Aloha Dump

It looks like the strangle hold Guam has on us is starting to loosen a bit. This might be the last post for a while. I took this picture as I was walking to the boat this morning. The big grey thing in the background is the USS Frank Cable, a submarine tennder that has been supporting us since we got here. ** New addition. What I have been doing most of the time here.

So I am extremely tardy in showing off the deployment so far, and I apologize, but I was trying to find a way to resize these shots to conserve bandwidth. oh well. Guess I"ll have something to do when I get back to Pearl. Brisbane at a cargo loading/unloading pier. Brisbane at a grain pier. There were seeds everywhere! Our friendly neighborhood Greenpeace. Notice anything unusual about this shot? Where else but on a submarine would you have to worry about this happening to your Koolaid?

Well, after a short 24 hours underway we are back in port for a while. I guess Guam just doesn't want us to leave. Our last visit was pretty good but people are starting to just hang out on base more and use the facilities here. I guess the strip clubs start wearing pretty thin after a while; I know I can only stand "Buy me drinkie" for so long. I spent about 6 hours in one the day after we got here last week but that was only to get there early because the Nimitz battlegroup was pulling in and there was going to be an extra 5000 people running around. About 9:00 pm that night it was standing room only everywhere downtown-restaurants, 7-11 stores, clubs, etc. What a freakin sausage fest. I remember looking at the floor on the stage at the strip club we were in and it was covered with one dollar bills. A lot of the strippers flew in for the weekend just for the carrier group- they expected to clear $2-3k in that short amount of time. I was the equivalent of the shore patro...

I take the duty section topside to do a little firefighting training with some hoses that are connected to a Y fitting from the tender. It is a pretty good size hose, about 2" in diameter, and shits through about 200 gallons a minute. I tell a guy to flake out the hose for use, it was coiled up topside, and then a booming sound scares the shit out of everyone. The hose had popped off the Y fitting and was dancing around like a possessed cobra topside. It slide about 20 feet across the deck before wrapping up on itself and a smaller hose that was hanging off the side. A guy stepped off the side of the boat the went down to grab the Y fitting while there was a lull in the action. Common sense would have said "Screw it, let it be and secure water to the connection" but I guess instinct took over. In all fairness, you can walk over the side of a round submarine before actually falling over. I didn't want this guy to fall in or get hurt if the fitting came loose off th...

After we left Australia we stayed for a while to play around with some Australian combatants and a few other submarines in a joint exercise. It was fun for about a week then it got old fast. We had a crossing the line (Shellback) ceremony on the way up to Guam as we crossed the equator. We did this event for 6 midshipmen who rode us from Australia to see how submarine life is. It is a big P.R. stunt the Navy uses to lure unsuspecting officer-wannabe's to the submarine force. Now, the trip down to Australia was especially fun because we had a crossing the line ceremony but we did it at a specific place on the equator. We crossed the equator at the exact point where the Internationnal Dateline (IDL) crosses the Equator. This is called a Golden Shellback because when you cross the IDL you get a certificate called the Golden Dragon. It is a time honored Naval tradition that dates back hundreds of years. Existing Shellback play roles during the ceremony: King Neptune, Davy Jones, and as...

We arrived at the Pacific Island of Guam, Where America's Day Begins, on Satruday and I think I can speak for the entire crew when I say it is already time to go. In all fairness, however, I have been here no less than 20 times and it got old the very first time I got here. I think the biggest factor in creating my dilike for this place is the weather- 90+ tempertures with about 99% humidity- humidity so bad that it takes your breath away when you walk outside. This is a working port and we hit the ground running today. Just about every division has a month's worth of work that has to get done in an extremely short amount of time. If we get it all done I'll be suprised. The nightlife is really good if you like strip joints (raises hand) and the ones here are some of the best I've seen, err, heard of. One of the local favorites is the Viking Club so named because of its theme inside and the huge helm that sticks halfway out of the stage at the back. When the wheel spins,...

It occured to me as I have spent the last 3 days packing up everything for upcoming 6 month deployment that the world will go on here. People will be oblivious to my abscence except my wife and son, of course. But for the most part things will go on like they have been but there will be so many changes when I get back. I remember past deployments would bring me back to a new parking lot where a club used to be, a new park, or new restaurants. It about the only good thing that a deployment brings upon return to homeport excluding the family homecoming. I think that this will probably be the hardest deployment of my career and hopefully my last. 20 years in the Navy is plenty for me despite whether I make Chief this time around or not. I think it is time to move on and get a taste of a new life and a new job. So, aloha and check back every so often because we are supposed to hit some really good ports pending any unforeseeable circumstances. That's Navy-speak for "Our schedule i...

My first liberty port ended on Monday, June 13 and we departed Brisbane, Australia with mixed emotions: sad because we were leaving, but happy because one month of our deployment had gone by. It was a fun stay despite the fact that 2 of my days there were spent on the boat for duty. But even the duty days were all right and gave everyone time to recuperate. We were moored at a grain pier and had to do a berth shift on Friday to make way for a ship that was due to get loaded out. There was some debate as to whether we would stay another few days or just get underway. Everyone was hoping to stay of course, and it all worked out good in the end. The piers we stayed at were a major international stopping point for tankers and other large ships to off and on-load their wares. These ships were so big and they just dwarfed our little submarine as they drove by. On my first duty day I saw a 900-foot tanker moor in front of us at about midnight, offload some containers, and get underway at 4 a....

G'day from Brisbane Australia! It took us a hwile to get here but we finally made it. Just wanted to drop a quick line and let everyone know what I am up to but will have more time to make a more detailed entry later.

The first long underway at my new command has come and gone but the 6-month deployment looms on the horizon. It has been an interesting experience being back on sea duty after being gone for 3 years and so much has changed, especially the security requirements after September 11. It doesn't really affect us at sea but inport it is both a blessing and a curse. The major watches on the boat are all armed and ready to go at the pull of a trigger, and after my pathetic passing of the gun shoot last month I hope I am never on watch when the insurgent horde decides to take the pier. The downside to all these loaded weapons is the extra set of rules and procedures that the Navy places on even the simplest of tasks, like turning over the weapon to your relief. Oh well, a bit of inconvenience for the chance to blow someone’s head off in the drop of a dime is worth the trade off. The underway was plagued with material problems which made life even worse than the normal situation of being...

So after an extremely nasty underway for our last certification before deployment I decided to take a week off and fly back to my homestate of Arkansas to see some family. It is depressing to find myself getting pissed here in AR at the very same things that annoy me in Hawaii. I guess retarded people are everywhere (no surprise there) but I was hoping to get away from all the ridiculousness at least for a while. I read in the local paper (Log Cabin Democrat, 5/12/05, Rural Schools Get Poor Marks, pg. 1B) about how southern schools suck as far as standardized test scores- my home state ranked 7th on the suck list. Coincidentally, I was just talking about the school systems in HI and AR yesterday with my family. The only thing Hawaii schools have going for them is that at least they aren't Mississippi who continually ranks as having the shittiest schools in the U.S. The ironic thing about this edition is that there is an article about the once thought to be extinct ivory billed woo...

I am ashamed of myself, really, for not giving this extended congratulatory handshake to my good friend Saucy Sauce who had a little baby boy not too long ago. My busy schedule has even prevented me from seeing him to give him a baby gift or something. Anyway, Saucy, you know I'm happy for you brother. As a father of 3 boys I can safely say you will have your hands full.