Some things about BMan make sense, now.

.
.
While I have been grumbling about being laid out and feel a bit squashed and flayed, I remember back to another time I felt like this.  After my first tour on a submarine.  It was a three month detachment, and change.  While we didn't have to take everything we needed to eat, we had to take everything else we would need for three months and a bit more maybe.  Tobacco, clothes of various sorts, and shoes/boots, several pair of glasses, any treats, reading material, even extra personal tp in case we ran out(!), and who knew what else.  Being the first tour I really didn't have a good idea about what to take.  Other guys offered advice but their notions, of course, and interests, were quite different.  Come to think of it, a multimedia ebook reader/movie viewer and a store of memory chips would have made much of that far easier.  The only fear with that would have been breakage.  Theft was simply not a problem on submarines.  Such a man was ferreted out and all but crucified, then kicked out of sub duty.  Especially since, if you needed... all you had to do was ask.  Someone would... help.  Or I found that to be the case.  The days were twelve hours of work, six down, then it would start over.  Only the Captain had 9 to 5, not even he had a guarantee of that.  Running drills two out of three sleep cycles didn't help.  

Technically, by rank, I didn't have to do some of the things others did.  I didn't have to, for example, work in the galley.  I put in for it anyway, and am glad I did.  It was a social thing, on the sub, and earned me some decent bona fides up and down the chain, minus the chief to whom I had been assigned.  Because while I wasn't technically inclined, he could use my rank and technical mos so as to supervise those who had the skills but not the rank (if that ruffled feathers from time to time).  Easy job for me, but as I said, I was there to help, and "join the club", which I did.  I was pleased to have helped in the galley though.  We had one of the few cook master chiefs on our sub.  When the rest of us were busting our butts, really busy, and doing our best, I saw him see something he didn't like, look around and see that we were giving 110%, so rather than yell or reassign, I saw him get a bucket and some stuff, go down on his knees, and scrub an area of the floor that just wasn't up to his level of fitness.  That made my whole sacrifice in the galley worth it.  Oh, I got "shit jobs" for a good week or two after that, when I got back to my chief.  Took em' and smiled, really.  I understood and just took it.  I remember being asked, usually, if I wanted to help out.  I don't know why, and don't remember if that is normal.  It strikes me as odd now.  The only thing I wouldn't do was climb/wiggle through a tight area sort of through pipes and under the grated deck, to do something.  The fit was tight for a smaller guy.  I think they were just teasing.  I wouldn't have made it in and out, I didn't think.  "Nope!", I said.  While not, obviously, an extreme claustrophobic, I... did have my limits.

Basically a submarine, a boomer anyway, is like three months of Burning Man.  Oh, and yeah, when you get off, back to shore?  You are zoomed.  Just getting used to the sun is a bit of a thing.  Fresh air is grand if it doesn't make sense at first.  A week after being home, if you go smell your clothes?  Ick!  You never really get that smell out no matter how many times you wash it.  Wives have been trying for all of the time of submarines to figure that out so I am thinking there is no fix.  There are some things that if enterprising socialized women can't figure out... they just can't be done.  Just keep those clothes and gear purely for sub runs.  Burned out, fuzzy in the brain, new air, actually different altitude if not by much, since it is underwater it is more than one might think, even encapsulated, I do believe.  Instead of coming out of the desert I came out of the sea.  Oh, and on a sub, it is either chilly or blast furnace hot.  Forward, with crew but mostly electronics, is kept somewhere in the 66-68 range.  Not bad but moist and metallic, which change the dynamic of the temperature a great deal... and no sun.  Aft is simply kept hotter, so the mechanical end runs more smoothly.  How hot, to a degree, depends on how close you are to whatever is being used, and what else you might be doing to or around such heat sources.

From reading a bit, it looks like everyone crawls back out of those sands, though, and has to reconfigure their configuration, catch some z's and their breath, and figure out where to go from there.  While this is worse, for me, here and now, than even a sub return, I suspect that is merely because I am old and ill.  I do think I could have done this on my hands back then, and been running 18 hour days in the sun and wilds.  While the sun/heat wasn't my favorite, even back then, I know I could and did handle large doses of that for other reasons, and of the worse sort... with humidity.  Bleh...  Dogs go where their masters command.

Anyway, after the dreams of typical sub duty and decompression from that, I am feeling better.  I have some context.  And, yeah, they pretty much gave us a week or two of light duty/no duty upon returning topside.  Three months of lighter duty after that, give or take, then we would have to hit it again.  I had heard, for most guys, that four tours would see them to retirement (if I thought they had to be wrong, especially with some mos's, definitely my technical job).  Maybe to the level of chief, but that should be about a twelve year climb.  Hmm, I even doubt that.  I would guess it would be more like two years on, two off, the whole career... 20years/2withsub = 10subyears, 10subyears/ 2deploymentsperyear =5dives... maybe four wasn't so off.  Not sure.  It was a beastly little spot of work, especially if you tore into it.  But fun.  If you like to work and live with the wind, and with a bunch of other tech heads, grease monkeys, and... your own frat house.  :)  Those dreams are so... refreshing.  Fond memories, mostly.

Ah, later.