LCDR Thorsson, Arriving

It took a bit of trouble getting me here, but I'm now on board the USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC-19), flagship of the US Seventh Fleet.
The fiasco started with the process of getting my orders approved in order for me to travel to Japan.  I won't bore you with the details other than to say that it looks like nobody bothered to tell the folks that buy plane tickets for Navy travellers that there was a crisis, so they didn't have anyone extra around for the weekend and there were a lot of us that got delayed in the jumble.

Once I actually got myself aboard the plane, everything came together pretty well.  I had a layover in Tokyo's Narita International Airport and I've never seen it so empty.  From there I connected to Naha Field in Okinawa.  From the looks of it, almost everyone on the plane was US military.  When we landed in Okinawa, a Navy bus met us and ferried us out to Kadena Air Base where they put us up for the night in the Bachelor Officers Quarters.

The next morning we piled our gear into the back of a truck and headed out to the pier.  I'm still trying to figure out how to upload pictures while I'm out at sea, otherwise I'd share the first snapshot I got of the ship at the pier.

Once on board, we were all give our berthing assignments and whatnot.  I'm sharing a stateroom with three other officers.  That stateroom shares a head and shower with the stateroom next door.  All things considered, they're pretty good living quarters for a Navy ship.

Not long after I'd arrived on board I managed to find Rich Servance, who's been one of my best friends in the world since freshman year of college.  While I've known for some time where I was going to be stationed, I've been keeping it quiet specifically to keep him from finding out about it and prompting another chapter in the Saga of the Ten Pound Bag of Pennies.  I've also come across three guys who I served with during my first sea tour aboard the USS CUSHING (DD-985).

The following morning, the ship left the pier and I started my involvement in Operation Tomodachi, the Humatarian Aid/Disaster Relief (HADR in military parlance) mission persuant to the earthquake and tsunami of mid-March.  Right now the US Navy has 19 ships, 140 aircraft, and 18,282 personnel involved in the mission.  The biggest concern, of course, is avoiding radioactive contamination while delivering aid supplies to those in need in the stricken area.  While we're doing that, we're also working to re-open Japanese ports which were cluttered with debris after the disaster, helping to deliver freshwater via barges to the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors, and working with the Japanese government to provide emergency supplies and equipment to isolated communities that were cut off by the tsunami damage.

For my part, I'm one of three folks covering the Maritime watch in the Fleet Command Center.  We'll be rotating through (eight hours each per day) keeping track of the surface ships involved in the disaster relief operation.  Despite how that might sound, it's not all that interesting.  At the fleet command level nothing happens very fast.

So far, the biggest challenge for me has been getting re-acquainted with the various codes and acronyms that are daily language for naval officers, but not much use for merchant seamen.  Other than that, it's been surprisingly easy to re-integrate myself to active duty.

So that's the short version of what's been going on.  Again, I'll be posting when I can with what details I can.

Stay tuned...

Now For Something Completely Different

Things are about to get a bit more interesting in my life.

For those of you who don't already know, I'm a Lieutenant Commander with the Naval Reserve.  This aftenoon I got a call telling me I'm being recalled to active duty for a little while in support of Operation Tomodachi*, the humanitarian aid effort in Japan.

The whole thing was very short-fused, so I'll be on a plane in no time at all.

As I did with my Afganistan adventure, I'll be posting as often as I can with stories, pictures, and whatever other information I'm allowed to post, so stay tuned.

*Tomodachi is Japanese for "friend."

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Finally, a Day I'd Call Busy

After a few weeks of waiting, I finally gave up on the Navy Reserve sending me off to Pearl Harbor for my two weeks of annual training. I wasn't terribly upset about it though and actually started stacking up things to do over the next two weeks instead. In fact, the night before yesterday I was tinkering on the boat until the wee hours of yesterday morning, secure in the knowledge that I'd have weeks to catch up on my sleep.

When I rolled over yesterday morning (the ninth of June) at around 9 am, I checked my phone and noticed that I had a number of emails. Three of them were notifications that my orders had come through. I was due to report in Hawaii on the morning of the 11th, so I was flying out of SFO at 0913 on the tenth. This gave me just a scant 24 hours to go and I was going to need every single one of them.

Here's the to-do list I scribbled out as I was getting out of bed:

• Drop off and feed the dogs at the folks' house
• Run boxes to post office and pick up undelivered packages waiting for me there
• Grab breakfast at a coffee shop while sorting through outstanding orders online
• Get a haircut
• Pick up boxes and shipping supplies
• Build, box, and ship unfilled customer orders
• Pack uniforms, civilian clothes, camera, and dive mask for trip to Hawaii
• Replace oil absorbent pads in the bilges of the Heart of Gold
• Attend an opera with Rose
• Meet up with the usual crowd for dinner
• Find all of the power cords and chargers for portable electronics
• Clear-cut all of the weeds growing in the dog pen
• Visit with mom at the office
• Gas up the car
• Arrange cash payment for canvas boat cover
• Take in buckets of caffeine

I'm pleased to say that I accomplished all of this and more and still found time to stop and be sociable along the way. Tomorrow I'll put on my lieutenant commander pants and see what Navy life is like for a couple of weeks. For now I've been up for a solid 38 hours of scrambling and working and driving, so it's time to go collapse.

