out in the cold a' natural

I always like it when Mike climbs in the bed, 'cause his big body radiates so much heat, however, he's a nightowl, a catnap of 4 maybe 5 hours and he's good to go. The other night,

me - Mike come to bed and warm up my butt.
naked Mike as he is climbing in bed - If you'd take your clothes off you'd stay warmer.
me - yeah, just bet I would, I've heard a lot of lines but...
Mike - In the Boy Scouts, they used to tell us to take off our clothes before we got in the sleeping bag, and then our bodies would warm up the bag.
me - In the Girl Scouts none of us were stripping down and I can tell ya my Daddy would've had none of it.
Mike - I'm just saying, it seemed to work.

At the office, I thought I'd do a little informal research, asking male coworkers, former Boy Scouts and military, about Mike's theory, all chuckled and the group was in agreement that Mike was angling for some hoochie-coochie. However, I kept pondering the whole "Boy Scout" mentality, and now have found some online comments -

My army trainers insisted we sleep naked in our sleeping bags. Having been in the Canadian military playing soldier in -30-40C temperature, this is absolutely true. In fact one should be in the buff. If you wear any clothing, you will sweat into them, rendering them useless and in fact you will get very cold very fast. Your body will insulate the bag. Our bags were rated to -60.

Improvements to sleeping bags using Gortex(TM) are making them even better than they need to be. Anytime you can wick away moisture from your body you will be warmer. I have slept quite comfortably in -40F in an Extreme Cold Weather Bag and nothing but a T-shirt and PT shorts. You can also put your clothes in your bag with you where you are laying on top of them, then you have warm clothes to put on in the morning. We also placed our VB boots in the foot of our bags so as to not be putting "blocks of ice" on our feet in the morning. (make sure they are free of mud/snow/dirt before doing this)

Sleeping in clothing is optional,

some like to sleep in their clothing,

other schools of thought are that your sleeping bag will keep you warm so sleep a’ natural, but you should always wear a stocking cap (a.k.a. ski cap, tuke) to sleep in.

So maybe Mikey was speaking from the BRAIN this time.

***************************************************

Here's the walk home this afternoon.