we had to dig the snow, to build a small wall and to firmly tether the roof. Sometimes it was necessary to bring back tanks in the valley: I have learnt how to ski with two heavy tanks on the back. Once, during such an operation, I have been the witness of an amazing incident. Two people had come in order to make underwater photography. One of them was a well-known cave diver, and the other was a professional photographer. Despite their reputation, they were not at ease with skis, and they fell during the descent. So their bags opened, letting flow a whole collection of photographic material on the white snow. I must confess I found that hilariously funny.
I was accommodated in the Refuge de la Cime (Cime’s Hut). The manager was a guide named Michel Blanchard. Since 1998, we have met less frequently, but he has a huge place in my mind and my heart. He has a huge experience, not only of mountain but also of life. He was also ski instructor and has made many difficult things in the field of mountaineering. He has encountered many times situations of danger. He was one of the few men I knew who had really been close to death and had become wise. His fashion to tell his stories was also very wise and deep. Dinners and other moments of life in his hut were very warm. There were always very interesting people from many horizons. All that has sunk in the past: with today’s safety and sanitary rules, with the current evolution of society, such a place could not afford people the same kind of atmosphere.
As member of the town council, Michel disagreed that diving under ice was allowed in the Lac Sainte Anne. As a man of mountain, sailing and other outdoor activities, he saw diving under ice as something too closed, not really a sport or perhaps just a motor sport. Perhaps he regarded that as a kind of perversion. I must confess that later I have sometimes thought the same thing than him: mountaineering is by far more interesting. Each time I hike with mountain skis, when I try to use the relief to change the direction of my track without conversion, I think of him. He is one of the characters deeply embedded in my character and who supported me in bad times.
We had had a discussion about women:
I’m still with Nathalie, and we are still happy as wife and husband. Nevertheless, he was profoundly right. We were loners. Due to our jobs and many other constraints, Nathalie and I were together only few days or even hours per week. We were no sure that we could again live permanently together.
Michel is now semi-retired, and he partly lives with a girlfriend. He has learnt by himself pottery and has become a great potter. Our last discussion was about colours and correlated degree of oxidation of cooper. It is a very difficult problem in the field of pottery. I feel by far more at ease with him than with chemical engineers and other production managers because such kinds of people have perhaps graduated from prestigious schools, but they aren’t so wise. They aren’t so autonomous. If another comparison were necessary, Michel knew very well Pierre Gilles de Gennes, a famous French physicist awarded by the Nobel Prize.
I have used the word client above, and this is one of the reasons why I leaved this club five years later. I have never been paid for that activity. All the money earned by the club was devoted to rent the cabin and other materials and also, I presume, to pay another member of the team who was unemployed. With the equivalent of almost 60 euros per dive, it was extremely difficult to defend the position of non-paid. The association was not very well managed, and I began to have problems when I asked questions in order to improve that. Perhaps there were some secrets I had to ignore? This hasn’t been the main reason to split up. I also no longer wanted to pay by myself all ski lifts and other fees. As a non-paid, I wanted to do other things, more personal and more engaged than simple initiation dives.
The possibility to reach under ice the springs who fed the lake, several hundred metres far away from the hole, had been discussed many times. The possibility to come back to the lake during the summer in order to dive it in another environment had also been discussed many times. I have been very disappointed when I realised all that was only speech, not real action. When you want really to do something, just plan it and just do it! I painfully obtained to perform some tests of rebreather. At that time, such a material was not easily available for civilians or for non-professionals, and I was already trying to build my own prototypes. Once developed and improved by a teamwork, it would have been a very good tool for shallow dives under ice over a long distance. The probability of freezing is lower than the one of classical material. But the others were not very interested. They were more interested by all that could be published in common newspapers, for instance the coming of an actor for a tour under ice.
