Haze Grey and Underway
Well, here I am, out to sea on my first deployment. I’ll be gone for a total of six months, sailing around doing Counter-Narcotic and -Terrorism Operations, or ‘CNT Ops’ for short. Basically we patrol the ocean between the US and South America and try to stop a bit of the drug smuggling that’s going on. It promises to be an interesting trip, with several nice South American port visits planned.
We’ve already had one stop on the way down there - just a brief overnight visit to Key West, Florida. It was a nice place, with gorgeous light blue water, but a bit touristy for my taste. Case in point: I saw enough t-shirt shops along the main drag for me to declare Key West the ‘T-Shirt Capital of the World’. Plus, food prices (at least in the tourist section of town) were crazy! Most entrees cost around $15-20, even at the burger joints! Ouch!
I’ll try to get some pictures up now and then during the deployment, but that’s not going to happen very often - our Internet connection out to sea is worse than dialup. I had one day where it took me an hour just to check my bank balance.
<rant>Side note to all you web page designers out there: Not everyone has broadband! Some of us are stuck on slow connections and those sites with lots of images and fancy Javascript do nothing but annoy us and waste our time. Grrr.</rant>
Oh, well. On with the deployment. Ciao!
I’m glad things are going well for you. It sounds like you’re having amazing adventures and seeing some cool places.