Thank you and goodnight.

The First (and Possibly Last) Drill Since My Return

I mentioned in a previous post that I was frustrated on account of my latest drill weekend. Here's a brief synopsis of what happened:

After weeks of travelling around the country and trying to relax, it was time to shave, get a regulation haircut, and dig up my uniform. I finished all of these things for the first time in quite some time on the Friday afternoon before my scheduled drill weekend. That Saturday I woke up in Petaluma at ridiculous-o'clock in the morning so I could drive down to Alameda in time for morning muster. Since I'd been gone for quite a while, I gave myself a little extra time in case I got lost on the way.

Bear in mind that the unit I'd been drilling with since 2005 has been decommissioned. The last thing they were able to do before I shipped out to Afghanistan was to reassign me to a new unit. In the hustle and bustle of being processed for mobilization and deployment, I had just enough time to meet a few of the folks at the new unit, shake hands and trade email addresses, and scoot out the door.

At the time they were meeting at a separate location a few minutes down the road from the Navy Operational Support Center (NOSC) where I had been drilling for the previous two years. Being a creature of limited imagination, I went to the same location in the hopes of finding the unit where I'd left it some ten months prior.

They were not there.

Not only were they not there, the building was locked and dark and when I asked a passer-by if he knew anything about it he said he'd never seen a Navy person in that building in two years of working there. Suddenly I was in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone.

Well prepared for such an occasion, I headed over to the NOSC to ask WTF. Upon arrival I got the standard runaround during which I learned that A: my unit has been relocated to another city altogether, and B: their drills have been rescheduled and I was in the wrong place on the wrong weekend. So it turns out I'd gotten the world's worst haircut for nothing. Awesome.

Since I was already there and all dressed up, I wandered to the NOSC Admin office and asked if there was anything they needed me to do now that I was back from deployment. This started me on a bonus runaround during which I was reminded of all the reasons I've hated being in the military. I got to stand in a couple of hours worth of lines so that I could have half a dozen different petty officers tell me that they couldn't help me, I was in the wrong place, and the previous person had told me wrong, only to be sent to another line where the couldn't help me because I was in the wrong place and the previous person had told me wrong.

The final straw was when I stopped by medical to drop off my records and the corpsman behind the counter mentioned that they were really busy and could I please come back on Monday. This is a drilling center for reservists. Usually these people have day jobs on Monday through Friday. I told her she could call me if she had any questions, but no, I would not be there Monday.

Added to these little bits of aggravation was a whole shopping list of administrivia that I'm apparently delinquent on. It turns out that being deployed to a war zone doesn't give you a buy on all of the minor stupid shit that they would've had me doing during my routine drill weekends (mainly filling out forms and sitting through powerpoint presentations). So I've got twenty days worth of websites to page through and certificates to print out proving I've been schooled in topics ranging from Alcohol Abuse Awareness to Small Arms Safety to the Flavor of the Week in Naval Terminology.*

While I was there I put myself in for a six month leave of absence. I'm not sure if I'll go back. If I do, I'll have to find a new unit to drill with, a new NOSC to drill at, and start the whole pain in the ass all over again.

So that's that.

I'm thinking of transferring to the Merchant Marine Reserve program so I can still serve in some capacity and at least earn points toward retirement. We'll see how that goes.

*Naval Terminology has an odd way of morphing from something useful to something completely useless. Example: years ago someone coined the term Command and Control to describe systems used for, you guessed it, command and control. Simple and straightforward that. You hear it and instantly understand it. Then some time later, some jackass** decided it sounded cooler to say C2. Okay I guess. But then some other jackass** decided you can't have Command and Control without Communications and it became C3. Add another jackass** and it became Command, Control, Communications, and Computers, or C4. Then, because brevity is the soul of wit, the Navy had to make it longer. With the diligent work of another jackass**, a moron**, a fucktard**, and at least one idiot**, it became Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance, or C4ISR. Note that C4SRI has just as many syllables, making it just as ponderous and time-consuming to say, as Command and Control.

While I was gone, the Brits actually took this term one step further, coining C4ISTAR, or Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaisance. With just a few more improvements, this will become the superacronym that includes every single thing the military does.

I figure by the time my six-month leave of absence is completed, it will have grown again into Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Confusion, Telephones, Internets, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, Reconnaisaince, HUMINT, SIGINT, Intelligence, Information, Intuition, Indecision, and Special OPerations, or C5TISTARHSI4SOPs for "short." At that point, nobody will be able to understand what it means anymore and they'll commission a study at great expense to find a useful term to describe can be defined as the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commanding officer over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. I'd help them out, but I'm sick of the process.

**Admiral