My Twelfth Tattoo...

My twelfth tattoo is a quote in the book I am reading. It says "Fly Across The Sea On Wings Full Of Wind". It was said by Daenerys Targarean in the book series Game Of Thrones By George R. R. Martin.

"In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand," Dany told him, as she had told him before. "Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind."

This is in the first book of four. Here she is talking to her husband (a vicious nomad that rules over an army of thousands that her brother "sold" her to in order to gain the army). Long story short.... She is trying to get back home and needs to sail across the sea in order to do that. Her husband's tribe is horseman and do not trust the sea let alone go on boats. So she is  trying to convince him to sail.

I can relate to this quote in different ways. I have always had a love for the sea but an utmost respect for it as well. I have always prayed that when I go out upon the sea, I will make  it back home. I always hope for a swift transit to where ever I'm going.

 Finally I have always had dreams about flying. I would feel a gust of wind coming and I would jump into it and fly where ever I wanted to go. Most often then not it was over pastures and the water.



Done by Jason Goodnight at Ink Addiction in Ft Lauderdale, FL
Left and Right feet

It happened again...

Well it happened again! I got another tattoo! Oh yeah, that's right. This one hurt like a BITCH! I got it on my feet.

Haha this reminds me of a flip-flop

I like the reversed image because you can see the print a lot easier. It is so difficult to get a good picture because of the way it wraps around my feet. You can read more about the meaning behind it on my tattoo pages or by clicking HERE. The guy was awesome. He came up with the script on his own and only charged me $60! It took over an hour and a half to do (including re-drawing). He had to re-draw it because originally I wanted it on my right foot, but as he tried to place it, it got awkward  so I asked him if both feet would be better. Of course he was totally down for that. It made it so much easy to place and also made it bigger so you can read it so much better.

It says: Fly Across The Sea On Wings Full Of Wind

Other than that, not much else has been going on. We completed phase 1 of the OT&E. It was pretty much drills all over again, but it was evaluated by how the boat works and not on how well we do the drills. Although we are awesome anyways. Everything pretty much went smoothly except when we towed another cutter. After we broke tow, the other cutter decided to run over our tow line so we had to let go and get back because of the tension it took. After a minute, the order was given to cut the tow line. And of course after we cut it, it broke loose. So we hulled it on board. After all that work we can't use the towline and have to get another. Stupid other cutter. (I'm not going to tell you the name of the other cutter..... but it rhymes with "Kick-nak")

So after Thanksgiving we will start phase 2 of OT&E. Not the part I am crazy about. We get to make a 10 day trip up north. No further than Virginia, but it will still be cold. Not looking forward to thank. The one good thing is that I may be able to meet up with the guy who did my half sleeve and we can make it into a full sleeve!

Until the next time...

One down...

Well I have my first patrol under my belt. We went out on a three week in and out patrol. We went all over Southern Florida. I have to say it was very tiring and exciting all at the same time.  We had a little bit of everything thrown our way. We had a couple of Search and rescue cases, alot of boardings, a big law enforcement case that involved multiple countries and agencies and a almost drug and smuggling case.

The second search and rescue case involved us picking up two guys who had been lost at sea for 3 days. They were happy to see us! Haha. Of course we were miles away from them to so it took us forever to get to them.  We got them onboard and then towed their boat all the way back to Miami. We passed the boat off to Station Miami Beach and got to moor up for a couple of hours.

The guy driving the small boat from the Station was a good friend of mine. He of course wasn't to happy that we passed off a broken down boat with 2 guys who have been reaking in the sea for the pass three days. haha. This was his response:

I have awesome friends!

Now we have had a few days back at home. Which is good because on the last day of patrol I started to get sick, a cold not sea-sick. Almost everyone on the boat was catching it. I came home and started to dope up on Advil Cold and Sinus and Nyquil. Oh, and a little Wild Turkey American Honey to wash it down with. Needless to say I didn't do anything on my time off except for sleeping and lounging around. Today was the first day back and I feel better. I still have a cough, but at least its not as bad as it was. The first day I was sick I had a tremendous headache so I laid down around 6 pm and didn't wake up till the next morning. Haha I guess I needed it. I'm just surprised that I actually got to sleep on the boat that long.

