Fast Track to Nowhere
Afishionados,
These next few weeks may be quiet around here for a while. The powers that be onboard the Lincoln have decided that the Reactor Department needs to be in a Port and Starboard duty section. What this means is that I have duty (i.e. a watch or some other “job”) every other day. But wait, there’s more! The even higher powers that be have determined that the Reactor Department also needs to do a “fast cruise”.
“What’s a fast cruise?”, I hear you asking.
A fast cruise is where the ship goes absolutely nowhere but you pretend that you are at sea. So I am stuck onboard the the world’s most evil and most hated ship until Friday or Saturday. Joy. I may get a half day off this weekend, but then this process starts all over again. There is no end in sight as to when this schedule is projected to end.
I better go. My cell is dark and the candle I made from my earwax and dental floss is just about burnt out. Gotta save some more for later this week.
March 11th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Well…all you can do is hope you have a good time sailing
Must suck to have to jump when the powers that be say jump. Actually, that sounds more like a marriage….
March 12th, 2007 at 12:56 am
So you are actually just fooling around? I bet you there are a lot of computer games out there with navy simulation which means you can do your job from home… Oh,wait you got a crappy machine don’t you, Pac or Gac or whatever it’s called.
March 12th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Goin nowhere.
Shoont that be calld a SLOW cruise?
March 12th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
The ship goes absolutely nowhere but you pretend that you are at sea? Why can’t they just let you stay at home and pretend that you’re on a ship?
March 13th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Dang. I thought a fast cruise might be where the captain says “OK sailors, let’s open up that crazy reactor throttle and see what this baby can really do!”
March 15th, 2007 at 7:24 am
sounds like purgatory to me….good luck buddy!
March 17th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Souns like fun t me — like when I usta sit in Papa Polanskis parkd car & pretend I was drivin somwheres.
Ah … but if Papa P had a whole dangd SHIPski!
March 24th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Man, that brings back the memories of our old RO Captain Mike Turner aka Scoop aka Herman Munster. We were getting toward the end of the 2001 shipyard and he just decided that since berthing was once again habitable, that we needed to have a 3-week fast cruise. All of our hit lists in RE were as done as they could be, but we were waiting on Shipyard to finish whatever the hell they were working on so we could clear tags. I think M and RM had a bunch of work to do, but it seems like they always get hosed over the worst during PIA’s.
Anyway, the CO’s wife found out about the fast cruise and evidently gave the CO an earfull, who then kicked the RO’s ass. Suddenly, in addition to getting like 3,000 fresh-baked cookies from the CO’s wife’s friends, the fast cruise became a “modified” fast cruise, in which the khaki could let people go home at their discretion (which basically meant we all got to go home).
The RO before Turner was much better - Andy Sevald. I heard he was a terror when he was on the Enterprise, but he must have become more human over time, because he was pretty damn cool on the Pig. During the 99 PIA, the CO (JJ Quinn aka Skeletor) basically took the entire time off. Sevald was the next senior O-6, so he got bagged with being CO for most of the shipyard. It’s great having your department head act as the CO, becuase he basically rammed his boot up Shipyard’s ass to support Rx Dept in a timely fashion. Life was at least tolerable then.
9 years was enough. Bleah.