Rio de Janeiro

Before and after Paraty was Rio. I didnt spend much time in rio this year, and most of that time was hanging out with nathalie's family. one of the vestiges of the portuguese colonial times are the sidewalks on Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. Copacaba has a wavy pattern and ipanema has a wierder teletubby looking square pattern. different neighbourhoods and areas have different patterns (its kind of a way to tell where you are) and then some of them have little random bits of art. in front of nathalie's uncle's apartment are some pictures that look kind of like cups with pieces of celery in them. i only managed to spend one day at the beach in rio. because of my short time there this time. we went to ipanema, and rented our umbrella from the same guy we did last year. João. the beaches in rio werent as nice as the deserted beaches we saw on the boat trip in paraty... so, i was kind of disappointed by those. but, still, for big city beaches it was nice. we spent a little bit of time at the beach, but not too much, because otherwise, i'd burn... alot. we went and jumped in the water. the water in brasil is alot colder than in texas. i think the water temperature probably hovers around 72-76F. the beach is a major part of the rio lifestyle. people go to the beach to lounge and play in the water. or they go and ride their bikes along the bike paths next to the sidewalks. or they go and walk/run on the beach or the sidewalk. the part of the beach we go to is the family part because having all the kids and parents around seems a little safer from pickpockets and what not.

paraty, brasil

For Christmas, i went back to brasil. the flights down there were crazy... i had to spend a night in dallas en route to rio. once we got to rio we got ready for our little trip to paraty. paraty is an old portuguese colonial town that was the end of the gold road. in the 17th century the portuguese discovered gold in minas gerais and they shipped it out of paraty. paraty has that once prosperous and now sleepy country town feel... mostly cause we were there on a monday and tuesday right before christmas. today, it's a famous touristy place... and this chick even did her music video there. the streets havent been worked on in ages. the "cobblestones" are uneven to the point of dangerousness. i tripped at least 5 times, and while clumsy, i'm not that clumsy. the lack of coherent cobblestones means half the time youre too busy looking down to appreciate the colonial charms. which is sad, because the colonial charms are really quite charming. i got to the point where i just stopped looking down, especially at night when the buildings were all lit up. the first day we wandered around the town, got our bearings, looked into the many, many stores. two of the best stores were the store full of brightly coloured hammocks, and the store that sold model boats that were built by local fishermen. the guy at the store said that making these models was the most profitable thing fishermen in paraty could do... the second most profitable thing was the boat tours they give, and a distant third is fishing... so, making model boats is pretty good, they paint them to look like their own colourful boats and then sell them to people. the little boats are in this big rambling store it was three or four rooms, several with people actually painting hulls, and then every other store in paraty sold the little model boats. the thing to do in paraty is go on a boat ride. the boats take you out to several islands in the bay and you can go swimming and all that sort of good stuff... apart from just being underway. 1045 every morning the pier is crammed with fishing vessels and the hustle and bustle of people going to boats theyd prebooked or trying to find a boat the day of. the boats are all crammed onto the pier... only a few are actually there to go fishing. the port captain is out in civilian clothes and his marinha do brasil port captain hat. the boats are all med-moored. which means their sterns face the pier and they set their anchors out. the boat we were going to go on was called the sir francis drake... i found alot of humour in the fact that a portuguese boat in an old gold port was named after drake who all the spanish thought was a pirate... portugal was part of spain back then because of the unified iberian crown, so it was funny to me. there were problems of some sort with the sir francis drake, so we were transferred to the soberano do costa, sovereign of the coast... despite the high sounding name, this was a nice 80-90 foot two masted schooner. they had awnings rigged from the booms of the schooner, so no sailing... just diesels... and off we went for 5 hours of waterborne fun... not bad for 30 reais (about 17 bucks.) once we got away from the pier and the river next to the town the water started to clean up. we passed contiki restaurant, which is a random island on a rocky island in the bay, and kept going til the water got super pretty and the schooner anchored and after a very brief (and apparently funny safety brief in portuguese) "if you dont know how to swim, you wont know how this year, so dont try to learn now." since i knew how to swim, it wasnt a major concern, and into the clear blue water i went. no mask, no snorkel, just good old fashioned fun. after the island swimmin hole, we stopped at a beach. with really clear water. if you didnt want to swim to the beach, you could take their little boat. i'd call it a rhib, but, i really dont think its that rigid of a hull. so, i'll call it an ib. i didnt know we could swim, so i wound up in the boat with all the girls... which was mildly embarassing... so, i swam back to the boat on the way back... eventually, our time on the boat finished... so, we walked back up to our hotel and took a little break... i.e. got to lay in the hammock and rest for awhile. love hammocks. and the hammock at our pousada overlooked the city. we were on the major hill overlooking the town... not far from the fort of perpetual defense... seriously, the fort that guarded the town was named Forte Defensor Perpétuo. the walls for the most part have been torn down/erroded... probably used in people's houses. the only thing still standing there are about 2 feet of walls and a building. so that was an interesting thing to see, lots of old cannons, not so much else... nice view, but similar to our hotel. not entirely sure how this fort could command the bay since it seems most of the guns pointed towards the town... but, maybe it made more sense back then... we ate at a restaurant called ramdam cafe. if you're ever in paraty, i reccomend eating there on rua do commercio. its owned by a portuguese expat lawyer who is a pretty interesting and friendly person. we ate there twice in two days. the prices were reasonable, the food was great, and the service amazing. the first night they had a special nathalie loved, and they also had another dish nathalie loved, and she couldnt decide, so they gave her half of each... and didnt charge anything extra. in a town of inflated restaurant prices (our two meals there cost between 20 and 30 dollars for both of us)... and we were ordering as much as we wanted. drinks, appetizers, the most expensive things on the menu. and if you like crazy/bizarre foods, ramdam cafe's desert choice is ice cream... gorgonzola icecream. if you're curious, our portuguese friend will bring out some for you to try gratis. i think you should try it. it's good for a bite or two... but, then it starts to become a bit too much. the name ramdam comes from the first 3 letters of each of their names... but i forgot them... go to paraty, take a boat ride, and eat at ramdam cafe... what more could you want?

