Come close, ya stiff-necked supercargo. This one is important. This is a story about laundry. It is a story about power. It is the story of knowledge.

It may come as a surprise that pilots, especially military pilots or their veteran counterparts like me, spend many nights of each year in sleeping bags. As an Eagle Scout who knows the true value of a quality sleeping bag, I remember being very proud when I heard that our deployed commander used one instead of sheets while in Iraq. You see, I was no longer alone. To this day, I spend about 1/4 of the year’s nights in a sleeping bag—not including camping trips.

Naturally, this level of commitment leads to the need to wash a sleeping bag, and wash it with more regularity than your own sleeping bag laundering habits have ever included. In fact, you’re likely thinking this very moment, “Where is my sleeping bag?”

Washing a sleeping bag is an adventure of its own. Not just the washing, but the drying as well. For any ground-pounding, civilian pukes who never have spent a night under the stars (let’s not forget the boldly illiterate hippie camping community), there is a tag right on the bag that says, “Only dry in commercial dryers” or some similar wording that forbids the pilot from his perfect dream of living as an island.

(I have laundered my sleeping bag(s) many times at home and never had a problem. This post is not about rule-following.)

So the other day, despite both cars revealing mechanical issues almost simultaneously, I learned at night that the dryer stopped heating. (LORD? You watchin’?) It made the same noises and tumbled as surely as any other day—even longer when on the “automatic” setting; but the clothes wouldn’t dry. I tracked down that they weren’t getting warm either.

Enter YouTube.

There were two probable issues. One was that a thermal fuse on the heating element had tripped/blown. The other was the heating element itself had broken.

I tracked down an appliance parts guru in town who loved to chat on the phone and he assured me it was the fuse. But I forced him to concede it was worth ordering both just in case his foresight proved dim. During this back-and-forth, he said something like, “It’s all about airflow. The air has to blow the heat from the heating element into the dryer and then that air has to find its way past the clothes, past the lint trap, and through the vent all the way to the outside world. If any part of that path is blocked, the heat will remain and eventually blow the fuse. You may never know why the path got blocked. Could be stray article of clothes got caught in the wrong spot or maybe someone washed too big a comforter. But it’s all about the air.”

Fasten your seatbelts.

“Only dry in a commercial dryer,” the tag reads. Any warm-blooded human says, “Huh?” And we proceed to rebel and possibly damage the dryer.

But…

“It’s all about airflow. If the sleeping bag blocks the incoming heat, the fuse will blow—which is annoying. If the fuse doesn’t blow, the heating element could potentially overheat and cause a fire—lots of variables in that one,” the facts are. And any warm-blooded human says, “Okay.” And then assesses the risks and gets on with their decision.

The passive, uninformed warning fosters rebellion, and well it should. Instinct informs us to demand respect! “Don’t boss me! You have my attention. Now treat me like a man!”

But the knowledge is irresistible and fosters sound judgment and good decision making. “Hmm. Good to know. I’ve dried many things of similar size in this machine and so I’ll risk it.” Or whatever.

What is knowledge? Knowledge is irresistible. It defies rebellion.

Go get some.

PS – It was the heating element. And Speed Queen dryers are super easy to work on—should they not live up to their name.

PPS – Yes, I have gone back to the original name of my blog. I do want to use the fact that I stare down death for a living to get your attention. Whether I can keep it is the thrill.