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Friday, April 28, 2006

 

Chuck The Tour Gulde...

As most of you know I’ve been working in Mobile, Alabama this week, although I’m home now. It was a productive business trip during the day, and a hella fun time in the evenings! As is normally the case on my travels I made some great new friends in Mobile (big shout out to Ed, Homer, et al). I hit the town, and hit it pretty hard, with those guys (and several others) last night and had a blast! I’m looking forward to my next trip in another month or so. Wednesday night dollar margaritas....I’m there! Well since Chickie suggested it, and I since I mentioned it in my lame ass audio post yesterday, I thought I’d post some pictures I took when I toured the USS Alabama and USS Drum. So sit back and let Chuck be your tour guide! And try not to fall asleep at your desk... It rained all morning long on Wednesday and I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to visit the Naval exhibt, but luckily around 1pm the skies began to clear and I took a little time from work to head toward the ships. Here I am driving west on I-10 towards downtown Mobile. See the skyline in the far distance? I began the tour and was amazed at how huge the battleship is. I walked all around the deck, checking out the guns (small, big and HUGE), then headed below decks to look around. Everything is pretty much restored to appear exactly as it did during World War II, when the 2500 plus crew was out in the Pacific kicking some Japanese ass. Being the way I am I couldn’t help but take a couple pictures of the enlisted men’s head, including the urinals and shitters. Luckily it wasn’t stinking, but I can imagine it would back in the day. After the battleship I walked over to check out the submarine USS Drum and along the way I passed a group of planes and fighter jets. As you can see in this pic, if you click to enlarge, most of them look like they’ve been through a war zone. Well that’s a fairly accurate assessment. They’re heavily damaged not from war, but from Hurricane Katrina. It’s really a shame. Here is the sub, torpedo room and bridge. It was a bit claustrophobic. I can’t imagine living on one of those things for months at a time. An even bigger problem I had was trying to fit my 6'5" frame through the hatches. I couldn’t imagine being in a war time situation, scrambling to battle stations and trying to hurry through a hatch and being yelled at from behind, “Hey man move your fat ass!” Well folks, there you go. I hope it’s been very educational for you all. I’ve got a big day of catch up with admin crap for work, so I better close this out. Y’all have a great weekend! Talk to you next week.

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