Day Two

12/7/04

Second night under way. 2 am underworld hundreddaysoff

Rough seas are rapidly approaching. We may hit 12 ft waves before morning. All of our planes are in the hangar bay, tied down. Most of the med size choppers (ch-46) are down there as well. It's a real tight fit. The large cargo helo's will remain on the flight deck with the harriers. All the work we have to do involves tearing the bird apart, using the ship-board crane to remove engines and tranny. There's no way to get the birds under the hoist until everything is cleared back out of the hanger. Of course, we have to move our birds out first in order to get the bigger choppers out. This all involves ridiculous amounts of work. If we were on land we would be halfway done the job after three days, but due to the weather it'll be a week before we even start.

So, we did as much work as we could. Little things like swapping out filters and checking some tolerances and that's it for the night. I don't understand why we have to stick to this 12 hr schedule when there's no work to do, but I can't complain. I get to bring the lap top into work and write while the rest of the guys watch Spiderman 2. Hopefully the rest of the network will be up soon. One of the computer reps set up part of it this evening…the part where we can look at our maintenance manuals, aka, not the part I really need. I can always do maintanence without the book, but I can't get to the outside world without the internet.

I don't know how G.I.'s dealt with the distance in the ancient pre-internet days. That's the only reliable way we have of staying in touch with people and keeping current with the news. Even if we were still a snail-mail society, I would have recieved no mail yet. Anything I had sent out would not have arrived yet…and may not have even gone out yet. Of course, there -are- pay-phones on the boat. In classic military fashion they only operate with phone cards sold in the ship store, and, also in classic military fashion, the ship store is out of stock. If there's one thing I'm beginning to understand through my military experience is why Catch 22 was written.

I'm still not accustomed to this full night crew schedule. I may be a natural night owl, but staying up until 7 am every night never seems to get any easier. I slept fairly well last night, or rather this morning. I woke up around noon, convinced that it was the middle of the night until I checked the clock. It stays dark on the berthing deck almost 24 hrs because there's always somebody sleeping. I managed to sleep a few more hours, and still wake up in time to watch Star Wars before dinner/breakfast. Maybe I'll have time for Empire tomorrow, and Jedi the next.

It's some kind of tradition to shave your head on your first boat ride…shave it or we'll shave it for you kind of tradition. Somebody brought clippers into work tonight so what the hell, I needed a haircut anyway. I'll see if I can get a picture of my baldness to send out. I like having my head shaved. It's comfortable and maintanence free, I just look a little too Nazi to run around in public like this. Another thing a lot of guys do is grow a boat-stache. There's no one here to impress, so it's the perfect time to see what you look like with a mustache…and it's the only allowable facial hair. Otherwise I'd grow some wicked boat-chops or something. I keep meaning to do it, but I always forget and just shave my whole face. If it happens, it will make another humorous photo…particularly if I'm still bald. Might as well put that one up on the web.