96 hour liberty

So we got back friday afternoon, i got in my jeep and was just a very happy person. So happy. still remembered how to drive! had cell phone service, etc. I went back took a shower and unpacked my backpack. I decided to treat myself to some chinese food, but my debit card got declined. I guess my new debit card came in the mail while i was gone which shut down my temp card. A lil frustrating, but i would go to the bank the next day and fix it. Went to sleep that night in my own bed, very comfortable. Next morning i wake up, go to fix my card, get some chow at the galley. Get a hair cut, i was beignning to feel like my normal self again, it was nice. Clay and Jackson wanted to go to the casino that night, so i said why not. Had a little extra money, and wanted to get out and have a good time. We got a hotel room, and drank a little bit, then went downstairs and gambled. Did pretty well on roulette, then i wanted to play some poker, and ended up losing 100 bucks there, then called it quits. I had a fun night. Relaxed the rest of the next day. And here it is monday, going back to work on tuesday. Woke up sick this morning, so i went out and bought some nyquil/day quil, and humidifier, i love those things for some reason. And lemoore air is very dry, so i thought why not. So i got that thing going, i took a bath, read my book, and have been working on this blog for quite a while. Ima text Matt (flight instructor) sometime this week, when i feel better to see if i can start flying next weekend again. Everyone who took the 3rd class exam should find out by thanksgiving whhether they made it or not, and i will get promoted with them. But im still going to ask my chief how its looking for my promotion everyday until it happens, the 6th month mark was yesterday, so i should be 3rd class by now. Hopefully my next paycheck BETTER reflect my payraise, and I will be getting an extra 100 dollars a month cuz i wont be paying my MGI bill anymore. WOW already a year in the navy, that was quick. SO things to look forward to- hope there is a PC board in the next week or two. C school starts December 2nd. E-4 promotion should be within the next two weeks. Thanksgiving is next week, unless ticket prices go down, i will be staying in cali for that. And Christmas leave will be taken December 24th-January 2nd. So nowwww, hopefully my next blog ill be a PC and third class. We shall see.

