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.