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everydayhiker
11-28-2009, 12:47
O.K. Guys and Gals, I will be transferring back to sea duty and will be on a ship for the next three years. I got a notion to buy the backpacking towels to save space in my coffin locker. But, the question I have is the small hand towels. Can they be used with soap or are they just for drying yourself off? Thanks for the help.

ShelterLeopard
11-28-2009, 12:51
Packtowl personal! Love it, dries fast, soaks up a lot, and when you wring it out, it is already almost dry.

Can definitely be used with soap.

everydayhiker
11-28-2009, 13:00
Awesome. Thanks.

skinewmexico
11-28-2009, 13:26
You can buy those towels cheap online, they're the same as the ones used on cars, and cut them whatever size you like. Unless you just really want to spend a bunch of money on Sham-wow, or MSR, or REI. Although REI did have some on closeout.

everydayhiker
11-28-2009, 13:44
Yea, ordered 2 from REI sale. Figured they would work for a while.

SunnyWalker
11-28-2009, 14:00
Everydayhiker: Thanks for your service to our country!

everydayhiker
11-28-2009, 14:03
Your welcome. Thanks for your support.

mister pooh
11-28-2009, 17:42
I spent much time sleeping in a coffin rack, and great idea on the full size Shamwow style towel. I used one, and since it dried so quickly it helped to cut down on "berthing funk." Not that anything will ever truly get rid of it completely :D

Good luck on your cruise shipmate.

ShelterLeopard
11-28-2009, 18:49
Amen to what chaplain said- thank you everydayhiker. I was tempted to join up, but didn't want to sign my life away. (I have a problem with not having control, and a slight problem with obeying orders...)

everydayhiker
11-28-2009, 19:17
Thanks for all the help.

queary82
11-28-2009, 23:58
What ship are you transferring too?

everydayhiker
11-29-2009, 01:30
What ship are you transferring too?

I will be going to the USS Hopper DDG30. I believe that is the hull number anyway. It's n Pearl Harbor. Gonna be some good hiking over there. I can't wait. I've been in DC for the past three years. This place gets way to old way to quick.

queary82
11-29-2009, 01:45
Cool. I just left Patuxent River, Md last year and am on the USS George H W Bush.

paradoxb3
11-29-2009, 01:56
The Thru Hiker's Guide to the Appalachian Trail has a few things to say on the subject of pack towels...
A pack towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing a thru-hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value -- you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold mountains of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; you can lie on it in the dusty wood-floored shelters of Virginia, inhaling the heady mountain air; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the green grassy balds; use it to sail a canoe across the river Kennebec; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat against bears; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes from weekender gas or to avoid the gaze of the ravenous shelter mice (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you cant see it, it cant see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-thru hiker) discovers that a thru hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in posession of a toothbrush, water filter, soap, package of tuna, platypus, compass, map, length of bear-bagging cord, gnat spray, wet weather gear, lightweight shelter etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the thru hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the thru hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can thru hike the length of the appalachian trail, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

everydayhiker
11-29-2009, 02:44
Cool. I just left Patuxent River, Md last year and am on the USS George H W Bush.

Oh a carrier, I was on the Carl Vinson my first 5 years. I don't plan on ever going back to one again. Way to many people on um and have to wait to long to eat.