Underway

I sleep in until the next day, awaken by a man overboard procedure, in which everyone has to muster with their division. I followed all of my night check crew up the stairs, through hallways, still had no idea where i was going and to our compoartment, where we sat and waited for the test to be over. It took like 40 minutes for everyone to muster up. Terrible, terrible time. Oh well, back to bed it was for me. I slept till i had to go to work. But i was awoken by what i thought was a huge pipe burst, and leaking water everywhere. No, it was just a jet landing on the ship 2 floors above. Scared the living daylight out of me. Anyway, got ready for work, and followed some guys up again. We immediatly got ready, float coats on, cranials on, to relieve daycheck. It was nice to see all my buds, and i already missed my day check crew. In order to be up on the flight deck alone, you needed a qualification, i didnt have one yet, so i had to be up there with a person who was qualified. My buddy got assigned to a jet, and i got assigned to him. During this time our pilots needed Carrier Qualifications, which was just landing, catching the wire, and then taking off again. They would do this like 10 times for each jet. THey would come back in between times, and refuel, which is were we came in to play. The jet needed 6 chains in order to be secured when fueling. So we each just stood around with 3 chains on our shoulders just waiting for these jets to come back, and since they were taking off and landing all the time, we had to be ready at a moments notice to go chain the jet down, but most of the time we would just stand around aimlessly with chains on our shoulders waiting for our jet. By this time it was very dark out. The jets would fly from like 11am-11pm. So we were up on the flight deck from 530pm until like midnight holding chains. BUT since the flightdeck is such a small space, we had to stand in a cluster, and there were so many jets everywhere taxiing around, and where we were standing, one of the only safe places, was the hottest place to stand. Constantly getting blasted by jet exhaust. I saw people get blown like 20 feet at the worst, but on some cold nights, boy was it nice to get a wave of jet exhaust your way. So we are just hanging out on the flight deck looking like a chicken with its heads cut off. There are all the colors of the rainbow up there, to designate what peoples jobs are. Plane Captains are brown jerseys, and we have a 1P on our cranial, which now i know signifies that we have all the 100's jets, people with 2P on their cranial have all the 200's jets, and so on. So the first time i had to put chains on, i couldnt see a dang thing, barely even my hand in front of me. I was freaking out, and you had to do it at a fast pace. I was trying my hardest but just couldnt find a padeye to hook the chain into. I was hardcore stressing out. After i finally found one for which seemed like hours, i took a step back, and took a couple deep breathes. It seemed like everything i had ever learned had just flown out the window. I felt useless. It was dark out, we were totally surrounded by water. Once again stranger in a strange place. I need to stop doing this to myself. It took a couple days to get used to this kind of stuff. But after about 5 days of doing that straight, the Carrier quals were over, and they went back to just regular flying. I found out the worst part was over, even though i never new we were in the worst part, boy did it feel good to know it was going to get easier. During those beginning days, i was still having trouble finding my way around the ship. I hit my head multiple times, i fell down stairs twice, and i tripped over a tow bar up on deck, cut my leg pretty bad. I also tripped over a couple chains too. Its so much tougher when it is really dark out. Once the flight schedule was done for the day though, it was a pretty easy rest of the night. We usually went to eat around midnight or 1am. The only things that needed to be done was a washjob if we needed it (every 7 days on the ship), fuel samples, 14 chains put on each jet, and daily inspections. So time went by pretty fast during the flight schedule, and then slowed down a little towards the later part of the night. Let me remind you that when we are out at sea it is 12 hours on, 12 hours off, no weekends. This stuff is hard work, especially night check, def. harder than day check, im guessing thats why i was the chosen one to go to nights, cuz i could handle it? i dno. Anyway, after stressing hard those first couple of days, we had a no fly day, and just a wash job. These washjobs never made me more angry than anything. We had to ask permission, and use fresh water to wash the jet with, and it was extremely dark out, so it was hard to see. Then, after the washjob was complete, we had to vaccuum all the water out of the padeyes, which took honestly like 3-4 hours just to suck all the water out. Had to keep the flight deck clean, i dno why the sun couldnt have just evaporated the water, but we had to make it so it was like spotless and no more water. Washjobs on the boat were absolutely terrible. And we had to tape down the jet, but the tape wouldnt even stick because it was too cold out. Some of the positive things about the washjob was just looking up at the stars, you were sure to catch like 5 shooting stars on a good night. But they were just so frequent, and you could see so many stars, it was nice. Other jobs we would have to do at night were brake ride- for when they moved a jet, someone had to be up in the cockpit to release/put the brakes on if need be. This evolution could take anywhere from 5 minutes to 4 hours. Depending on where they needed to move the jet, and what priority the jet was, which was annoying as well. Same with fueling. But what was really sweet was most of the lower jobs that we would do on land were done by people on the boat, whose specific job was their rate. Blue shirts- chocked and chained the jet down. Yellow shirts- move director (directed where the jet would be moved to). Purple shirts- Fuelies (we only had to supervise them fueling the jet, we really didnt have to do anything. These people were "ships company" meaning wherever the ship went, they went. AKA they were most always out at sea, which i thought really stunk. Granted i signed up with my recruiter to be a ABH, or aircraft handler (Yellow shirt-move director.) Boy am i glad i got switched out of that rate. There sole purpose is to move jets around on a ship. They sure make it sound different at the recruiter station. Their main weapon of choice is a whistle. I am so glad i got rolled in with my rate of working on engines. They look at Plane Captains like we are amazing, and they are always helping us out, its nice. So anyway, once the no fly day was over, we had a regular schedule planned out, and things starting repeating over and over again, same thing different day, but i was feeling a lot more comfortable and started doing stuff on my own. We would get off work at 530am, go get some breakfast, and then i would shower and pass out until i would have to go to work again. Pretty Monotonous routine, but it worked. Met some new friends on night check too which was nice. The food was not as bad as people were saying it would be, i mean yeah we had a lot of pasta every now and then, but it still was pretty good. Had some meatloaf some nights, chicken parm, and they even had cranberry sauce some nights, i was very excited. They also had chocolate milk. The rack i was sleeping in was just my height, i could barely striaghten out, but i made it work. The bathrooms/showers were not bad at all, cept they had one temperature- scorching hot. So i had to wash my body in waves in order to not get burnt. But the routine continued on. Then with about one week left, i get the confidence to do my final qual for my Plane Captain. I had to do a daily inspection with a Quality Assurance Representative, on a jet. I was very nervous, and it was hanging over me for like 2 weeks now, i just wanted to get it done. So one night, after everything was done, we had like 3 hours left, I called up QA just to see if anyone was there that could watch me. Just so happen that there was, and he would be on his way to the shop in 10 minutes. I felt sick to my stomach, cuz i didnt think it would actually happen. So started asking everyone questions, got my tool belt on, tirepressure gauge, and fuel sample kit. He came to our shop, and i brought everything up, including the daily booklet you are suppose to go by step by step. I ended up tossing the book to the side after the first 5 minutes, and just went with it. I named off the nomenclature, and new literally everything there was to know about the daily. I dont know how i remembered all of it, but i passed with flying colors. Except the fact that i brought the wash kit up, instead of the fuel sample kit, which got a good laugh. But i am still amazed on how much i really did know. I was ready for my PC board. Now Clay, a buddy of mine that checked in a couple days before me, had already done all of this and was just waiting on his PC board, but he was waiting for like a month and a half by now. I think they were waiting for me cuz they like to have multiple people go to board at a time. But whenever someone says something about a board, its usually just a rumor, or crying wolf. There were 2 potential boards on the ship, but those just got washed away. Hopefully something comes soon, before i go to C school. Overall, the boat went by pretty fast, i started to get used to the monotnous routine, and days were starting to fly by. I cant believe its already mid november. They had internet and email, on the boat, so it wasnt that bad with missing friends and family. But there were many things that i take for granted everyday that i am so thankful for now. Just being on dry land and in lemoore makes me extremely happy. The ship rocked a ton, and you could feel it. Food always ready, and at your fingertips, my jeep, my phone to talk to people, internet, sleep, clean laundry. It makes me appreciate this place a lot more, and i look forward to going back to 10 hour work days, and being on land.

