Camping, Batteries, and the Human Lung; An Excerpt

Most of our campsites came equipped with a gravel tent site, and unfortunately our first night’s sleep in a tent would be done without our queen sized air mattress.  After a short discussion including the phrases, “It’s almost big enough” and “Maybe we can force it”, we determined the mattress (60x80x9) would not fit in the 60x72 inch tent we borrowed.  Upon setting up the older, shittier, and larger tent we determined that it was plenty big for our mattress.  However we hadn’t thought to buy batteries for the air pump.  I hadn’t even thought of an air pump, but upon opening the cardboard mattress box and dumping out the inflatable, I saw it.  Turns out the device took six (6) C batteries.  I can’t remember the last time I bought C batteries.  Likely I never have. 

And if you think we should, or even could have blown up the mattress with human lung power alone, let me give you the facts.  A queen sized air mattress takes 43,200 cubic inches of air to fill, less perhaps the thickness of the plastic, assuming the dimensions are measured on the exterior.  That comes out to about 708 liters or 187 gallons of air.  The vital capacity, which is the maximum amount of air the average person can expel from the lungs following a maximum inhalation, of the average adult is between 3 and 5 liters of air.  That means that for the average adult, (and let me add that Hilary and I are most definitely on the smaller side of average) it would take between 140 and 236 maximum exhalations to fill the mattress.  As there were two of us I could divide these numbers in half, but my travel partner (in her infinite wisdom) scoffed at the idea of even trying.