kelly's excellent adventure
We left for norfolk friday night at 1:30 AM. Fell asleep for two hours, only to wake up at 4 freaking 30 AM to the uncomfortable bright lights of a shady gas station in shady norfolk. Then we went to Comfort Inn to meet up with my uncle and his friend. The reason why we were in Norfolk was b/c my uncle had extra tickets to family day on 1 of the 13 (or is it 12?) US aircraft carriers. we had to be on the ship at 5 AM so that's why we left at 1. i couldn't tell anyone before hand b/c of the rules...something about terrorists and such.
we get past the security checkpoints into the naval base, which seemed pretty lax about everything. we park in this huuuuge parking lot and walk through another security checkpoint to the ship. there was this reaaaally really really hot army guy in uniform with a german shepard dog standing there. the dog was so cute too. so being a tourist, i went and got my picture taken with them but the dog had buried its face in the guy's crotch so the picture looks really strange.
the aircraft carrier was HUGE. it was 4.3 acres across. there was soooo much food in the hangar. it was awesome. i mean, if you love food, you would have loved it there. they had little ben and jerry's ice cream cups and pop tarts and edy's ice cream and sooo much more. i was so happy. and it was all free! people were taking a lot and putting it in their bags to take home, which i thought was kind of wrong b/c they should have just left it for all the sailors b/c the food they usually eat is really gross. there were port-a-potties had the label "philpott potties" on each of them(i'm not joking!) so i thought i should mention that.
it was about 6:00 AM and we had 6 hours until the air show so we just explored the ship for a couple hours. there are so many stair ways and the stairs are so narrow and steep. every hall pretty much looks the same. the door frames were round and you had to step up to get through. if you are taller than me then you'd probably hit your head on the top if you didn't bend down so it must suck to be a tall sailor. we saw the berthing rooms (the barracks) where the people sleep. the beds are stacked really close together so you can't sit up. the bathrooms are nasty. i don't think i'd be tough enough to join the navy. we passed through one of the mess halls for the sailors...it was kind of gross. a few hours later we had walked through one of the places for the admirals and high ranked people and there was a huuuge difference. it felt like i had walked through i country club and wasn't even on a ship. even the stairs to the captain's part are nicer. we saw some of the control rooms with all these radars and stuff.
i met the captain and stood in the place where he works. they had all these cool computers and what they called modules in there. his "office" was the island part above the flight deck for the fighter jets in the highest part of the carrier. it was so hard not to fall asleep when he was talking even though it was really interesting. (i'd only had two hours of sleep).
he said the average age on the ship was 20. which was weird, considering that's only 4 years away for most of us. the sailors looked so young. they looked like seniors in high school. it was weird to see them carrying these huge guns and patrolling the decks. seeing them made me realize how awful it really is that the soldiers out in Iraq are getting shot down and killed right now.they're just so young.
the air show was amazing. on the flight deck, there weren't any planes, just literally thousands of people standing in front of the island waiting for the show. we had been sailing outward from norfolk for about three hours, about 100 miles from the coast. the water light blue; it was so pretty and clean (compared to that nasty brown polluted water at the harbor). there were four planes. one of them was an F-14 or something. we had to wear ear plugs. they (the planes) did touch offs where they zoomed past. this sounds so cheesey but it was soooo cool b/c they were about 10 feet away from me. i tried taking pictures but i think i just wasted my film and got pictures of nothing b/c they had already flew past. the did some other tricks like dropping bombs into the water but the coolest thing was the sonic boom. when they did the last one you could see this sort of clear explosion from behind the jet and then hear the explosion. the second sonic boom was the best b/c it moved pretty much everyone on the flight deck. i almost fell over. on my sister's digital cam you can see it (she was recording) and suddenly she's a foot away from where she had been standing. this girl who looked like she was 12 or 13 started crying and i started laughing at her b/c i'm mean like that.
there was a helicopter circling around the ship the whole time. they started doing that since the USS Kole (i don't know how to spell it) attack. if a boat or something comes with in 300 feet of the aircraft carrier then the person in the helicopter will start shooting at it.
in the hangar (with all the food) they had a lot of entertainment for the long ride back to shore. there was a band (actually pretty good even though they played songs that parents liked growing up), a comedian, and a hypnotist. the hypnotist was awesome. i had been walking around to see the other control rooms so i missed a lot of it. the guy had hypnotized about 15 sailors and a few guests. you could totally tell which people were not hypnotized though (even though there were only 3). this one sailor was so funny. the hypnotist told him that the guy ( a random guy from the audience) standing next to the hypnotist was the sailor's favorite celeb. so then the sailor started freaking out and yelled "TUPAC!!! I thought you were dead, man!" Then the hypnotist told him to sleep and then told all the other people that were hypnotized that the man next to him was arsenio hall. he woke them up and they were all excited and did the arsenio hall cheer. then he told them that the man was richard simmons and they were all looking at the man weird. then they slept and the hypnotist told them they were the village people and were gonna dance to the next song. it was so funny. they guy turned on the YMCA song. they were dancing like the village people. especially the Tupac guy. then one sailor started freak dancing so the hypnotist told them to go back to sleep. then he told the Tupac guy he was a comedian and couldn't remember the punch line and the guy tried to tell jokes about a "big boat" but then he started cracking up in the middle of them. he did so much other stuff to them afterward, it was so funny.