thanksgiving adventures

nathalie and my thanksgiving traditions so far involve exploring the wider norfolk area. this thanksgiving involved trips north and south of norfolk. the first phase of our thanksgiving break was an overnight stay in kitty hawk, nc. kitty hawk being famous as the place where the wright brothers first flew their airplane 12 yards before it came back to earth. nathalie thought about that some, because supposedly in petropolis, brasil this dude with an airplane called 14-Bis is supposed to have flown first... we had a nice hotel room with an ocean front view... so nice to hear the waves crashing. it was kind of cold and i had a terrible, terrible headache, so we went to sleep early on thanksgiving and then got ready for the next day's adventure. the next day we went out looking at light houses down the outer banks. the first light hose we saw was the bodie island light house just south of nag's head. it had white and black horizontal stripes. then, we continued on to see the famous cape hatteras light house. it's got black and white diagonal stripes. then, after we saw that, we drove back up to norfolk. the light houses were pretty cool. there were a couple more, but dark sets in pretty quick, and the light houses were all like 50 or 60 miles apart. the second big thing we went to see was the mariner's museum in newport news. this was a pretty nifty museum. the first thing to see there is as you walk in. it's a giant gilt eagle off of uss lancaster. i didnt even know there was a uss lancaster when i went there, so, it was pretty cool to find out and see the figurehead of it. the major display at the museum these days are artifacts from uss monitor including the turret and the guns that were in the turret when it foundered in a gale off the outer banks. there are several exhibits on discovering/raising the monitor from the graveyard of ships that is the carolina coast. the newport news shipbuilding industry even donated a life size replica of uss monitor to the museum that is housed outside. since i had just moved back up from new orleans, i took particular interest in the gilt piece of wood off uss hartford which had been admiral farragut's flagship throughout the bulk of the war. farragut's ship captured new orleans and mobile and took part in the campaign up the mississippi river to capture vicksburg. pretty nifty to have this in the museum... but, kind of sad thats all thats left. some of the other exhibits they had included an exhibit on that floating cliche the titanic inlcuding a lifeboat you could sit in, to get the experience of being in an open boat in a dark room... and an exhibit on the life of admiral nelson. it was a decent exhibit, i just feel like i saw it during trafalgar celebrations in portsmouth. but, it was a good weekend and we had lots of fun on our seveal small scale adventures... no maps, no highly detailed plan, no problems.

Earle Naval Weapons Station

Major storms hitting hampton roads diverted the ship from going home to Earle, NJ... you might ask, where is Earle? Earle is within sight of the manhattan skyline... but, far, far away. earle is famous for its 3 mile long pier. seriously, you're not allowed to walk on it after dark. the weather sucked, cold, rainy, and windy, so there wasnt much to do in Earle... which was fine with us because we were exhausted from new york. 60,000 tours and a liberal liberty policy meant alot of sailors were dead tired. i got 10 hours of sleep two nights in a row... and then, the third night, MWR scored like 45 tickets to a new jersey devil/washington capitols game in newark. 20 bucks for the ticket and busride, so i went to that with a bunch of the other junior officers. the devils won like 5-2... but, i was cheering for the caps.