From here on out our new mission on the boat is OT&E which is Operational Testing and Evaluation on the Cutter. This is usually done on the first of the fleet, but since we are so awesome, they are doing it with us. It's a good thing to do, we get to prove what we can do, but it also takes away from patrolling. The Captain said that if there is a case or a go-fast (boat trying to get into the country suspiciously) we will go for it and if we have free time we will do more boardings. So we won't be totally out of the game but just sitting on the sidelines waiting for the coach to call us in.

A different title than expected...

Originally I had expected to title this entry "Holy hell in a handbasket..." but now that I am writing it, things have changed. To be truthful I didn't really feel up to writing. My depression has been hitting me hard this weekend. It's either that or exhaustion, or both. Yeah, probably both. I should just leave it at that and just talk about what I had originally intended on talking about. So here I go:

I have had so much happen to me this past week or so. I finally got to experience my first patrol. We stayed near Miami and Key West so it wasn't that big of a deal. Except we kicked ass. I got our first SAR case. We were out doing boardings and I sent my boarding team over on this one boat and they radioed back that they were knee deep in water and the boat was sinking. They were able to get the water pumped out as long as they stayed up on plane or had some speed going for them. I was able to talk our commanding officer to letting me escort them in to a safe harbor instead of waiting for the station. That boat never would have made i if they waited so it was a good thing I knew the area.

On our second go round we had an all day long affair with a sailboat. I had the watch with the CO and he wanted to board a sailboat. As we were in the middle of a boarding I spotted one and he said keep an eye on it cause it's next. It turned out to be one crazy case. The boat was registered in a foreign country, owned by a guy in France, ran as a charter out of Florida and had some shaddy as characters on it. One guy gave us 4 different names for himself, 3 people were being smuggled and one guy had a warrant out for his arrest. There is alot to this story I can't really say but the bottom line is that we had multiple countries and agencies on this guy. He eventually got arrested. Go us. It was a HUGE deal for us to be the one who found this guy.

We also stood by for security for a boat race at Juniper Inlet. That was awesome. At first I was out on the small boat standing security while the other agencies got on scene. It was kinda funny because when I got there, there was alot of people in their boats getting way to close and by the end of it, they had all moved out of the area. Haha. We sure told them haha.






We were supposed to go back out this weekend but with Sandy coming through they let us stay in port. Which was good because I was not looking forward to the beating we would have taken if we were out there. At one point it was calling for 35 foot seas. Yeah, screw that. But in a way I had my own storm I had to weather. I had my first duty as a qualified inport ood. Now that was were the "Holy hell in a hand basket.." was coming from. An hour into my watch, the stantion holding the brow had completely sheared off. So I had to untangle that and find a way to secure the brow and the lifelines so nobody fell over. I also had to suck in the stern of the cutter because that was a major factor in why the stantion broke (too much tension). All the while there was three different sets of workers on board and alarms going off constantly. Not to mention it was pouring down rain every time I had to do something.

The darker the color the bigger the waves.

I called the captain about 6 times before things were all said and done. Thankfully I had my OPSbro as my jood so he helped tremendously as well as a kick ass break in jood. We went non stop from 9 to about 4. In between the chaos we had to call everyone and change our status to B2. Which means no drinking and be ready to roll out in 2 hours. Yeah I had a long list of stuff to pass to the oncoming ood. I was so exhausted that I laid down to take a nap at 4 or 5 on friday and I didn't wake up until 11 on saturday. Yup I was tired.

A favorite "Me-ism"...

"You grow from those who are there to support you and feed you, but your strength and determination will come from those who want to see you starve...." 

This is one of by better quotes. I say it because it is true. The last couple years I have been fed well and I'm so grateful for it. I remember a time not so long ago that I was being "starved" and it's hard to go through life when your being stomped into the ground.

Not anymore. I have grown beyond what I could imagine. Thank you for those who have supported me. And thank you for those who haven't. If not for you I wouldn't have anyone to rub my success in there noses.

I can relate...

Dear mailman...

Dear mailman, you are an asshole.