my sister had been hypnotized when she was in college. the guy told her she was an alien with her own language and she started jumping around the stage and screaming random things in gibberish.
anyway. my wrists hurt and i'm sunburned so i'm gonna stop. this was such a long entry.
we get past the security checkpoints into the naval base, which seemed pretty lax about everything. we park in this huuuuge parking lot and walk through another security checkpoint to the ship. there was this reaaaally really really hot army guy in uniform with a german shepard dog standing there. the dog was so cute too. so being a tourist, i went and got my picture taken with them but the dog had buried its face in the guy's crotch so the picture looks really strange.
the aircraft carrier was HUGE. it was 4.3 acres across. there was soooo much food in the hangar. it was awesome. i mean, if you love food, you would have loved it there. they had little ben and jerry's ice cream cups and pop tarts and edy's ice cream and sooo much more. i was so happy. and it was all free! people were taking a lot and putting it in their bags to take home, which i thought was kind of wrong b/c they should have just left it for all the sailors b/c the food they usually eat is really gross. there were port-a-potties had the label "philpott potties" on each of them(i'm not joking!) so i thought i should mention that.
it was about 6:00 AM and we had 6 hours until the air show so we just explored the ship for a couple hours. there are so many stair ways and the stairs are so narrow and steep. every hall pretty much looks the same. the door frames were round and you had to step up to get through. if you are taller than me then you'd probably hit your head on the top if you didn't bend down so it must suck to be a tall sailor. we saw the berthing rooms (the barracks) where the people sleep. the beds are stacked really close together so you can't sit up. the bathrooms are nasty. i don't think i'd be tough enough to join the navy. we passed through one of the mess halls for the sailors...it was kind of gross. a few hours later we had walked through one of the places for the admirals and high ranked people and there was a huuuge difference. it felt like i had walked through i country club and wasn't even on a ship. even the stairs to the captain's part are nicer. we saw some of the control rooms with all these radars and stuff.
i met the captain and stood in the place where he works. they had all these cool computers and what they called modules in there. his "office" was the island part above the flight deck for the fighter jets in the highest part of the carrier. it was so hard not to fall asleep when he was talking even though it was really interesting. (i'd only had two hours of sleep).
he said the average age on the ship was 20. which was weird, considering that's only 4 years away for most of us. the sailors looked so young. they looked like seniors in high school. it was weird to see them carrying these huge guns and patrolling the decks. seeing them made me realize how awful it really is that the soldiers out in Iraq are getting shot down and killed right now.they're just so young.
the air show was amazing. on the flight deck, there weren't any planes, just literally thousands of people standing in front of the island waiting for the show. we had been sailing outward from norfolk for about three hours, about 100 miles from the coast. the water light blue; it was so pretty and clean (compared to that nasty brown polluted water at the harbor). there were four planes. one of them was an F-14 or something. we had to wear ear plugs. they (the planes) did touch offs where they zoomed past. this sounds so cheesey but it was soooo cool b/c they were about 10 feet away from me. i tried taking pictures but i think i just wasted my film and got pictures of nothing b/c they had already flew past. the did some other tricks like dropping bombs into the water but the coolest thing was the sonic boom. when they did the last one you could see this sort of clear explosion from behind the jet and then hear the explosion. the second sonic boom was the best b/c it moved pretty much everyone on the flight deck. i almost fell over. on my sister's digital cam you can see it (she was recording) and suddenly she's a foot away from where she had been standing. this girl who looked like she was 12 or 13 started crying and i started laughing at her b/c i'm mean like that.
there was a helicopter circling around the ship the whole time. they started doing that since the USS Kole (i don't know how to spell it) attack. if a boat or something comes with in 300 feet of the aircraft carrier then the person in the helicopter will start shooting at it.
in the hangar (with all the food) they had a lot of entertainment for the long ride back to shore. there was a band (actually pretty good even though they played songs that parents liked growing up), a comedian, and a hypnotist. the hypnotist was awesome. i had been walking around to see the other control rooms so i missed a lot of it. the guy had hypnotized about 15 sailors and a few guests. you could totally tell which people were not hypnotized though (even though there were only 3). this one sailor was so funny. the hypnotist told him that the guy ( a random guy from the audience) standing next to the hypnotist was the sailor's favorite celeb. so then the sailor started freaking out and yelled "TUPAC!!! I thought you were dead, man!" Then the hypnotist told him to sleep and then told all the other people that were hypnotized that the man next to him was arsenio hall. he woke them up and they were all excited and did the arsenio hall cheer. then he told them that the man was richard simmons and they were all looking at the man weird. then they slept and the hypnotist told them they were the village people and were gonna dance to the next song. it was so funny. they guy turned on the YMCA song. they were dancing like the village people. especially the Tupac guy. then one sailor started freak dancing so the hypnotist told them to go back to sleep. then he told the Tupac guy he was a comedian and couldn't remember the punch line and the guy tried to tell jokes about a "big boat" but then he started cracking up in the middle of them. he did so much other stuff to them afterward, it was so funny.
my sister had been hypnotized when she was in college. the guy told her she was an alien with her own language and she started jumping around the stage and screaming random things in gibberish.
anyway. my wrists hurt and i'm sunburned so i'm gonna stop. this was such a long entry.