It had been very difficult to explain my expectations to the rest of the team. I was not very communicative, and they had even believed that I was sick. But they refused to understand. Especially, they didn’t understand that I was interested by another reward than money. They believed or pretended to believe that doing initiation could be a reward. I still regard a large amount of that kind of teaching as slavery and pure boredom. Long-distance incursions or other non-public engaged dives would have been my reward, and I had not got them! So I have ceased to frequent the association and its members since 1998. Resigning has been very difficult, and I have thought to stop definitively any kind of diving. Several years later, I have read in a newspaper that an accident had happened and that the club was closed. I have come back to the lake with mountain skis, and I have seen that there was no longer any hole, cabin or anything related to dive. There was just a flat ice surface covered by immaculate snow.
Things have not been made, hopes and expectations have been betrayed, and I have wasted a lot of time. This is why despite the numerous difficult or deep things I have learnt, despite the huge beauty and the deep aesthetic of things, I remember diving under ice as a bad moment. This isn’t only a question of killing someone’s dreams. It is foremost that, when you are different from other people, you cannot expect they will progress at the same pace. You cannot expect they have the same motivations or the same aims. Common evolutions and common aims exist mainly inside the mass. When you are out of the mass or when you want to go out of the mass, you must accept the differences and anticipate their consequences. I hadn’t fully anticipated.
1993–1995
The keyword modern age appears in previous chapters. Explicitly, as in the essay from Hannah Arendt entitled ‘Tradition and the Modern Age’, it means an epoch where things, ideas and persons have no longer any intrinsic value. All is networked, and the value is the result of exchanges. ‘Relationship’ is compulsory. Even if we are since a long time in a world that globally is this modern age, tradition crumbles in a progressive fashion. In other words, one can always find situations or places where tradition remains but is to disappear. This is very analogous to the thawing of snow in mountain. When the days become longer and longer, when the sun shafts heat the ground, the white coat crumbles. It disappears piece by piece. One can still find some snow but only in places that become smaller and smaller. They also become scarcer and scarcer. In some occasions, I have been in such places, on the brink. I have not only been a witness but also an actor, and at least two times, I have fallen.
After my doctorate, I have been a teacher in a great college in the northeast of France during the year 1993–1994. Perhaps because the progress of the European construction, some regulations were in quick evolution. Behind those regulations, without having at that time the keyword modern age in mind, I forbade changes into the French society itself. For instance, an evolution in the rules regarding civil liability can induce changes in everyday life, even in politeness or in the content and spirit of teaching. The content has progressively become less important, and the form has taken an increasing importance. I was preparing myself to an exam to become first-grade monitor (Brevet d’État d’Éducateur Sportif Premier Degré) of scuba diving. I had the strange feeling to be in a very unstable situation, like riding on the crest of a wave before being flooded by the billow. I felt very well that I had to obtain the exams that interested me before it was too late. This is the reason why since this epoch up to 2004, I have always hurried to prepare and pass the exams. Regarding this facet of world, I have already written that I am a very conservative man. I am at right wing because I think the content is the most important and must always prevail over the form. Being permanently in hurry when you are young, when you have still a lot of things to learn, is something awful. You have by far not finished to build yourself, and you are obliged to do things as you were older. In order to obtain diploma, I had also to present a first aid certificate. Obtaining this one has been the most difficult, for it was centred on form. It was very far from the reality of diving problems, so I had a very bad moment.
After this year as a teacher, I made my National Service in the west of France, in Brittany (Picture 12.8 & 12.9). We were in a very regulatory atmosphere, and it was difficult to make interesting things. In a paradoxical fashion, sport was not very well regarded. It was not easy to do some running or to go to the swimming pool. Nevertheless, I decided to prepare the exam of second-grade monitor (Monitorat Fédéral Second Degré) of scuba diving. Because some comrades were preparing other exams and needed authorisations to go out, I succeeded to obtain the same authorisation. When the meteorological conditions and the waves were good, I swam many kilometres along the shore (Pictures 12.10 to 12.13). I remember having gone out even in the presence of important waves (Picture 12.13). The most dangerous moment was just when entering into the water because there was a risk to be projected on the rocks. Despite the risk, these moments within the ocean remain marvellous. In my mind, because I opened a letter when facing the ocean, I cannot dissociate them from contemporary bad moments.