That is all.

Going old school...

My 80's peeps knows this one!

Adding...

I'm going to start doing something a little extra to my blog. I am always saving random pictures that I like on my hard drive. I want to start sharing them on here instead. One: it saves some space on my computer and Two: It gives a better idea on how I'm feeling at the time or what I like.

I find I am not always able to get up the desire to type, but I always have the desire to view pictures. I really need to start working on that. I fear my depression is creeping in on me so hopefully posting pictures or sayings or little tid-bits here and there will help.

Bumping...

Ok so I am sitting in my truck at Walgreens and this guy gets in his car beside me and he opens his car door not once but three times hitting the side of my truck. I roll down the window and said "Seriously?" His response was "Oooohhh I bumped your truck" I said "yeah, you did. Maybe if you lost some weight you wouldn't have to open the damn door so wide". Then he said "A bump isn't going to hurt your truck so just chill" So I was like fine. As I pulled out of the parking spot I made sure my brush guard made contact on his car. I yelled out the window "Don't worry it was just a bump" and then drove off. I hate Miami.

That's not gonna buff out...

So this weeks rant is about some jerk off deciding to hit my truck in the parking lot. A multi-million dollar marina an you still have some asshole who hits your truck. My truck had been sitting in the parking lot since Sunday and on Tuesday I went to go to the store and noticed a white streak down the side of my drivers side door and rear door.

I called the security and he came to look at it and then called the West Palm Beach police to right up a report. The security guard was going to let his supervisor know and try to look through the video footage. The only bad thing is that the camera was pointed on the passenger side of the truck. The camera on the boat was two spots down from where I was parked. Dammit!! I still need to get an estimate and I'm waiting for the security to tell me something. The security guy said Rybovich may even pay for it. Yeah, we'll see...

 So the next day I told the rest of the crew what happened. I was also up on the bridge and I look out to my truck. Wouldn't you know some guys are leaning up against it. As I am looking out I say "What the?!? Get your grubby ass hands off my truck." I get up and step out side and yell "Hey! Do you mind not leaning up against that truck!?!". They instantly got off it. Everyone else on the bridge just looked at me. What? I didn't want them scratching up my truck anymore than it is already. One of the guys said to me "It's a truck". No it's my truck. I told him so and added "It's a 2011 and it looks like an '09!" Haha. Meaning that ever since I got here people have been dinging it up and just plain being asshole and not respecting or caring about anyone else. Either way, I can't wait to get out of here.

Just a head's up to the next clown who decides to "tap" my truck

SIA...

Sorry I have been sick in action. Well I should say no action. I have been sick for over a week. If I wasn't working, I was sleeping. I'm not sure of what I had. It was mostly my sinuses but it knocked me for aloof. I know one of the girls on the boat didn't enjoy me being sick either. One night we had the AC off all day and it had just started to come back on when we went to bed. Well I got into a coughing fit. I could not stop coughing for the life of me. The whole time I am apologizing to her for being so loud and keeping her up. Her response was that it was fine, but asked what the smell was in the room. Haha. I said "I may have been farting this whole time. I'm coughing so hard that it just kinda slips out the back as well". That was the only thing that bothered her. Haha I thought she was going to stab me in the middle of the night. I sprayed some airfreshner , took some cough medicine, and propped myself up and eventually fell asleep.

So not much else exciting has happened in my absence. I finished getting my sign offs for inport OOD. Not bad for not even breaking in right now. Hopefully I can get a board at some point and start standing it once we get back to Miami. The only other quals I can work on now is underway OOD and Boarding Officer. Both of which we need to be underway for. Soon.....

My kinda crazy...

I had a blast last night! I scored tickets to go see Toby Keith in West Palm Beach at the Cruzan Amphitheatre. The concert was amazing. Definitely the best one I have gone to. We (my fried Katie and I) got there a little early so we walked around and people watched for a bit. There are some interesting people in this world. I saw everything from a emo/goth cowgirl to a guy who looked like he just left basketball practice in flip-flops. But man...oh...man... there was alot of NICE looking country boys. MMMMmmmmMMM. Haha.

