Leftfeet

Have you considered coaching or management now that you're retired? As a player you seemed like a team leader everywhere you went.

Little league coaching is a ton of fun, I highly recommend it. My son's team had the pleasure of a former AAA player coming to work with them a few times and the kids loved it. I appreciate the dedication to your family.

I was a sonar tech on a submarine. There are a lot of strange sounds in the ocean. Especially in the Arctic. Ice makes a lot of noise and a lot of weird noises. I listened to the ice sounding like a crying baby. I heard it sound like a lawn mower.

There are tons of difficult to explain sounds out there. We recorded several and tracked a few closely.

Loss of propulsion is a big one. If you stop going forward the ship will start sinking, leaving your only option as an emergency blow.

Fires can eat the oxygen supply pretty quickly. If you don't get them extinguished fast you can be left with not enough breathable air to last long.

Damage control is the most important part of every submariners job. Knowing your assignment depending on watch schedule, and exactly what to do in response to all the different emergencies that can arise. In your first year on a sub you have to get qualified is submarines. That involves learning every system on the boat, locations of all damage control equipment, and how to respond to emergencies. You work through a qualification card by interviewing with qualified folks that run the different systems. Once the card is completely signed off you sit for a qualification board, where you are drilled with questions by a panel of qualified guys including at least one NCO and one officer. They can ask as many questions as they feel necessary to determine you know what you should. Most of the questions are damage control related. In my board I had to list the locations and types of every fire extinguisher, ever fire hose and all the fire fighting outfits. That was my first question.

There's nowhere on Earth that I know of where everyone relies so much on the rest of the crew. If one person fails their job you all potentially die. That's part of why it's such a tight knit community.

They're the worst.