Shore Leave: New York

despite a large amount of time spent giving tours and standing watch and giving more tours in new york... we did get a certain amount of time off. the bright lights and stunning view of midtown manhattan tempted us from the ship to come and explore new york. i did alot of walking... all over the place... little brasil, the library, grand central station... all these grand buildings with classic architecture from when people cared about what buildings looked like and didnt try to build wierd things... people would thank us on the streets as we walked by. which was pretty cool... sometimes. it was pretty funny, i was walking down the street and i passed a small street sign under the sign for 46th street that said little brasil, and i was like this is little brasil? its mostly 3 or 4 restaurants and a shop selling brasilian things... good restaurants though. i can recommend one of them, i ate there three times... ipanema restaurant was great... and their fejoada was wonderful... you could split it between two people and both walk away full. i went to the metropolitan musem of art again. i went when i was in college and it was cool, but i spent alot of time running from crowds... it didnt seem that crowded when i went this time... at least compared to some of the art museums in london... i spent alot of time looking at the greek and roman statues... i ignored most of the rest of greek and roman antiquities section. completely ignored the egyptian section. i saw a couple cool old paintings in the american section, but the way they had them displayed behind glass in big shelves was annoying... then they had a special exhibit on american paintings... so, i got to see some cool ones about bargemen on the mississippi. to get to the museum i had walked through central park. the leaves were changing colours in central park, alot of leaves were already on the ground, but, alot of them were still there changing colours, so that was nice to look at... and walk by. the weather was in the high 60s and that was kinda hot with lots of walking in service dress blues... one of the other fun things i did was go up to the top of the rock. the day was clear, but kind of hazy, but it was cool to go up and see the sights. there were alot of people up at the top of the rockefeller building from all over the world. it was cool to see everything, but once you had finished looking around and taking your pictures, i didnt see much point of hanging out for hours. i had gotten a discounted ticket at 10 dollars... supposedly some people got to go up for free in uniform, but i didnt really get anything for free except some dinners that some of my friends bought me. not that it bothers me free things from strangers is kind of odd, it just boggles my mind how some of the other members of the wardroom got all sorts of stuff for free. i'm glad that our sailors got yankees game 6 of the world series tickets, giants tickets, knicks tickets, and hockey tickets... since alot of them would never get those sorts of experiences otherwise. but, i can pay my own way. i also really didnt try to get my picture taken with every single celebrity that came on the ship. i did get it taken with miss new york (she happened to walk by the quarterdeck when i was on watch) and mike and mike, Captain, CHENG, MP2 and I gave them a tour of the ship... apart from that, i didnt really do any of that. the wierdest place pricewise was the met. they dont have actual prices. they have recomended prices (exorbitant recomended prices) i paid 10 dollars. the recomended was 20. 10 dollars is more than i paid to go to the hermitage. which is supposed to be an expensive museum... i left new york this time, actually liking the city. i had been 3 times before and really had not liked it. too big, too many people, too crowded. it still is, but there is a smittering of decent architecture. its not berlin, london, dresden, praha, or wien... its just a big grid with lots of tall buildings... which isnt that impressive... but the fact that you can order indonesian food online and have it delivered pretty much is awesome. i spent enough time there now, that i can find my own way around... its a grid, its not hard. but, being there on my own gave me the reason to walk around on my own and not brainlessly follow my yankee long island friends around the city with no idea where i was... so, yeah, i'm looking forward to going back to new york... on the ship. but, i'd still rather go somewhere foreign.

Commissioning Day

The day of commissioning finally arrived, and the weather was gorgeous. people had sat down and looked at the best historical weather trends for a commissioning ceremony in november. someone had guessed right. the day before had been ridiculously cold... the day of the ceremony was sunny and mild... which was good for me. but, it didnt matter too much, because i stood inside the door to the foc'sle most of the ceremony... but, i could listen to the speeches... and they went on past the point necessary to make their point, with each speech in turn repeating what everyone else had said... the commandant of the marine corps said it first, and therefore best. but, a northrop grumman representative, dottie england, admiral roughead, secrertary mabus, and hillary clinton all spoke at the ceremony... and then, we manned the rails. that was what took the most time for us for rehearsals... but, on the foc'sle, everything went fine... except that one of the BM1s lost a medal as he rushed to man the rails... oh, and i'm the second one from the bow in this picture...

