There's no sign of intelligent life anywhere...

As I'm certain you were all on the edge of your seats dear readers, I'll start off this entry by assuring you that the UNREPs did indeed go well. Long day Monday. Woke up at 0500 and didn't get done til around 2000. I got about an hour in the middle there to take a much appreciated nap. We did UNREPs all day, and one VERTREP. The UNREPs were very cool, it was somewhat sobering to see these two large ships lumbering along at 15 knots close enough to yell to each other. (Loudly of course) The best parts, though, were not the technical details or anything, it was the fun stuff. More later on those. Tuesday, we came into San Diego and docked at the fuel pier to load cargo. It was an all day affair which we had to be present for in order to get one of our qualifications. I spent most of the day standing around looking busy. Yesterday's big moment came as we were just coming out of San Diego's Harbor. We had just finished up dinner and were looking forward to our evening off when we heard over the 1MC that a coast guard helo had been told to do a few qualifying "touch-and-go"s from our flight deck. We had heard nothing about this, but we set up the flight deck for them. So we had last minute flight ops last night. Then this morning, I woke up to an announcement for a MEDEVAC. More last minute flight ops. Then we had three more UNREPs today and I stood watch with one of the third mates, Sam. He's really nice and lets me actually do things, YAY!

I did promise to share the fun parts of UNREPs, so here goes. First, I should tell you that our captain has a deep booming voice and is fairly old school. Whenever he's on the bridge, he wears a hat not unlike that of the Skipper from "Gilligan's Island." So as the other ship pulls up to ours, he insists we play over the loudspeaker The River Kwai March. You know, the one where they whistle. Then he welcomes them alongside the "Yukon Jack" in his booming voice. Then the UNREP commences. Somebody shoots lines across with a rifle (and that's just fun), and I've noticed that we tend to be better shots than them... hmmm. Then at the end, more often than not, we do an Emergency Breakaway Drill, which is just what it sounds like. We practice procedures for if we should need to get away quicker than usual. And as the newly refueled ship pulls away, the captain has us play "Movin' On Over" by Hank Williams. Unfortunately, I have come to realize that both of these songs are extremely conducive to silly dancing, and as such have lost a small portion of my dignity during a few UNREPs, but I've been having fun.

And now, it's time for dinner. I hear the pork chops are supposed to be good... wish me luck.

Alyssa