During the beginning of the summer 1994, when passing the exam of first-grade monitor, I had met a girl. She had let me seduce her, and we had begun a relationship. It was not easy to be together, not only because she was working near Paris and I was in the west of France. The problem was also that, except the naval base, I had no other place to live than in my parents’ house. She had split up with another boyfriend some months before, and she had no other place than a small flat near her parents’ flat. So our relationship was very influenced by our respective families. More than only influence, I had the feeling it was also a question of conformity, judgement and future expectations. She was issued from commercial prep classes and had already worked abroad. My parents were more than satisfied with her social rank. They were also surely impressed and disturbed. They had perhaps a feeling of inferiority. My father had been pupil in a school of boiler making after what he had become electro-technician. Later, by lifelong learning, he had become engineer. My mother had been bookkeeper in chief up to my birth. The parents of my girlfriend were of a higher rank. Her mother was a doctor, and her father was an engineer and director of a public utility. I was a graduate from a first-rank school, but as a teacher, I have probably never been regarded as a reliable man. In addition, I was three years younger than Isabelle. Therefore, our relationship was obviously not in accordance with standard expectations. After ten months, she split up.
I have been very affected. Splitting up is very often the culmination of many elements, which accumulate up to a threshold. Some of them are very private and not fully conscious. As autumn leaves, they are rather sweet than bitter. They definitively belong to the world of shadow and oblivion where nothing is painful. Some other elements cannot be forgotten, for they are totally outside the realm of love. They just pervaded and perverted it as oil can mar a beach. Not seducing someone or not being seduced by someone because of his/her social rank is perfectly acceptable, especially when it appears on people’s face or look or in their speech and ideas. This is a right to choose who you want. Taking into account the social rank afterwards is different. This is where career and private life mix and shouldn’t mix. In other words, whatever I was inside, I was not the proper person for a sustained relationship because of my family and because of my studies.
My first mood has been sadness, and I carefully tried not to propagate this sadness around myself. I tried to keep normal relationships with other people. It was quite uneasy, but I succeeded.
Several months later, my reflection had been fed by this event, and I have changed my outlook on love and life. Some people had perhaps tried to ‘improve’ their social position or prove their worth by looking for another girl of high social rank, but I moved to a different direction. I lost any belief in a firm correlation between social rank and personal worth. As long as the analogy with someone who had religious beliefs and has changed or lost them is obvious, I became a dissent.
I met Nathalie only later, and at that time, my close family was only my parents. It would be easier to enumerate what your parents have not done for you than to reckon what they have given to you. Despite the fact my father was perhaps too severe, I owe him many intellectual and practical skills. In addition to the access to interesting scientific books, he has taken time to explain me how to use tools in a safe fashion. Other fathers would probably have forbidden playing with tools. The older you are, the least easy it is to acquire manual skills, and I would probably be definitively awkward with tools and unable to build my rebreathers. My mother was perhaps not enough severe, but I owe her during my early childhood to have been immersed in a very rich material environment. I have a dim remembrance of many ramblings, many colours, many shapes. My parents lived at 30 kilometres from Paris. At that time, it was countryside and I had many contacts with nature. This was a merry part of childhood. Growing out of a large city has been a great fortune. Very probably, I wouldn’t be the same if I were born in the centre of Paris, Lyon or Marseilles. I have realised that existing in a world where nature and matter are less important than the money I can earn or my wife’s social rank is a permanent bad moment. Having met and lost Isabelle was just the tip of the iceberg. My current feelings about social relationships are quite well described by this poem:
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
— Emily Dickinson
1995–2008
From August 1995 to January 2008, I have been teacher of physics in second year of prep class in a college in Paris region. During this period, I have finished my surf on the wave I described above. After that, I have been flooded. At job, it was very difficult to socialise. I did not agree with social evolutions where form prevailed on content, whereas a majority of colleagues had the opposite opinion. I have been progressively pushed out of the way because of that. I had a very different personal life (is it an offence against some French regulation?) and also because I was faster than them to do the same task (they were jealous).
