Friends and Family Day Cruise

Yesterday I went out to sea.

Grant and I were awake and standing at the guard shack at the pier before the sun came up. Through the gate, across the pier and up the stairs to the bridge we walked side by side. We loitered in the hangar bay. Giant U.S. and Japanese garrison flags hung from one wall. A small stage had been erected in front of them faced by rows of nearly empty chairs.

The guests trickled in but we didn't stay to watch. Grant brought me through some bulkhead doors, which closed with lever systems, and down some steep metal stairs to the Reactor office. He stopped there only long enough to tell his boss he had arrived and then led me to Dosimetry where he works most days.

The Dosimetry office was about ten feet by six. It held three desks, four chairs, a couple of computers, a mini fridge, some file cabinets a shredder and an entire wall of binders. We sat there for a while talking to a couple of the sailors and half watching a ridiculous show on their little TV.

Grant actually had a job to do that morning, but first we went up to the flight deck to watch the ship pull out.

Helicopters beat overhead. Tug boats and a Japanese coast guard ship roared to life. The ocean rolled softly under us, too softly to feel. It started slowly. At first I was hardly certain we were moving. But then I noticed there was less blue sky between the pier crane and the ship's island. Soon we were out in the bay and trailing a bubbling wake.

Grant said. "Okay, now we have to go do something way more interesting."

So I followed him down the metal stairs with the ocean agitating under my feet, through the narrow hallways and rounded doorways, past pipes and ducts and door after door to dosimetry. I sat in a chair and took pictures while he set up for an internal monitoring. That's when they check to see if you have any radiation in your body before they let you transfer off the ship.

As a joke he handed me one of the lead bricks they use to shield the equipment. I almost dropped it. It was at least four times as heavy as it looked.

We waited around for the equipment to calibrate, then to recalibrate, for the person he was monitoring to show up, for the test to finish.

Then we went back up the through the doors, down the halls, up the stairs, stop to close a bulk head behind us at least once every level and we were back in the hangar bay waiting for lunch.

We had only 15 minutes to eat before the air show and there was no way I was going to miss watching flight operations on an aircraft carrier if I had the chance to see them.

The air wing prepared the planes for take off, and they did, one after another in quick, loud succession.

A helicopter lowered a rescue diver on a belay line. A plane whizzed by at almost the speed of sound, knocking two swift gunshots into every chest. Even with the little ear plugs they had given us the sound was monstrously loud. Jet pilots showed off their stuff, rolling and diving and whispering overhead in a kind of jet pet show. We even got to see one plane refueling another in midair.

Then it was over and we took the ear plugs out and headed down again into the machinery hum of the ship at work. We took the elevator, the one that brings planes from the flight deck to the hangar bay. It moved faster than we expected and most people screamed as if they were on a ride at an amusement park.

The Moral, Welfare and Recreation division had set up video games, face painting, balloon animals and sumo wrestling suits for the kids and series of bands performed on the stage. But every time we were in the hangar bay I looked at the water.

We were moving fast now and I could feel the boat rolling under my feet. It was like being on an airplane only the dips and rolls were more gradual, less violent. We were completely at sea, no shore, no land as far as my eye could discern. The ocean sparkled by, lit by an unveiled sun. I couldn't help but stop to see it.

Grant seemed amused. This is his life. Six months or so out of every year the ocean rolls outside the huge picture window of the hangar bay doors. He doesn't stop to watch it much anymore.

I leave you today with my favorite prayer, "Oh God, be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small."