2008-04-25 23:07:59′, ‘2008-04-26 03:07:59’, ‘
Eddie and I joined the Cub Scouts to sleep on the USS Torsk, a WW2 submarine that is set up as a Museum piece in the Inner Harbor at Baltimore. A group of kids and their parents sleeping in close quarters on tiny bunks stacked 3 high surrounded by metal. Originally I did want to attempt to sleep next to other loud snoring people. But I found out that ear plugs are actually rated by the amount of sound that they block. So I researched on the internet and found some that had a maximum sound blocking rating of 32. I ordered a bunch of them and put them to the test when Paul and I shared a Canvas tent at Cub world. Paul’s tree-rattling snores did not disturb me so I agreed to get sardined in the Sub for the ultimate snoring earplug test. One feature that the submarine museum wanted the adults to experience was “Standing Watch” throughout the night to protect the Scouts from raiding pirates. We were to each pick an time during the night for our hour of standing watch. I drew 5 am. Other adults who drew 1,2,3 and 4 am wanted to trade with me but I figured I could handle 5 am. I picked a middle bunk that had lots of space between me and the bunk above me. I ended up with a woman above me and another below me. Sounds great, but the whole experience left a lot to be desired. It turns out that I accidentally kicked the lady above me a couple of times but she did not retaliate. Another man did not pick as wisely. He complained in the morning that his nose kept touching the stainless steel bunk above him. He also said he did not get much sleep. Something I discovered while attempting to sleep in the skinny little bunks on the submarine was that the bunks padding are covered by NaugaHide. I found out that after about 15 minutes of contact with bare skin the NaguaHide will begin to bond with human skin and it will strongly resist separating as it would yank on every exposed nerve in the skin that it had assimilated. Since I felt the need to turn over about every 20 minutes, I would notice an intense pain as the NaugaHide would separate from my skin. This tended to wake me up a little. But Not enough for me to want to worm my way out of the bunk and put on a shirt. Each time I rolled over I kept anticipating that it had reached 5 am and I would be woken up to stand my watch. But it turns out that the lady who had 4 am did not wake me up. She felt that she could not get back to sleep so she did not wake me The submarine captain lady had warned us that she would be waking us up at 6:30 am by sounding the Ah-oog-Ga horn. This had all the kids so freaked out that they all woke up at 6:15. When the horn went off, I was disappointed that it did not have a speaker in the sleeping quarters. So it was not all that loud, but I was awake anyway.