The turning point has occurred when expectations regarding pupils have become also more centred on form than content. Even if it would be very easy for someone else to perform less work, to wrap it with a better fashion, I have never been very able to do such things. I belong to an ancient and primeval world where it is normal for students to be present, where it is normal for them to learn their lessons and to do their homework, as I have done mine when I was student in prep classes. At the beginning of 2008, my students have organised a strike. They probably have been helped by some of my ‘colleagues’ of prep classes, and they succeeded to produce something very credible. Inside a college, such a strike is illegal; nevertheless, I have been obliged to move to another position in another smaller city with a reduced salary. Among my ancient colleagues of the college, only one is still a friend. It is easier to forget the other than to forgive them. Sylvain was a teacher not in prep classes, and I regard him as a very close friend. (During 2005, we went to Libya for one week; and despite the evolution of this country, I have still a thin hope we could make another journey there. This is why I don’t tell our journey.) He has been obliged to find another position too. For those who were teachers in prep classes, Nathalie didn’t exist. One of them has even written about myself: ‘He lives alone, and when he has a problem, he has nobody to speak with!’ Despite their position or their social rank, it is very difficult to regard such people as very brilliant. They were naïve and idealistic, and they probably have never read Le Prétendu Humanisme Moderne (The So-called Modern Humanism) from the well-known anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
I have met my future wife Nathalie during the end of the spring 1996. She was neither of first social rank nor a top model, but we have begun a relationship, which still continued 18 years after. This is because we feel at ease together. Another less-obvious reason closely regards social rank. We are two characters out of normality, I mean social normality. Being outsiders rendered us close to each other. This has probably strengthened our relationship too.
During the thirteen years spent in that college near Paris, I have also encountered very bad moments in my caving life. The two have probably interacted and accelerated my fall. I was initiator of cave diving and wanted to become monitor. As a conservative man, I have always regretted the crumbling of teaching into many grades. Therefore, I saw more the initiator as a transient and probationary state than a permanent one. At that time, in order to become a monitor, one had to produce a paper file that indicated what we have done in the field of cave diving and caving. One had also to be examined from a practical point of view by other monitors during training sessions. Among the criteria, one had to have performed long-distance dives, at least thousand metres from the entrance. One had to have performed deep dives and to have used gas mixes. A minimal number of dives in a minimal number of sumps was required. I do not remember precisely how many, but it was of the order of 50 or 100. Participation to federal boarding or commissions was also taken in account.
The year 2003 was a time of conflict because the French Federation of Speleology and the federation in charge of diving disagreed about the convention that allowed, among other things, the same diplomas to be valid inside both federations. I became doomed when I organised an initiation training during the spring 2003. A she-monitor from another region participated in order to evaluate me. Nothing has been said during the session or shortly after, for instance during debriefing. But she phoned me more than one month after the session to explain me that I was dangerous:
Obviously, we had not the same level of thought. I have also participated to a national training session during August 2003. As a non-monitor, I was not allowed to lead dives deeper than 30 metres. I remember very well a shallow sump with a narrow entrance where my pupil has panicked beyond the narrow. I succeeded to help her to pass back the narrow part and to go out despite her panic. I had all my background of diving under ice to help me, and I am not sure that someone else, even authorised to the deepest dives, would have been able to take care of her. I encountered another problem when I was charged to teach something like ‘dangers of the surroundings’. I had prepared a genuine document, with some written parts and some parts where the pupils had to make notes by themselves (an active learning is always better). Of course, I had submitted this document to the rest of the staff before my lesson. Again, afterwards, I was reproached for not using ‘standard documents’ and other ‘already-existing documents from the commission’. Several weeks later, I received a letter that explained that I was not accepted as a monitor.