 

 

The best person we saw was this older man line dancing. He was so awesome. He knew all the words to every song that played (and I was quite surprised by some of the songs, not your typical everyday radio songs) and he danced to every one of them. He had the biggest smile on his face the whole time. You could tell this guy really enjoyed life and you couldn't help but to smile with him. There was also a little girl out there trying to dance with the rest of the group. She was just too damn cute!

Younger generation and older generation all sharing
the same good time.

The first performer was Thomas Rhett. Good singer but he played alot of cover songs. The second was a man I would love to have teach me a few "guitar tricks". Brantley Gilbert. Yeah funny name, but oh my....he is definitely something good to look at! He's like 27 years old, tattoos, plays the guitar, and a really great voice. I wouldn't mind taking him home! I decided I need a good ole country Georgia boy like him. Haha, or at least a good ole boy. I could be his "My kinda crazy".

CMA's

Finally it was Toby Keith. He was really awesome. You could tell he has a sponsorship with for though. Haha "FORD" was everywhere! On the stage, in his video, yada yada.... He played a song that went something like "I'll never smoke weed with Willie again". Haha that was too funny. He played alot of songs, my favorite of course was "I love this bar". He topped off the night by doing an encore of "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue". I have to hand to him, Toby does have alot of Patriotism. Toby also threw all of us for a loop when he played Ted Nugent's "Stanglehold" Not what I expected but he totally rocked it!

Red Solo Cup!

Willie (not actually there, though I did detect the smell of a certain green leafy substance,  so I guess he was there in spirit)

'Bout to practice my skills...

Ok so normally I'm not that violent of a person, at least at home, but the neighbor is on my last nerve. He has this speed boat that he has been revving the engines all flippin day. Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of a good engine. But this guy's engine is LOUD AS FUCK! It's vibrating my floors. I live on the 8th floor and he is across the canal. Seriously dude? I'm about to use my shotgun skills and shoot your damn engines out. There has to be something about noise pollution in a residential area.

Nice boat, nice and LOUD

The bar

On other news...I haven't done much practicing on my guitar. After work I have just been going to get a beer instead of studying. This has been a very frustrating week. Well at least the beginning. We are at the repair dock at Rybovich Shipyard in West Palm Beach. This isn't no ordinary ship yard. It's a freakin Super Yacht Marina. All the boats around us cost as much as our boat and some cost more. There is the "Kennedy" yacht and also "Henrick Motorsports" yacht here. Yeah can we say "MONEY"? Also there is the M/Y Cafe right by our boat. That sells cheap food and beer by the way. Yup That will be interesting.

The view from the cardio room at the shipyard

We also have a couple of rooms at the Homewood for us to use. I haven't stayed in it yet. I have just been staying on the boat and I got to go home this weekend. I get half of the week off. Which is good after this week. I will probably stay in the hotel most of the time. It's about an hour to an hour and a half to get home. Not too bad, but I really don't need to go home. Plus the boat serves food and I guess the hotel does as well. I only came home this weekend because the rooms were already spoken for.

Kinda sucks cause I need an oil change. And I am getting free tickets to go see Toby Keith this weekend in West Palm Beach! Oh yeah! This only makes my third concert, but I am super stoked! I hope the seats are good. The Captain got them somehow and offered them to the crew. Nobody wanted them so I was like "I'll take them!". One of the guys' wife is going to go with me. He said she would have really wanted to go but it is hard for them to get a baby sitter. I told him that if he would watch the kid I would give her the other ticket. No need in me going by myself! It's going to be an awesome time. Standby for photos!

Well that sounds better....

Well after all the money I spent on getting really good steel strings for my guitar, I found that everything still sounded like shit. And that wasn't just me. The 1st string (e string) just sounded really pitchy. After some investigating I found out that the acoustic guitar that I bought is actually a classical acoustic. Which probably all sounds like jibberish to you. Anyways it boils down to the fact that steel strings aren't really the best type of strings for that particular guitar. I actually needed nylon strings.

These are the BOMB!

Well after a quick order I was able to get nylon strings and they sound soooooo much better. I have been holding off on learning new chords and songs because everything sounded funky (and not the good funky). YAY! Just in time too because the boat is going to drydock to get the engine replaced. We will be there for a month so now I will have something to do when I get bored on the boat or in the hotel.

