Blast from the past... part 1

Tonight I dug through the attic and found some pictures.  After trying to get my old printer scanner to like Vista (hard to do, nothing likes Vista), I have a small presentation of my past.  Since I have a ways back to go I'm going to break it up a bit.  This is a Navy version.  So we'll start with the dress whites.

2nd from right.

  This was taken during the "Tiger Cruise" which is the last leg of our WESPAC or Western pacific cruise, or we also called it the six month cruise.  On the Tiger portion we got to invite a family member or two to take the last leg (3 or 4 days) with us.  My Dad and a family friend came with me on this one.

Steel Beach

At one point during the cruise we had a "steel beach picnic" which is a big barbeque care of our mess cooks up on the flight deck.  Somebody even brought a little blow up pool with a palm tree.  The first cruise I was on we could hit golf balls off the fantail (back) into the ocean.  Greenpeace must have found out about it cause we didn't do it on my second cruise.  One step away from Carnival.

My house for four years, well I did move a time or two, but this was the bulk of four years.  The other places were exactly the same.  There is actually two racks across.  They were stacked three high as well and we had 90 people crammed into a space that was a little smaller than my house and my house isn't big.  I was lucky and had top bunk.  We had coffin lockers that were the length and width of the rack and around 6" or 8" deep and a stand up locker which was about the size of half lockers in school.  Needless to say we found other places to stash our stuff.

I've actually ridden a camel.  The ride was about an hour long, in the desert... see the sights.  Camels are actually pretty nasty animals.  One slobbed my leg, he had a lazy lip and I knew it was coming, and it did, big camel lugie.  This was in the Persian Gulf in the middle of summer and the middle of the day.  It had to have been a billion degrees out.  We were encouraged to wear pants to not offend the arabs.  Pretty sure our love for shorts is not why we are where we are at today.

I'm pretty sure Webb and I were contemplating something important.  Cup o noodles or stand in line a half an hour for chow.  I still have dreams about the chow line... of course I have dreams of paper machines in the hangar bay. Go figure.  Webb wasn't his first name, we didn't use first names, even if you were a Weisbarth.  Oh and that big thing behind us is a JBD or Jet Blast Deflector.  When the birds (planes) get ready to take off they raise the JBDs so they don't torch the birds waiting in line behind them.

  Me and my "buddy" Jack D(aniels) at the Hard Rock in Hong Kong.  We'll end the story there for now.

On a liberty boat in Hong Kong.  When the carrier couldn't pull up to a pier we used liberty boats which were basically 50 person rickshaws with itty bitty motors.  Just getting into town was not fun for many, really not fun for many more when coming back drunk.  I'm remembering walking on sticky floors.

Not really sleeping, we staged that.  But we did play poker while on watch

I was on the flying squad, which is the at sea firefighting team.  We had to pull watch while we geared up for offload toward the end of cruise.  The hangar was filled with stuff that went boom and we had a group in each hangar.  We figured if the other hanger went boom we could tell someone maybe, and if we went boom the other group in the hangar would do the same.  I'm really not sure why we were there really.  If we went boom it wasn't good for anyone.

I'll close with a few pictures not of me.  Some shots of birds on the deck (or flight deck, or topside).

F-14's,  cue Kenny Loggins

F-18 taking off from the waist (middle of the deck)

On the tiger cruise they actually let people on the deck and this close to watch them take off.  It was pretty cool really.

I've seen google earth pics of the Constellation in Bremerton being scrapped.  Pretty sad actually, but she was an old ship.  When I was on her I thought they should have decommed (decommisoned) her, now its sad to see her go.  She was a good ship all in all.

The next go around will be a little farther back in history.  I forgot I ran track in the 7th grade too, and I found a picture of it.  Yikes.

Enjoy your day!