San Diego, CA

Well well well. It's Monday November 18th,2013. boy has the time flown. Got back from the boat det on friday, so so happy to be back on land. I now understand why so many people do not like going to the boat. So let's get down to it. Packed my seabag pretty full. I also had a backpack as a carryon. That was stuffed pretty thick too. So i get on the plane, middle seat, of course, and I pass out for the whole plane ride, like a total of an hour. Wake up in San diego. Get off the plane, and shuttled on to a bus. 10 minute bus ride right up to where the USS Ronald Reagan was ported. I am getting very excited. Since i already had my bag on me i was able to go right to the ship. I climbed up some stairs, requested permission to board the ship, and i was on. Hangar Bay level, 3 hangar bays, with 4 sliding doors that you could see out of, it was just a huge open space to walk around, and store jets in. The jets were not here yet though. So i was looking around, lost as could be, looking for anyone to help me out. Luckily i find Pierce walking around, and he escorts me into our berthing two floors up. I get there, where clay already reserved my rack with a lock. It was a berthing of like 200 people. 3 bunk beds, and 6 to a cube. I got top rack cuz i was the tallest. I didnt have my sea bag yet, so i just unpacked what i had in my backpack. I was very excited for this new adventure. I unpacked, and then headed topside to help out. There i saw all of my buddies from VFA-2. We were on the flight deck at this point. Cranes hoisting in huge boxes of stuff we packed. We had to unload it alls and get it set up. That lasted for like 3-4 hours. One of the boxes had all of our seabags in them, so i grabbed that and went downstairs to unpack. Mind you, these stairs were very steep, easy to slip on, and every hatch you went through you head to duck your head and lift your feet. It wasnt tall people friendly. Once on the flight deck though, the ship seemed smaller than i expected. Everything seemed a lot better than i originally expected anyway, because all these other people talked down how bad their other experience with another ship was, so i literally expected the worst, and this didnt seem half as bad. So our shop was one deck below the flight deck, so it was very easy to get to. Once we had that set up, our LPO (leading petty officer) called our cheif to tell him, and he said we were good to go for liberty, just had to check back in by midnight at our maintainance office. I ran out of there, changed into civilian clothes, and ran off the ship. It was like 6pm by this time, and I talked to my buddy bresnahan from bootcamp about meeting up. He picked me up in like ten minutes, and we were off to get drinks. It was so good to see him!! We caught up, and ended up going to a bar called Mcfaddens. I guess i was there before when i went down to san diego to visit dave briski. It was a lot less crowded than before, since it was a tuesday night, and it was early in the day. $2 Dos equis, and we were having a great time. The bartender started making conversation with us, and we were talking to her as well. she even bought us like two shots each, it was pretty sweet. Anyway so we stayed there the whole night, and ended with a nice burger to sober up, and get back on the ship. Bresnahan had to call his roommate to come pick us up and drop me off lol. We had a great time. I stumbled back to the ship, and somehow, i have no idea how, checked in at our office. I honestly dont remember how i remembered how to get there, the ship was a huge maze, and there were doors everywhere. I checked in, then went and curled up in my rack. Didnt have to work till night check the next day, which was at 530pm. It was going to be a nice hibernation.