I have learned how to play the riffs for "Another One Bites The Dust", "Smoke On The Water", and "Hang On Sloopy" and I can play "Happy Birthday". I'm ready to move on to more. I really need to sit down and learn what all the chords are but I am so damn impatient that I just want to play songs. Haha. Guess I need to pace myself a little more.

Well wish me luck!

So I usually don't care...

Ok so this may sound bad, but I usually don't care when someone dies (unless it's like close family). I may sound heartless, but it's the way of life. You come in to this world and eventually you have to leave it. Sometimes it's sooner than later or for some just not soon enough.

I was actually really upset to hear about the passing of Michael Clarke Duncan. I read Stephen King's "The Green Mile" and loved it. This was before the movie ever came out.  I loved the book. I am a huge Stephen King fan. They way he described John Coffey in the book is exactly the way Michael Clarke Duncan looked like. Or at least that's how I imagined it. I had never heard of Mr. Duncan before so when I saw the first preview for the movie I knew in an instant that he was the one playing John Coffey. I swear I think Stephen King wrote the book for Mr. Duncan.

I also really like this particular actor because just by looking at him, he made you want to smile. He almost always had the biggest happiest smile on his face. You couldn't help but smile back. I really am going to miss seeing him.

World, you lost a great man. Heaven, you gained a rather large but gentle angel. God, thank you for making him and blessing us with his presence.

Back again...

Well we made it through the storm (both the weather and the damages). Now that we are done with the whole storm evasion, we have a new shit storm. The trip up to Cape Canaveral (I can tell you where we were now) was a little rough for all three Cutters. All of them had some damage and "boo-boos". The biggest one was one of our engines. We had turned it off on the way up because of an alarm and it ended up being the best thing we could have done. I can't remember what all is wrong with it, but if it hadn't been secured, we could of had a crankcase explosion and a fire. This would have happened in the shitty weather I mentioned in the last post. No bueno. That would have been an extremely bad day.

Good news is that the factory is going to give us a whole new engine. The technicians kept finding more and more things wrong with it. So our patrols have been put on hold for a while and we will be spending another month at home. They have to get a new engine, make the latest modifications to it, ship it to us, install it, run it and test test test it. So yeah, it's going to be a few weeks.

Another bright side is I can catch up on my work but even better is I can practice more on my guitar! I have actually learned a new little riff. I recorded it for you hear. Now before I put it on here, bare with me cause I seriously just learned it an hour or so ago. I have a tendency to be out of rhythm sometimes so it takes me a bit to learn something like this.

But if you don't like it, kiss my left butt check. Haha

So could you guess what I played?

Also I added a couple new quotes on my Me-isms page.

Ralph...

So we left Miami to avoid the storm. All I can say is we headed North for awhile. Talk about a rough trip. It was 6-8 foot seas off shore. That was the worse trip I have taken for awhile. I was puking almost every other hour. I counted 5 times. Uh. Its been awhile since I have been in seas like that. It wasn't just me that was sick so that made me feel a little better about the situation.

There were quite a few people that were queasy . It didn't help me that I had a cup of nasty coffee before and tried to smoke a cigarette. Yeah, not a good idea. I made it through the day and my watch. The seas were calmer this morning. Now we are moored in a safe, more sheltered area so hopefully the storm will pass quickly and we will have a calmer ride from here on out.

At least I will have a couple days to let my stomach settle and my abs to stop being sore. Then its off to the big blue yonder.

Breaking 100...

So this is my 100th post! I'm shocked I haven't reached it sooner, seeing as though my life has been a whirl wind this year. I guess that the winds have been blowing me in every direction except to the computer. Haha.

ANYWHO... I am so excited for what I got in the mail today! I got my next big adventure!

I have always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. I am mesmerized by people playing acoustic guitar. I love music and the feelings it brings. So I bought one! I'm just glad it came today cause I will be away from home and I didn't want it laying outside my apartment.

I won't be able to play it while I am gone, but I will keep you totally posted on my progress! Wish me luck.