This letter recapitulated several things that had nothing to do with level and skills and were more related with politics. It dealt also with a certain kind of ‘deontology, which, more than ten years later, I have still not understood. It is worth to unveil a part of this letter, for it is characteristic of this epoch and of the aforementioned wave that flooded me.
Firstly, I was reproached an attempt to publish a technical article (about the use of guideline) in a review. But other articles had already been published in many reviews, and this review has published many other articles about cave diving. If something was wrong about the content of this article, what was it?
Secondly, one explained me that teaching inside the cave diving commission was based upon a common friendship and upon the share of common ideas. What is the need for a federation if friendship is enough and if everybody shares the same ideas? The word deontology was written but without any further development. What was wrong in my behaviour? What would have been the future negative consequences for trainees?
Thirdly, I was reproached to be publicly interested in gas mixes and rebreathers. One had asked me to postpone a training session I wanted to organise. There already existed books and articles about gas mixes, and training sessions had already been organised. Why stop? Moreover, I have been treated in an unfair fashion. During the training session, with the large approbation of the rest of the team, one of the other initiators had brought the rebreather he developed and showed it. It was a large apparatus, with many blinking LEDs. Regarding pedagogy and prevention, why was it more interesting than a gas mix training session?
Fourthly, of course, one explained me that I was not monitor, this was not a punishment and this was a call to further investment. I had already taught. I had already organised training sessions. Wasn’t it an investment? What other kinds of investments were expected?
Fifthly, there was an invitation to participate to a meeting about teaching; and one explained me again that I had to be invested, neutral, open and, again, respectful of deontology. I have always been less interested in meetings than in real work. That was too much. I have firmly and immediately decided to stop any investment and to resign. I have been very disappointed. I had wasted a lot of time. In addition, doing huge efforts to socialise with those people had been very tiresome. This is why it has been a very bad moment.
I think I have made a mistake, but it has nothing to do with the required technical and pedagogical level to become a monitor. I did my best to defend some values I had learnt when I was a beginner. I defended values regarded as very important for safety and high-level practice. This led me to repeat what elder cavers and cave divers thought or said. But I didn’t repeat what all the elders said. I only repeated what a part of my former teachers said. The wave arrived, and some of these teachers have realised that either they had to change or they would quickly sink. I have perhaps been a foil for their preservation. I have realised later that in our actual world, saying things the majority wants to hear is more important than saying the truth or interesting things.
However, I think that focusing on the information expected by a majority is a positive feedback loop that can be very harmful. At a larger scale than my insignificant cave diving, it has many times proved its dangerousness for mankind. The totalitarianisms of the last century are a shallow caricature of this very perverse and seething mechanism. I believe that it is related to what physicists call phase transitions and more precisely to percolation transitions. Such a theory is too difficult to explain here, and it is out of the range of this book. In a simplest fashion, I am very sorry but the sky remains blue even if the majority says that it is red! I will ever refuse to say that it is red if it isn’t!
The same kind of scenario happened when, after being an initiator of caving, I tried to become a monitor of caving. I have not been accepted for dim reasons. Especially, my speed of equipment has never been criticised. I must also precise that at this epoch, the norm during the exam was to reach a depth of at least 400 metres underground and to equip quickly a lot of pits. Due to huge rains and water flowing underground during the session, nobody has reached more than about 250 metres. However, some candidates have obtained their diploma. What was their worth?
All those failures had shattered me. This is linked with what I encountered at job because of an obvious reason: some people have felt that it was the right moment to organise something to definitively push me out of the way. Once again, it has been dim and gloomy. For instance, when I have sent a bailiff to certain people to ask them precise questions about my so-called failures, I had never got any answer.
I regard all the progress of the wave as an outrage. I have lost almost all my beliefs; only callousness, estrangement and irony can remain after such a hard journey. Nevertheless, I have never ceased to practise cave diving. Those bad moments have strengthened my willingness rather than blown it out. I have become tougher. Those bad moments have also strengthened my relationship with my wife Nathalie. She and cave diving are the two pillars of my terrestrial life.