Depending on where I have been the night before I may have to wake up at 7:00/7:30 in order to leave at 7:45 from Waikiki only to get stuck in traffic on the highway due to 2 huge construction trucks that are being escorted down the far left hand lane of the highway. After we finally get past the trucks and out of traffic we are pushing 8:10 and I start to think I'm not going to make it to muster which is at 8:30 in my coveralls which I don't have on right now.
As we roll through the gate to get on base it's 8:15 and I know I can get ready and be up there at the right time no prob, so with 10 mins to spare I throw on a clean uniform, put on my boots, I grab me a belt, and then start heading up to the flight deck where I know everybody else is already waiting. I stand in front of my chiefs and a couple officers after about 2 or 3 hours of sleep and listen to how awesome our day is going to be... starting off with a fresh water wash down right after muster.
I was so excited and you could see the enthusiasm of all the others just by looking at their faces and we all thought it was pretty cool to be doing something that should have been done before we pulled into port but because of a heavy schedule weren't able to accomplish. So I follow my buddy Will, who is also an FC(CIWS type) and we start with the CIWS mounts. After about an hour or 2 of the duty section spraying down the entire ship and sweeping all the water build up over the sides we were finally done and could continue on with whatever else was planned for the day.
This lead me to the filter cleaning shop in order to take care of some DCPO maintenance that I was going to help Will with, and only after completing the necessary checks up forward and one aft I thought maybe I would chill out for a little bit before early chow for watch reliefs since someone wanted to switch my 17-22 with his 12-17 so he could participate in the ships softball game.
It's 11:05 and as I'm walking by the messdecks I run into the person who I am taking over for and I make sure the game plan is still in effect, he gives me batterys release and I know I have to eat now or never since I was relieving the internal rover(who was playing too) at 12:30 instead of the normal 12:45 in order for him to get ready and be at the softball game. They tell me I can eat right now even though the line isn't open but as tempting and as hungry as I was I needed to change into my Utilities for my upcoming watch in 20 mins.
So I hurry down to berthing as fast as possible and throw on my new uniform and start to feel good because of how fast it took me and start to leave my room when I notice that I never shaved the hair off my face which was now staring me down begging for a shave.
I couldn't just leave this poor hair on my face, especially since I was about to take a watch where I was going to see everybody for the next 5 hours, and that's when I turned back to my rack to grab my stuff for a dry shave like I normally do.
Ahhh finally have a fresh shave and I got 10 mins before I am supposed to be on watch so I still got a lil bit of time to eat so I head back to the mess line to get some ono kine grinds and eat my sloppy joe at a slightly faster chewing velocity then normal and upon completion get topside to take the watch. Now watch is boring and nothing really happened so I will skip the details and take yall to 1700 the time I finally got off watch.
I was starving and it was hot wings, pizza and ice cream night so I was pretty stoked and could hardly wait to sit down and eat this delicious food that had been prepared for us.
Now apparently we didn't do a good enough of job with the fresh water wash down earlier that day so we were going to muster back on the messdecks at 1730 to try and talk about what needed to happen in order for us to be a squared away duty section. My body had other plans and their was a Head that was calling my name so I started to stroll back to berthing when I got stopped right where my ladderwell was... Sure enough in the last 30 mins one of the fan coiling units started to leak and now their was a big puddle of water going all the way across the P-way which I now got tasked to help clean, woopee! So me and a GM2 put our heads and our swabs together and we got almost all the water off the deck just in time for our 1730 muster(and yes I left 5 mins before that in order to relieve built up fluids that were dying to get out of my system).
So the day just keeps on getting better and better and we decided to do the fresh water wash down after colors at around 1930 when it is dark so we have a less chance of being seen since we aren't really supposed to be doing a washdown like this in port. After the awesome news about our failed attempt of a fresh water wash down and how we would be trying our luck again with some fire hoses to get more pressure to get the salt off I finally had time to take a little break.
Now it's my time and I thought about sleeping but I had a few people I wanted to talk to so let the texting commence! I do this for about an hour conversating with 3 or 4 people over text messaging and it's finally time for my next part of the day, "Lights" at the sound of colors. As this being the first time I got the chance to turn on the lights from the Pilot house aka Bridge I didn't really know which lights to hit but QM1 filled me in on them "Lets see hmm, 3 there... 4 over there, o ya and you can't forget about this one up here too!" Sweet sounds like fun and can't wait to hit all the lights!
5 min warning goes down and this is when I start to really concentrate and stop texting people so I won't be distracted for my time to shine with the lights that will light up the sky and tell all the airplanes where we are so they won't hit us. It was quite exciting and nerve wrecking, especially since I was all alone and this was my first time, but I overcame and I showed those lights who was the boss right when colors went down.
I started with the 3 and hit the top 2 first then moved to the lower one, then I bent over backwards with a *swoosh* (sound added for emphasis) to the 4 which I hit all at the same time and then I couldn't forget about that last random light that was nowhere near any of the other lights, and now I successfully completed my evolution immaculately.
Not even 10 seconds later "Muster duty section 1 of 6 on the quarterdeck with the section leader", wow this day really does keep moving doesn't it. Good times is all I have to say and now we start the spraying of water all over the ship in the dark like we had done earlier except this time we were using the fire hoses :)
Okay so now we are done for the second time at 2030 and I'm exauhsted and can't wait to get to my rack and get some sleep before I gotta be up for lights again at 550 in the mornin. So I get all nice and cozy and plug in my phone to charge and pass out after setting the alarm.
2 and a half hours later someone rings the doorbell to our berthing 4 house and doesn't get an answer so he lets himself in and then he finds my room and knocks on my door(rack 21) and says "Hey bro they need you up stairs by the fan coiling unit", "Okay fine I'll be up there in a min" I mumble back as I start to crawl out of my rack which is a foot off the ground.
I slowly put my uniform back on and then my boots and start to head back up stairs to meet our Warrant officer and a DC2. I look over at warrant and he starts talking to me "Hey are you DCPO qualed?" I reply no, then he asks me "Have you ever worked on one of these before?" and again my response is no, then he asks "Who is your DCPO?" and I tell him Will. Then he starts asking me what he looks like and what is his birthday and if he is married and if he has any kids and he asked me weird questions like if Will owns a fairy or a unicorn.
Well I guess I just woke up and I might have just been hearing things but apparently over night I had gotten DC qualified which I have been trying to do for the past 5 weeks and then somehow mysteriously I was DCPO qualed as well, I must have pulled the Matrix card where I just strapped a cord to the back of my neck and uploaded everything I need to know in a matter of seconds.
After I tell Will this amazing story about the fan coiling unit I head back down there to mop up the mess again, by myself this time, using a retarded mop bucket that only had 3 wheels. Then I grab a trash can like they told me to and put it next to the leaking air conditioner and I think to myself "hmmm I should really make a post right now?" and here I am at 1 in the morning with about 4 hours to go before I have to be up again explaining how awesome life is onboard the boat and how even a noob gets called out to do something he has no idea or comprehension of what needs to happen.
I guess I need to start hiding in the shadows because they have already noticed that I'm trying to learn everything and am active almost anywhere I can be... Now I'm hungry and I'm headed back to bed and tomorrow I will post up on facebook about this post and maybe put some spaces in here to make it easier to read or something. O and again welcome to my world ^-^
*Finished lights and did a read over and fixed a few things and now it's time to put it up on tha facebook, o ya then I get to go to another muster and hopefully we will be off by 8:30 *crossing my fingers* and hope you enjoyed this.
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