Commissioning Week New York City

We spent 10 days in New York City. We arrived on Nov. 2nd and commissioned on the 7th. The 5 days between arrival and commissioning were full of events, dinners, tours, and rehearsals. The first big event was our welcoming reception sponsored by the Navy League at the New York Athletic Club... if i was smart, i would have asked to see the Heisman Trophy room, but i didnt... stupid, stupid me. At the reception, our main job was to walk around and speak with the veterans who were there. the singer paul williams performed a song he had written about things. he was a nice guy, and people kept talking while he was trying to sing... so that was kind of annoying, i felt kinda bad for him because people were being rude. it wasnt the crew though, they were all listening politely. and then, after we finished with the reception at the new york athletic club we went and got some pizza at a place, i think called angelinos... and we saw ryan reynolds and scarlet johansson... or rather paul and reese saw them, and i faced away from them. then, after we got outside, paul told everybody they were behind us, and two of the six at dinner ran back inside to get pictures taken... during the days, we would give tours of the ship and do commissioning rehearsal. the lines for the tours were really long, and we crammed people into the ship. this is a picture of the main vehicle stowage area and the ramp up to the upper vehicle stowage. throughout our time in new york we gave tours to somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 people... depending on who you ask. ship's force, navy pier security, and ports america all came up with three wildly different numbers... 55-60,000 is probably the most accurate. in 3 hours after commissioning, we pushed 6,000 people through the ship... that was a very nervewracking day because most of the sailors were with their families and you couldnt find people to man the tour stations. i walked around grabbing people and pluggin them into holes only to come back and find them gone... so, i'd grab someone else and put them there. there were three or four really important spots, so after those got deserted once, i pretty much stood by them and made sure they didnt leave. and those guys did well. they controlled access to the restricted areas and didnt let anyone in. one of my firemen stood on station where i told him to go for like 6 hours. i thanked him a lot for that. some of the tours we gave were to VIPs... the jets cheerleaders came with a few jets players. i wasnt there because i was out with my friends off duty. (to be written about in a later post). when i was standing officer of the deck, one of the marine 2nd Lts brought Miss New York to the quarterdeck on her way off the ship. he had escorted her all around the ship. so, i asked her to take this picture with me. pretty much one of the only people i asked to take a picture with me. not geraldo, not montel williams, not giuliani, not the thai princess, nor sal paolantonio from espn. the night before commissioning we had our major reception at the new york yacht club... as a child, the pantheon of sports heros in our house was mark spitz, dennis connor, and steve spurrier. so, it was really awesome to get to go to the yacht club and see their room with the models of all the victorious america's cup boats... and half models of famous american warships... including the armoured cruiser NEW YORK (ACR-2), the Bonhomme Richard, and the CSS Virginia/USS Monitor together on a half model. In addition to the model room, i got to see the dining room which looks like the gundeck of an old sailing ship... i also went up to the library to sit and read a magazine... they had a great nautical library... i was happy to see some of my books on the shelves in the naval history section. so, hooray me. wished i could have had a few more of them. granted, it kinda seemed like they stopped getting newer books on naval history because alot of them were definitely older, which looks nice, but you have to have the contrast of new and old for proper historical studies. the library itself was all you could want in a library.... dark woods, models of ships, and tons of books about ships and sailing. now, i just need to figure out how to get a membership there, pauper that i am.

a grand entrance

november 2nd, we entered new york. we spent all saints day ghosting off the coast of long island within sight of jone's beach. we ghosted along off the coast because we brought on 100 or so VIPs by helicopter including former secretary of the navy gordon england and his wife and their grandkids. then, the mayor came by lcac (landing craft air cushion) and then left by lcac a few hours later. the VIPs spent the night on board and we all woke up at 0400 for our grand entrance into new york harbour. there were three or four or five media helicopters, police helicopters, and a swarm of small boats escorting us up the hudson river. we passed the statue of liberty which was really cool. and i wondered if any of my family that had emigrated from bulgaria had experienced the same freezing winds when they entered new york harbour en route to ellis island... the state of liberty was really big and really green, and yet, from a distance she seemed kind of small, but big. i thought about what it must have been like for the british when they attacked new york in the revolution. after the statue of liberty, the next big thing on our agenda was going by the site of the world trade centers. which was a pretty touching thing. the marina down there was lined with policemen and firemen, and their bagpipers. i never quite understood how a scottish instrument has become the personification of irishness in new york... but, as we went all stop, you could faintly here the sound of bagpipes playing various songs, wearing of the green amongst them. and then, the marines fired 21 rifles in salute and we proceeded up river to the george washington bridge, turned around and moored at pier 88... and then, on the pier, the mayor, and several dignitaries from the city and state met us, with a procession of sailors, soldiers, and airmen led by a bag piping band... so, that was pretty cool. and then, we prepared the ship for tours.