Taney

My sister and I went to downtown Baltimore today for an outing. Well, we had a reason to go there - My sister had bought a Swatch that Was acting weird since the last so many days. Every morning it would stop at 8:45 AM! No idea why only 0845..

We got the watch replaced in no time. And just so you know, Swatch makes some amazing watches now - and by that I don't mean those trendy, colorful, kiddish watches that come to our minds when we think Swatch, but very nice, elegant, beautiful chronos. Most of them were $140.

Anyway, after our quick visit to the store, we started a tour of Pratt St., the most happening street in downtown Baltimore (I think). We could not stop ourselves from entering the USCGC Taney, a beautiful Coast Guard ship standing quietly at the harbor. By just looking at the ship you could tell that it is one of those deadly combat weapons that looks so calm and serene from the outside. The first glance would not tell you what it is capable of doing, you have to enter the ship and "read" and observe to understand how it survived so many years of combat and action.

Well, Taney is apparently the last survivor ship of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Once inside, My sister was totally overwhelmed by the design and "looks" of the ship. The passages were somewhat dingy, and very narrow, and the fact that there are actually so many people aboard a ship makes the passages all the more narrower. She also didn't like the bunk beds, because they were smaller than a twin size bed!

I thought that the most impressive thing on Taney was the automatic and semi automatic .5 caliber gun which could do (I think) 2600 rounds per minute. Of course, that is not really possible when there is human factor involved, but the gun looked pretty cool. It is an air cooled gun, which means that whoever is operating the gun has to make sure that they do not overheat the gun because air cooling can take time, and if the gun gets overheated during combat, chances of that person never getting to shoot again in their life are highly likely.

Taney was fun. Climbing up and down all the stairs on that ship was fun too. But really, you have to be inside such ships to understand what kind of a life naval soldiers lead. It can be interesting, it can be disgusting. Some of us may get excited and decide to join the navy, others may just run away and swear not to think of the Armed Forces as a career option ever.